When man in perplexity interrogates the idea he has of external
reality, he is anxious to put his little individual self in harmonious
relation with the whole of reality that he knows. Therefore he should
organize that reality as a whole, and in such a way that it can all
be brought to bear through any single point. The relation between the
self and the idea of outer reality is, for any one problem, that of two
pyramids touching by their points only; but the points of contact can
shift as by miracle over their surfaces as the problem is changed.
But another power of personalities is their power of interpenetration.
The purely material cannot do this. One portion of matter cannot
occupy the same space as a second portion. It is another of the
great differences between the psychozoic and all previous stages of
evolution, between man and all else that we know in the universe,
that the discrete units reached at this level of organization, the
individual human beings, can achieve interpenetration by means of their
minds. When you expound a new idea to me, and I grasp it, our minds
have obviously interpenetrated. This is a simple case; but there may be
an intimate union of mind with mind which is the basis of the highest
spiritual achievement and the greatest happiness. If mind and matter
are two properties of the same world-substance, then the rise of mind
to dominance has enabled this basic substance to escape from some of
the imprisoning limitations which confined it at lower levels of its
development; do we not all know that despair at being boxed up, that
craving for communion? Using our previous line of argument, we see
that the interpenetration of personalities is right, implies a further
step in progress, must be part of the basis on which future advance in
evolution is to build.
But to apply this to our present point. By organizing our knowledge of
outer reality after the pattern of a personality, we make it possible
for it to interpenetrate our private personality. If, therefore, we
have, in any true sense of the word, “found religion,” it means that we
shall so have organized our minds that, for flashes at least, we attain
to a sense of interpenetration with the reality around us--that reality
which includes not only the celestial bodies, or the rocks and waters,
not only evolving life, but also other human beings, also ideas, also
ideals.
This, to my mind, is what actually happens when men speak of communion
with God. It is a setting, an organizing of our experiences of the
universe in relation with the driving forces of our soul or mental
being, so that the two are united and harmonized. There is a resolution
of conflicts, an attainment of a profound serenity, a conviction that
the experience is of the utmost value and importance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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