Wood The Symphony Of Life

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-3-8496-4331-7
Verlag: Jazzybee Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 149 Seiten

Although the general purpose of this book is unitary, in the broad sense, its various studies and interpretations are quite unlike. They touch upon different aspects of life, and their mutual relation is mainly below the surface. The particular order in which they receive attention is therefore of no consequence. A few of them, subject to considerable revision, have appeared in various magazines. The underlying motif of the author is constructive and not iconoclastic. It is by the positive light of Truth that the shades of error are to be dissipated. There is a deep spiritual hunger among men, the nature of which is often not clearly discerned, and this is the real cause of a universal restlessness. This craving cannot be satisfied upon the plane where the search is most generally made. The higher nature must receive proper sustenance, and failing in that, no physical, intellectual or ethical redundancy can make good such a radical incompleteness. There is a general though mainly a blind quest for the normal divine counterpart which alone can round out the vital necessities of the human constitution. Such a demand is a positive prophecy of supply.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wood, Henry

Leseproben

Xi. What Is The Higher Law?

THE term " higher law " implies the existence of other law which is relatively lower, either in quality, scope, or potency. Law, unqualified by any adjective, is defined by Webster as, " In general, a rule of being or of conduct, established by an authority able to enforce its will ; a controlling regulation ; the mode or order according to which an agent or a power acts." In a further elaboration, he says, " The power which makes a law, or a superior power, may annul or change it." While this is true in the subordinate sense, especially as employed in the realm of human enactment, it is obviously unfitting, if applied to the higher or divine law.

The definitions of law in the past, as a mode of operation, whether upon the physical, psychical or spiritual plane, almost uniformly have been given an objective interpretation. It consisted of the dominance of a Will, or Force, which was supposed to be operative from without. It bore the aspect of an arbitrary regulation, somewhat like the mandate of a powerful monarch. In government, it was the imposition of kingly or legislative fiat ; in physics, simply a necessary uniformity of sequence ; and, in the moral and spiritual domain, the objective " Will of God," expressed in external revealed regulation. Practically, the idea has widely prevailed that the divine government was arbitrary and subject to modification. But the higher inspiration of present thought measurably discovers in law some elasticity and even spontaneity. The present ideal of the moral order is therefore delightful and satisfying. To the human consciousness the former aspect of mechanical rigidity in law is dissolving. Not that there is any lack of perfect order in any corner of the cosmos or any doubt as to its reliability, availability and beneficence, but the arbitrary, unrelated and supernatural coloring of the universal order is fading under the clear light of the new philosophy of life.

Law is supremely natural. It is written not upon objective tablets, but in the nature of things. The rules to be observed by man are inscribed in his constitution. Law of any rank is unchangeable and immutable from the standpoint of its own plane. But the superior dominion of the higher law is now coming into recognition. The sap rises in the tree, not because gravitation is suspended, but because tree-life, in its order, outranks the earthy attraction. The forces of mind transcend mechanical and chemical powers, and therefore receive a deserved homage. It is eternally ordained that the higher shall dominate the lower, finer vibrations those which are more crude, and the unseen realm that of sense. In the three zones of man's nature the spiritual is primarily causative and obviously supreme. In the proportion that the conscious ego occupies that vantage-ground and vibrates from it as the recognized center, there will come organized power and harmony. Man grasps and utilizes the higher law when from the spiritual altitude of his own nature he cooperates with the divine order, and also reaches down with gentle but firm dominance through the various strata of his own organism.

That which is the higher law for one is not identically the same for another. In its general and abstract ultimate, no one at present is folly equipped for its perfect recognition. It is every man's relative higher law which differs in degree, scope and complexity from that of his fellows. To primeval man there was no moral law, and from the confines of the Adamic plane but little of the abstract law is intelligible. Law, to any man, provisionally includes that which he may now possibly recognize, but which still lies somewhat above his everyday consciousness. He should learn to co-operate with it without being in subjection to it. It is his to grasp and use. Step by step, as he mounts upward, new spiritual leverage is at hand from which lines of relationship radiate in every direction. As the railroad switchman, from his elevated tower of observation, governs the direction and destination of ponderous trains by the simple moving of a handle, so the normal mission of the unfolded ego is the orderly governance of things which are below. As before noted, the higher law for no two individuals is quite the same. But they are alike in the general fact that what any one may appropriate and employ to-day has more transcendent yet attainable accomplishments which stretch on in advance. As human ideals are pushed forward, they carry with them corresponding legal privileges and appurtenances. "To him that hath shall be given." He who can bring into his own soul a conscious oneness with the " Oversoul" will receive a divine equipment which he may wield with ever-increasing efficiency. This may be defined otherwise as intelligent identification with the subjective Christ. Only this will insure well-rounded and harmonious growth. In a deep sense we create the path upon which we are to walk. The leverage provided by every one's higher law reaches downward and outward. Seek ye first the kingdom of harmonious spiritual consciousness, and the lower planes and landscapes, dressed in living green will lie stretched out before you, each in its appropriate order and rank. But, by the law of growth, realization must be gradual.

The final interpretation of the higher law will be found in that universal attraction called Love. As it is developed, it will represent an ever-increasing lawfulness. Love in its subordinate forms is educational. Personal, paternal, filial, and even conjugal loves are the training schools of that broader, perfected, impersonal Law of Attraction. The higher law, which is not quite the same thing to differing individual consciousness, will finally be merged into that Higher Law the grand ideal of which is so charmingly voiced by Tennyson : —

" One God, one law, one element, And one far-off, divine event, To which the whole creation moves."

Xii. War From The Evolutionary View-Point.

WAR, like every other human phenomenon, may be studied from a variety of points of view, thereby revealing unlike aspects. We may survey it from the patriotic, ethical, social, humanitarian, religious or economic standpoint, and as a result reach one-sided and even misleading conclusions. But the evolutionary significance of war subtly permeates or rather underlies them all. The things which are revealed by the conventional studies enumerated are in the nature of surface indications, while only a deeper penetration into the constitution of man can lay bare the causative roots and essence of wholesale human conflict.

The same war may be holy or unholy, necessary or unnecessary, humanitarian or barbarous, as logically interpreted from the premises of the observer. But the true significance of every great human activity is only determinable m the light of a philosophy which is both metaphysical and evolutionary. But even under such an examination there are two sides of the subject which seem unlike and even in opposition. On one hand it is not easy to look at war specifically and relatively without some feeling and appearance of pessimism. But as the optimistic conclusion is the only true and final one, we suggest that if the first pages of this chapter carry any tinge of the former, judgment be held in abeyance until the final summing up is reached. In the closing synthesis we shall find that war is only an educational incident in an eternal economy which is wholly beneficent and optimistic. This larger encloses and swallows up the smaller, for the circumference of the Good is boundless.

Beginning, then, with the more specific and limited investigation, we may definitely state the foundation principle, that the sole cause of war is found in the evolutionary survival of brutehood in man, while objective questions or international differences, which are commonly regarded as causes, are really but occasions. The almost universal popular obliviousness to this vital distinction is responsible for a large part of the misery of the world. Occasions, being comparatively superficial, should be entirely under human control. Real causative forces are too deeply imbedded in the nature of things for the average man to grasp, much less to truly weigh and measure.

While the phenomenon of war is visible and objective, war itself is entirely within the mind of man. The action of armies and navies commonly called war is only war's outward expression. The latter is secondary. When collective passion arises to such a pressure as to find embodiment in fitting instruments, the visible signs are named war. But the term is applied to a symptom rather than to the disease. The real culprit hides himself beneath a great pile of rubbish. While the idealistic philosophy inculcates only a recognition of the good, war is the dominant recognition of evil.

We are now prepared to take what may seem a bold step, and affirm that the greatest harmfulness of war does not consist in its material desolating touch, the bitterness of pain, the tragedy of wounds, the carnage of battle nor the accompanying harvest of disease. Terrible and revolting as these concomitants appear to us, the monster which overtops them all is the great tidal wave of collective hatred. This is behind all...