Chapter 10

Now let us take the converse of this. To anybody on the moon at this moment the earth would be seen from there not as it is, but as it was 1-1/4 seconds ago, and from the sun as it was eight minutes ago, and if we were in Jupiter, and were looking back, we should, at this particular moment, be viewing what was happening on this earth, and seeing what each of us was doing an hour ago. Now let us go in imagination to one of the nearest fixed stars, and looking back we should see what was happening ten years ago; going still further to a far-off cluster, the light would only just now be arriving there, which started from the earth at the time when man first appeared; or we might go to so remote a distance that the scene of the formation of the Solar System would be only now arriving there, and all the events which have taken place from that remote time to the present would, as time rolled on, reach there in exactly the same succession as they have happened on this earth; and remember that we should be looking, from that great distance, at all these past events with the same intuitional advantage as though we were actually present here in time, for however near we are to an object, we never see it as it is but only as it was in the past.

Let us but turn to any point of space and we shall find at each point, according to its remoteness, the actual scenes of the past being enacted, in fact it may be said that throughout infinite space every event in past eternity is now indelibly recorded.

A murder committed hundreds of years ago, in a country house, may never have been found out, the criminal and his victim have alike turned to dust, the blood has been washed from the floor, the very house and its surroundings have crumbled and disappeared, and in their place a waving corn field is all that can be seen, but at this very moment if we were at a certain point in space, we should now be witnessing there, the whole actual living scene from beginning to end, as though we were present _here_ hundreds of years ago: the murderer standing over his victim, the knife driven in and the blood gushing out. If we went further away we should at this same moment be seeing the criminal just arriving and knocking at the door of that house, then going upstairs into the room, and the same terrible scene with all its minutiae would again be enacted. From a point still further removed, we should now see him, say, having lunch at a country inn some miles away, concocting his villainy, then he would be seen walking across the fields towards the house, again knocking at the door, mounting the staircase, and once more would that murderous scene be enacted before our eyes, and so on for ever; the scene, with the house and its surroundings, have indeed been completely swept away from the present _here_, but the whole tragedy will always be acting in the future _there_ in the presence of the Reality.

Let us now come, in imagination, towards the earth, from some far-off cluster of stars. If we traverse the distance in one year, the whole of the events from the formation of this world would appear before us, only thousands of times quicker. Make the journey in a month, a day, an hour, a second, or a moment of time, and all past events, from the grandest to the most trivial, would be acted in an infinitesimal portion of time.

When we have fully grasped this we recognise that Omniscience is synonymous with Omnipresence, and some may find, in this thought, a glimpse of that Great Book wherein are said to be registered every thought, word, and deed, which, in the direction of the Reality, has helped to nourish, or, in the direction of the shadow, has tended to starve the personality of each one of us; for we know that every word we utter, or that has been uttered from the beginning of the world, and every motion of our brain connected with thought is indelibly imprinted upon every atom of matter. If our sense of perception were greatly increased we need not go to Palestine to see on the rocks there the impressions of the image of Christ and His disciples, or of the words they uttered as they passed by, but any stone by the wayside _here_ would show His every action and resound with every word He uttered. In fact, every particle of matter on this earth is a witness to that which has happened, every point in space and every moment of time contains the history of the past in the smallest minutiae. The _Here_, embracing all space, and the _Now_, embracing all time, are the only realities to the Omniscient.

Let us once more change the scene and we may grasp even more clearly that Time and Space are not realities but are only modes or conditions under which our material senses act. A tune may be played either a thousand times slower or a thousand times quicker, but it still remains the same tune, it contains the same sequence of notes and proportion in time, the only characteristics by which we recognise a tune. And so in the same way with our sense of sight, an event may be drawn out to a thousand times its length or acted a thousand times quicker, it is still the same scene. An insect vibrates its wings several thousands of times in a second and must be cognisant of each beat, whereas we have seen that we, with our Senses of Sight and Hearing, can only appreciate respectively at the most seven and sixteen vibrations in a second as separate beats. That insect must therefore be able to follow a flash of lightning under the conditions of a Time microscope magnifying a thousand times compared with our vision. The whole life of some of these insects extends over a few hours only, but owing to their quick unit of perception it is to them as full of detail as our life of seventy years; but to them there is no day and night, the Sun is always stationary in the Heavens, they can have no cognisance of Seasons.

I have already referred in View One to the curious results of increasing our unit of perception by a Time Microscope, and I will now carry the investigation of this subject a step further.

As conceptional knowledge is based on perceptional knowledge, and we can only perceive about six times per second, and as the principal forms of knowledge are gained through the eye, we are conceiving progress in phenomena under a very restricted outlook; we cannot recognise such slow motions as, for instance, the hour-hand of a watch, the growth of a tree, or rise of the tide, except by noting the change that has occurred after a long interval; there is therefore a whole world of events which we cannot see. Owing to this limit, in our unit of time perception, we also cannot perceive events which are taking place beyond a certain quickness, they become blurred and give the impression of continuity, and constitute another world of events lost to us. For the same reason there is a whole world of sensation lost to us by our limited unit of sound perception; we cannot follow separate sound-events if they occur quicker than sixteen in a second, beyond that they become blurred and give the impression of continuity. If, on the other hand, our units of perception were increased a thousandfold, as is probably the case with some insects, our conscious lives would contain a thousand more events than they do at present, and, as the consciousness of length of life is dependent upon the number of events that have been perceived, we should under these conditions have passed on this earth a life equivalent to, say, 70,000 years under our present restricted unit; every second of that long period would have been as full of events for us as is a second in our present life of seventy years. If, on the other hand, our unit of perception were decreased a thousandfold, our length of life, based upon perception of events, would be no longer than 25-1/2 of our present days; if our life were actually reduced to that period (so as to regain our present units of perception) we should be old and grey-headed before the sun had risen for the twenty-fifth time since our birth. If our unit of perception, with our length of life, were again reduced a thousandfold, the whole of our life of seventy years would now only be equal to forty-three minutes, and, in the whole of that life, we could only see the sun move ten degrees, namely, twenty of its own diameters in the heaven; if we were born, say, at noon on midsummer's day, we could never have any idea of anything but daytime, and neither our fathers, nor grandfathers, nor great-grandfathers for fifteen generations before them could have seen the sun rise; but there would have been a tradition, handed down from a far distant past generation, that a long time ago, beyond the memory of man, there was no sun at all, everything was pitch dark, and that time was called the "Great Shadow." If their records could have gone still further back for the same length of time they would have heard that, before the "Great Shadow," the sun was always shining in the heavens, and that that great "Sun" day lasted twice as long as the great shadow.

To understand more clearly this subject of Time perception let me put another aspect before you; we are looking, say, at an insect whose wings are beating several thousand times per second, and, with our vision limited to six times per second, it would be impossible to count the number of hairs on that wing, or to see which of those hairs were split, or were bent from the straight, but, if we travelled away from that insect into space at the rate of light, and were looking back, the present would then always be with us; the wing, although still vibrating at that enormous rate, would appear to be stationary, and so would every other moving thing on the earth, however quick its movement, and everything would continue in that motionless state for a million years, provided we continued our flight with the rays of light. If we travelled a little slower than light, say one minute less in a thousand years, the same scene would be presented to us, but, that which was acted upon this earth during one minute of Time, would now take a thousand years to accomplish; the swiftest railway train would appear standing still, it would take 5-3/4 days and nights to cover each inch of ground. It is thus possible to again understand how the flight of a bird or the lightning flash might be examined under conditions of time which would lead to the discovery and tracing of even the principle of life itself. But let us go one step further and increase our flight beyond the rate at which light travels: scenes would now progress in the opposite direction to that which we are accustomed to; men would get out of bed and dress themselves at night and go to bed in the morning; old men would grow young again; tall trees would grow backwards and enter the earth, embedding themselves in the seed, and the seed would rise upwards to the branch that nourished it; the blood would turn into chyle, into food in the stomach, into the piece of meat, which would be transferred from the mouth to the plate, and would then be cut on to the joint, the joint would go down to the kitchen and be uncooked, would be carried to the butcher to be cut on to the carcase, and the animal would come to life and go out into the fields. Human bodies would be formed in the ground from the dust of the Earth, passing through what we call corruption to incorruption, the dead would be taken from their graves, brought back to their homes and put to bed; the Doctor would arrive, a miracle would happen, the patient would come to life; though this would hardly be a feather in the cap of the Doctor, as it would be seen that the medicine came out from the mouth of the patient, would be put into bottles to be thrown away, and it would be the Doctor who had to pay the Fee, and the bigger the Doctor the bigger the Fee he would have to pay. The future would in fact change places with the past, the effect would give birth to the cause as presented to our finite senses, and, though it is difficult to realise, it is indeed just as true, or untrue, that we come into this world through the grave, instead of in the way we are accustomed to, because to the Reality there is no change, the Here and the Now comprising all beginnings and ends, all causes and effects.

In this flight on the wings of light we did not in reality depart in the least from the Here, because there is no such thing as space, it is all included in a mathematical point, the Here; and as the whole of time is included in the Now, the Future, however remote with all events therein, is existent in the present; the writers of books 5000 years hence are therefore writing them now, and the Human Race has read and is reading them _now_; we have always hitherto maintained that these things are only "going to happen" 5000 years hence, but in reality all events in the future are events in the same Now in which we are living at the present moment, and, as it is just as true, that time is flowing from the Future to the Present and on to the Past, as in the contrary direction (of our present outlook), so it is quite conceivable that we may some day, in the not far distant future, not only realise that the future exists already, but that we may even be able to handle and read the books written 5000 years hence, in a similar manner to that which enables us now to handle and read those which were written 5000 years ago.

VIEW EIGHT

CREATION

In our first View we saw the necessity of clearing away the weeds, the moss, and the lichen from the stem of our Real Personality before that Transcendental Self could send forth fresh buds for the advancement of _conscious_ thought to higher levels; we found that the first step towards this clearing the approach to our window, was to recognise that a knowledge of the Truth was to be gained by the use of "Introspection" rather than by Intellectualism--to realise, in fact, that it is not we, with our intellects, who are looking out upon Nature, but that it is the Absolute looking into us and ever trying to teach us divine truths concerning the "Reality of Being." We saw that the phenomena, which our senses would have us believe to be the reality or solidity of our material surroundings, are illusions created by the fact that those senses are limited in their perception to that which is conditioned in Time and Space, necessitating _motion_ as the basis of our perceptions, and that, when the rate of motion exceeds our units of perception, we have the impression of continuity of events, which we accept as the objective existence of matter; we also saw that the duration of Time and extension of Space had no existence for us apart from those senses, our very consciousness of these two non-realities depending upon "relativity"--they could, in fact, be increased or diminished indefinitely, without our knowing that any change had been made.

In our second View I attempted to take another step forward by showing how, by means of this "Introspection," it was even possible to understand that these two limitations might be eliminated from consciousness; we then realised that the whole Physical Universe is but a thin film, set up by our finite Senses, between our Consciousness and the "Reality of Being"; we saw that this could only be understood when, by the Mystical Sense, we realised that physical phenomena were but symbols or shadows of the Reality or Noumenon underlying them.

In our next View I gave an example of the use of Mystical and Symbolical thought, leading, in the fourth View, to the subject of Everlasting Life and the Efficacy of Prayer, wherein I tried to show that by examining the phenomena of Nature, as depicted on the Physical Film, it is possible to reach a point where we may even feel that we are actually listening to, or having divulged to us, the very thoughts of the Absolute. This led to the next View, where we examined the Physical Film itself, and this we analysed in the next two Views into those component parts, by means of which this Film presents to our senses the impression of the whole Physical Universe as an objective reality.

We have seen that it is the Invisible which is the Real, that the visible is only its shadow; that the Invisible, as distinguished from the Visible, is not in a place apart from the Physical, but is the Reality of which the visible constitutes the boundary lines or planes in our consciousness, as lines and planes are the visible boundaries of solids. The Kingdom of Heaven is not a locality but a _state_ of Divine "loving and knowing communion"; it is within us in the sense that we are interior and not exterior entities of the "Reality of Being."

We have now arrived at a point where we can better realise that the Absolute cannot be localised or bounded by space, and must be Omnipresent--cannot be conditioned in Time, and must therefore be Omniscient--the Here comprising all Space, and the Now all Time in the "Reality of Being."

With these conclusions before us I will ask you to form a new conception of Creation. All creation around us is the materialisation of the Thought of the Deity. He does not require time to think as we do--the whole of the Universe is therefore one instantaneous Thought of the Great Reality; the forming of this world and its destruction, the appearance of man, the birth and death of each one of us are absolutely at the same instant; it is only our finite minds which necessitate drawing this Thought out into a long line, and our want of knowledge and inability to grasp the whole, which force us to conceive that one event happened before or after another. In our finite way we examine and strive to understand this wondrous Thought, and at last, a Darwin, after a life spent in accumulating facts on this little isolated spot of the Universe, discovers what appears to be a law of sequence, and calls it the evolution theory; but this is probably only one of countless other modes by which the _intent_ of that Thought is working towards completion, the apparent direction of certain lines on that great tracing board of the Creator, whereon is depicted the whole plan of His work.

Let me give a simple example of Creation by a "word," which even our finite minds can grasp. When I utter the word _Cat_, it starts a practically instantaneous thought in your minds, the power of that thought being dependent upon the knowledge you have gained. If you analyse it you will find that, though practically instantaneous, it comprises all the sensations you have ever felt on that subject throughout your life. It commenced, perhaps, when you were only a year old, and, sitting on your mother's knee, your hand was made to stroke a kitten, and you felt it was soft and it gave you pleasure. Later on, when you were older, you had it in your arms, and you felt the first intimation of that wonderful "[Greek: storge]," which manifests itself in most children in their love for dolls; you found it delightful to cuddle and that it purred. Later on, you found that it played with a reel of cotton, and that it could scratch, make horrid noises, and countless other things, which not only make up the life of a cat, but connect it with the world around us. All these thousand and one facts are now drawn out, by analysis in Time and Space, into a long line, and are placed one in front of the other; but the thought started by the word Cat was a fair example of an instantaneous creation.

One other example of an instantaneous thought. Let us suppose a large room fitted with, say, a hundred thousand volumes, comprising all the knowledge gained by every Specialist in every Science concerning the plan of Creation. In our finite minds, under the limits of Time and Space, the word representing the contents of that library would start, when uttered, an instantaneous thought analogous to that of our last example, according to the knowledge that each individual had already acquired of the contents of those books; but this knowledge had only been gained by taking down each volume separately and reading one book at a time, beginning at the beginning and taking each page and each word in succession, and a lifetime would not suffice to enable us to read them all; whereas, if our knowledge were _complete_, the word representing the contents of that room would start an instantaneous thought, comprising not only every book, but every chapter, page, word, letter, and punctuation contained in that library, or in one which comprised all knowledge from the beginning to the end of Time.

It is a well-known fact that at the approach of death, when the perceptive senses are completely, or almost completely, in abeyance, as in the "self-forgetting" referred to in "The Vision," the duration of Time appears to have no reality; in numerous cases of drowning, where the person has been no more than one or two minutes under water, the whole of a long life, with every forgotten trivial occurrence and the multitude of thoughts attached thereto, have been brought vividly before the mind, as it were, instantaneously; those also who have been put under nitrous-oxide gas, though the life of the body is not affected, know how, with departure of sense perception, the sense of Time is completely annihilated. I have myself experimented under such conditions, and attempted to realise the duration of time by counting steadily, one, two, three, four, &c., and had no knowledge whatever that between, say, "four" and "five" there was a complete hiatus of several minutes when, for me, time had vanished; I was still counting steadily when the anaesthetic had passed away, and it was quite impossible to realise that such time had elapsed, as I had not reached more than the twelfth count, whereas, according to the time expired, I should have reached the fiftieth or sixtieth. A number of examples of what may be called instantaneous thoughts created in the mind of a sleeper have been collected, and many of us have had similar experiences. I give one as an example: "Maury was ill in bed and dreamed of the French Revolution. Bloody scenes passed before him. He held long conversations with Robespierre, Marat, and other monsters of that time, was dragged before the tribunal, was condemned to death, and carried through a great crowd of people, bound to a plank. The guillotine severed his head from his shoulders. He woke with terror to find that a rail over the bed had got unfastened and had fallen upon his neck like a guillotine, and, as his mother who was sitting by him declared, at that very moment."

In the above case the whole scene was started instantaneously in his brain, but in waking his mind analysed it in Time and Space and spread it out into a long historical record. The opposite process to this, namely, the building up a thought-picture, is what we do every day when we form and combine our conceptions under the dominion of Time and Space, until we have accumulated in our minds a multitude of concepts which form as it were a single subject, somewhat analogous to a painter when he has completed his picture, a writer his book, an architect his house, or even a mechanic his machine. An interesting example of a musician constructing a thought-picture is given by Mozart himself: