Chapter 1

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SCIENCE AND THE INFINITE

Or

Through a Window in the Blank Wall

by

SYDNEY T. KLEIN

Second Impression

London William Rider & Son, Limited Cathedral House, Paternoster Row, E.C. 1917

First Published November 1912 Reprinted September 1917

TO

THE RIGHT HON.

ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR

PREFACE

In venturing to prepare this little volume for the eyes of the reading public, I am fully aware of the difficulties of the subject and the inadequacy of the expressions I have been able to employ, but I have made the attempt at the request of those who have found consolation in some of the thoughts herein embodied; and the messages left by others before they passed away, embolden me to hope that many others may find in this volume some points of interest which will help them to appreciate better the "joys" which this life has for those who know how to look for them, and that perhaps others may even gain a clearer conception of that which awaits us beyond the Veil.

Many of us allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the small worries and vexations of everyday life, clothing them with a reality quite disproportionate to their importance; we are too apt to look at them, as it were, through a powerful microscope, piling power upon power of magnification, until we have made mountains out of mole-hills, whereas if we treated them at their true value we should look at them through a telescope, in the reverse direction, when they would appear not only trivial, but would be seen to be too remote to have any material effect on our lives.

The sub-title of this volume, and indeed its inception, arose from my lately coming in contact with one of those establishments which are doing for humanity what a mother's arms do for the child who is "sick unto death"--a beautiful home with cheerful rooms and cheerful nurses, where patients are tenderly cared for after severe operations, carried through by our most famous surgeons, some cases, alas, almost hopeless from the first. At the head of this establishment was one of those kindly self-abnegating personalities, whose loving sympathy and encouragement have comforted the dying and smoothed the path for many a weary pilgrim passing from this life to the next. With immense responsibilities on her shoulders, and after a day full of strenuous work, the head of this establishment would often sit through the night for hours by the couch of those whose lives could not possibly be prolonged for more than a few days. It was a few simple answers elicited by the questions brought to me from those poor sufferers, and the way such answers seemed to calm anxieties connected with the fear of death and to render the impenetrable Veil more transparent, which suggested the title, "Through a Window in the Blank Wall."

I do not wish to lay claim to having made any startling discovery; similar thoughts, especially those concerning the non-reality of Time and Space, have no doubt occurred to others, but the whole problem "What is the Reality?" has been insistently pressing on me ever since I can remember, and I have tried to give here in simple colloquial language, without any attempt at rhetoric, the conclusions I have personally come to as to what is the Truth.

The study of ancient and modern philosophic theories is useful as showing how impossible it is, for even the greatest thinkers of any age, to grasp the Absolute with our understanding or to measure the Infinite with our finite units. The propounders of all these theories seem to me to be, without exception, looking in the wrong direction for the "Reality of Being"; they are all arguing from the standpoint of "Intellectualism" in a similar manner to that of the "Theologians" referred to in View Three. Our latest expositor of this, M. Henri Bergson, bases his theory upon "Life" being the Reality; this he postulates is a "flowing" in Time, and _Movement_ therefore becomes for him the Reality; and yet we know that Motion is but the product of Time and Space, and these are only the two modes or _limitations_ under which our senses act and upon which our very consciousness of living depends. Surely the Absolute cannot be localised, must be Omnipresent, and therefore independent of Space--cannot have a beginning or end, must be Omniscient, and therefore independent of Time; these two unrealities can therefore have no existence in "Reality of Being." If, then, there is any truth in "Intuition," we have, in this theory, the Reality, "Life," not only limited by the unreal but actually dependent for its very existence upon those limitations! In these Views I have attempted, on the contrary, to show that Time and Space have no existence apart from our Physical Senses; they are the modes only under which we appreciate motion, or what we call physical phenomena, and as our conceptional knowledge is based upon our perceptional knowledge, our very consciousness of living is limited by Time and Space, and we must surely therefore look behind consciousness itself, beyond the conditioning in Time and Space for the Reality of Being, otherwise _physical motion_, the product of these two limitations, would become the Reality of Being.

I have also suggested reasons for looking upon physical life as a mode of frequency, akin to Light, Electricity, Magnetism, Chemical Action, the Vibration of a Tuning Fork, or the Swing of a Pendulum, and therefore a transient phenomenon having to do only with the Race; Life can under these conditions only be looked upon as a reality in the same sense in which all other forms of energy or matter appear real to our finite senses--namely, as the shadows or manifestations of the Absolute on our limited plane of Consciousness.

However strongly I may be convinced--as I am--of the truth of my arguments, and however sure I may be that many others will not only agree with my conclusions, but will see that in "Introspection" rather than in "Intellectualism" lies the key to the Mystery, I do not wish to appear dogmatic in any of the suggestions contained in this volume; I am stating my own convictions, but at the same time I fully recognise that the presentation of the Absolute, with its infinite variety of aspects, must necessarily be different to every individual; we are all of the same genus, but each individual Ego is, as it were, a different species, and I do not therefore expect that my attempt to solve the Riddle of the Universe will appeal to all alike. It is, however, a true saying that "there is something to be learnt from every human being," and if I have by these suggestions succeeded in augmenting the number of those who have already started on the true "Quest," and have helped, however imperfectly, to enrich some lives with the "joy" of knowing their oneness with the All-loving, my aim has indeed been attained.

SYDNEY T. KLEIN.

"HATHERLOW," REIGATE, _1st June 1912._

CONTENTS

PAGE VIEW ONE

CLEARING THE APPROACH 1

VIEW TWO

THE VISION 19

VIEW THREE

MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM 36

VIEW FOUR

LOVE IN ACTION 71

VIEW FIVE

THE PHYSICAL FILM 100

VIEW SIX

SPACE 122

VIEW SEVEN

TIME 141

VIEW EIGHT

CREATION 165

SCIENCE AND THE INFINITE

VIEW ONE

CLEARING THE APPROACH

The proof that the Human Race is still in its infancy may be seen in the fact that we still require Symbolism to help us to maintain and carry forward abstract thought to higher levels, even as children require picture books for that purpose. The Glamour of Symbolism, Rapture of Music, and Ideal of Art, which come to us in later years, had their beginnings when to the child every blade of grass was a fairy tale and a grass plot a marvellous fairy forest. The great aspiration of the Human Race is to gain a knowledge of the Reality, the Noumenon behind the phenomenon; but the fact that from infancy we have been accustomed to confine our attention wholly to the objective, believing that to be the reality, has surrounded us with a concrete boundary wall through which we can only at times, with difficulty, get transient glimpses of that which is beyond. It is only in recent years that we have been able to realise that it is the Invisible which is the Real, that the visible is only its shadow or its manifestation in the Physical Universe, and that Time and Space have no existence apart from our physical senses, in short, that they are only the modes or limits under which those senses act or receive their impressions and by which they are necessarily rendered finite.

The difficulty is that our physical senses only perceive the surface of our surroundings, and that we have hitherto been looking at the Woof of Nature as though it were the glass of a window covered with patterns, smudges, flies, &c., comprising all that we call physical phenomena and which, when analysed in terms of Time and Space, produce the appearance of succession and motion. It requires a keener perception, unbounded by these limitations, to look through the glass at the Reality which is beyond. I propose then in a series of short views, through a window not hitherto unshuttered and in a direction which I believe has not before been attempted, to lead those of my readers who have the necessary aspiration, patience, and, above all, strenuous persistence, to a watch-tower, situated well above the mists and illusions of our ordinary everyday thoughts, whence they will find it possible to get a glimpse of a strange new country, and where those who have by practice once attained to its clear perception, will be able to continue the study by themselves and thus get further insight into that wonderful region of Thought which I have called "True Occultism"--the knowledge of the Invisible which is the Real in place of the Visible which is only its shadow.

Let us first try and understand the conditions under which phenomena are presented to us. In our perception of sight, we find the greater the light, the greater the shadow; a light placed over a table throws a shadow on the floor, though not sufficient to prevent our seeing the pattern of the carpet; increase the light and the shadow appears now so dark that no pattern or carpet can be seen; not that there is now less light under the table but the light above has to our sense of sight created or made manifest a greater darkness. Thus, throughout the Universe, as interpreted by our Physical Ego, we find phenomena ranging themselves under the form of positive and negative, the apparently Real and the Unreal.

The Good making manifest its negative Evil. The Beautiful " " " " Ugly. The True " " " " False. Knowledge " " " " Ignorance. Light " " " " Darkness. Heat " " " " Cold.

But the negatives have no real existence. As in the case of light we see that the shadow is only the absence of light, so the negative of Goodness, _i.e._ Evil, may in reality be looked upon as folly or wasting of opportunity for exercising the Good. Owing to their limitations our thoughts are based upon _relativity_, and it is hardly thinkable that we could, under our present conditions, have any cognisance of the positive without its negative; we shall in fact see later on that it is by examining the Physical, the negative or shadow, that we can best gain a knowledge of the Spiritual, the positive or real.

The first step to a clear understanding of this, is to recognise that it is not we who are looking out upon Nature but that it is the Reality which is ever trying to enter and come into touch with us through our senses, and is persistently trying to waken within us a knowledge of the sublimest truths. It is difficult to realise this, as from infancy we have been accustomed to confine our attention wholly to the objective, believing that to be the reality.

Let us try and grasp this fact. If we analyse our sense of sight, we find that the only impression made on our bodies by external objects is the image formed upon the retina; we have no cognisance of the separate electro-magnetic rills forming that image, which, reflected from all parts of an object, fall upon the eye at different angles, constituting form, and with different frequencies giving colour to that image; that image is only formed when we turn our eyes in the right direction to allow those rills to enter; and, whereas those rills are incessantly beating on the outside of our sense organ when the eyelid is closed, they can make no impression unless we allow them to enter by raising that shutter. It is not then any volition from within that goes out to seize upon and grasp the truths from Nature, but the phenomena are as it were forcing their way into our consciousness. This is more difficult to realise when the object is near to us, as we are apt to confound it with our sense of touch, which requires us to stretch out our hand to the object, but it is clearer when we take an object far away. In our telescopes we catch the rills of light which started from a star a thousand years ago and the image is still formed on the retina _now_ although those rills are in fact a thousand years old and, invisible to our unaided eye, have been falling upon mankind from the beginning of life on this globe, trying to get an entrance to consciousness. It was, however, only when, by evolution of thought, the knowledge of optics had produced the telescope that it became possible not only for that star to make itself known to us but to declare to us its distance, its size, and conditions of existence, and even the different elemental substances of which it was composed a thousand years ago. Yet, when we now allow its image to form on the retina, our consciousness insists on fixing its attention upon that star as an outside object, refusing to allow that it is only an image inside the eye and making it difficult to realise that that star may have disappeared and had no existence for the past 999 years, although in ordinary parlance we are looking at and seeing it there now.

I have referred above to the sense of touch; it is, I think, clear that the first impression a child can have of sight must take the form of feeling the image on its retina, as though the object were actually inside the head, and it could have no idea that it was outside until, by touching with the hand, it would gradually learn by experience that the tangible outside object corresponded with the image located in the head; this is fully borne out by the testimony of men who, born blind, have, by an operation, received their sight late in life; in each case their first experience of seeing gave the impression that the object was touching the eye, and they were quite unable to recognise by sight an object such as a cup or plate or a round ball which they had commonly handled and knew perfectly well by touch; in fact, the idea of an object formed by the sense of touch is so absolutely different to that formed by the sense of sight that it would be impossible without past experience to conclude that the two sensations referred to one and the same object. The image formed on the retina has nothing in common with the sense of hardness, coldness, and weight experienced by touch, the only impression on the retina being that of colour or shade, and an outline; it is, however, hardly conceivable that even the outline of form would be recognised by the eye until touch had proved that form comprised also solidity and that the two ideas had certain motions in common both in duration in Time and extension in Space.

Again, our senses of sight and hearing are alike based on the appreciation of frequencies of different rapidity; brightness and colour in light are equivalent to loudness and pitch in sound, but in sound we have no equivalent to perception of form or situation in space; it gives us no knowledge of the existence of objects when situated at great distances, nor can movements be followed even at short distances without having material contact, by means of the air, with the object; sight indeed appears to have to do with Space- and sound with Time-perception. In examining Nature by means of our senses we find we are so hemmed in by what we have always taken for granted and so bound down by modes of reasoning derived from what we have seen, heard, or felt in our daily life, that we are sadly hampered in our search after the truth. It is difficult to sweep the erroneous concepts aside and make a fresh start. In fact the great difficulty in studying the Reality underlying Nature is analogous to our inability to isolate and study the different sounds themselves which fall upon the ear, if our own language is being uttered, without being forced to consider the meaning we have always attached to those sounds.

Let us now go back to the contention that it is not we who are looking out upon Nature but that our senses are being bombarded from without; we are living in a world of continuous and multitudinous changes, and as our senses require change or motion for their excitation, without those changes we could have no cognisance of our surroundings, we should have no consciousness of living; but if we base our thought entirely on sense perception, taking for granted that Time and Space have reality instead of recognising that they are only modes or limits under which those senses act, the Wall will ever remain opaque to us. Let us try and make this clearer. If we analyse the impression we receive from Motion, we find it is made up of the product of our two limitations, it is the time that an object takes to go over a certain space. We must come therefore to the conclusion also that Motion itself has no existence in reality apart from our senses. The result of not being able to appreciate this, is that the finiteness of our sense, caused by its dependence on Motion for excitation, surrounds us with illusions; one of these illusions is what we call solidity or continuity of sensation. If you hold a cannon-ball in your hand, perception by the sense of touch tells you that it is continuous, or what is called solid and hard; but it is not so in reality except as a concept limited by our finite senses. A fair analogy would be to liken it to a swarm of bees, for we know that it is composed of an immense number of independent atoms or molecules which are darting about, and circling round each other at an enormous speed but never touching; they are also pulsating at a definite enormous rate; we can at will increase their motion by heat or reduce by cold; if our touch perception were sensitive enough we should feel those motions and should not have the sensation of a solid. We have a similar case of limitation in our other senses, which we shall grasp better in another View through our Window. We can hear beats only up to fifteen in a second, beyond that number they give the sensation of a musical or continuous sound. In our sense of sight we can see pulsations or intermittent flashes up to only six in a second, beyond that number they give the sensation of a continuous light; a gas jet, if extinguished and relit six times in a second, can be seen to flicker, but beyond that rate is to our sense of sight a steady flame. The effect may also be shown by making the top of a match red-hot; when stationary or moving slowly, it is a point of light, but, moved quickly, it becomes a continuous line of light.

Even apart from our senses we find Motion giving the characteristics of solidity: a wheel with only a few spokes, if rotated quickly enough, becomes quite impermeable to any substance, however small, thrown at it; a thin jet of water only half an inch in diameter, if discharged at great pressure equivalent to a column of water of 500 metres, cannot be cut even with an axe, it resists as though it were made of the hardest steel; a thin cord, hanging from a vertical axis, and being revolved very quickly, becomes rigid, and if struck with a hammer it resists and resounds like a rod of wood; a thin chain and even a loop of string, if revolved at great speed over a vertical pulley, becomes rigid and, if allowed to escape from the pulley, will run along the ground as a hoop.

Now with regard to this limit of time perception, which gives us the phenomenon of Solidity, I have lately been able to devise an arrangement which, acting as a microscope for Time, gives the sensation of an increase in sight perception up to several thousand units per second; it is based on the fact that though the eye can only see six times per second it can see for the one-millionth part of a second. An example of this is the well-known experiment of seeing a bullet in its flight; the bullet makes electrical connection resulting in a spark which illuminates the bullet when opposite the eye. The electrical spark exists only for the millionth of a second, and as the bullet in that time has no perceptible movement it is seen standing absolutely still with all marks upon it quite visible to the eye. When Sight perception is increased up to the rate at which time may be said to flow for any particular object we apparently get into the reality, the permanent _now_ where motion ceases to exist as a sensation. A tuning-fork, kept vibrating, by means of an electro-magnet, at 2000 times per second, may to our sense of sight be gradually slowed down and, optically, brought absolutely to a standstill, for as long as desired, and the smallest irregularity of its surface may be minutely examined, though it continues to be heard and felt vibrating at that enormous rate. I have made several experiments in this direction, and some very curious facts connected with the sensation of Motion are brought to light by means of this increase in perceptive power. If the sense of sight is increased to 125 units per second, motion at the rate of one inch per second is barely visible; taking the common house-fly, whose wings vibrate about 400 times per second, its units of perception would appear to be about two-thirds of those beats, as I found it had no cognisance of Motion below two inches per second; you can put your finger on any fly provided you do not approach it faster than the above rate, it turns its head up to look at your finger but can see no motion in it; if you approach at over three inches per second it will always fly away before you are within a foot. I found that a dragon-fly, whose wings vibrate about 200 times per second, had only half the number of unit perceptions of the fly and could apparently see motion at about one inch per second but not under. In the converse of the above we have then the principle of a Microscope for Time, somewhat similar to the Microscope for Space of our laboratories. If our perception were increased sufficiently we could slow down any motion for examination, however rapid; there would be no difficulty in following a lightning flash or even arresting its visible motion for purposes of investigation without interfering with the natural sequence of cause and effect.

If, on the other hand, our perception were decreased below six times per second, all motion would be accelerated, until with perception reduced to one unit in twenty-four hours the sun would appear only as a band across the sky, and we could not follow its motion any more than, as we have seen, we could follow the point of a red-hot match. If perception were reduced far enough, plants and trees would grow up visibly before our eyes. But we must leave this subject now, as this and the Time Microscope will be treated in a later View.