Raymond

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Raymond

or

Life and Death

by Sir Oliver Lodge

edited by Ned Snead

132-pages

$10.95

Home Page

374 CHAPTER XVI

OUTLOOK ON THE UNIVERSE

WHAT then is the conclusion of the whole matter? Or rather, what effect have these investigatlons had upon my own outlook on the Universe?

The question is not so unimportant as it seems; because if the facts are to influence others they must have influenced myself too; and that is the only influence of which I have first-hand knowledge. It must not be supposed that my outlook has changed appreciably since the event and the particular experiences related in the foregoing pages: my conclusion has been gradually forming itself for years, though undoubtedJy it is based on experience of the same sort of thing. But this event has strengthened and liberated my testimony. It can now be associated with a private experience of my own, instead of with the private experIences of others. So long as one was dependent on evidence connected, even indirectly connected, with the bereavement of others, one had to be reticent and cautious and in some cases silent. Only by special permission could any portion of the facts be reproduced; and that permission might in important cases be withheld. My own deductions were the same then as they are now, but the facts are now my own.

One little point of difference, between the time before and the time after, has however become manifest. In the old days, if I sat with a medium, I was never told of any serious imaginary bereavement which had befallen myself —beyond the natural and inevitable losses from an older generation which fall to the lot of every son of man. But now, if I or any member of my family goes anonymously to a genuine medium, giving not the slightest normal clue, my son is quickly to the fore and continues his clear and convincing series of evidences; sometimes giving testimony of a critically selected kind, sometimes contenting himself with friendly family chaff and reminiscences, but always acting in a manner consistent with his personality and memories and varying moods. If in any case a given medium had weak power, or if there were special difficulties encountered on a given occasion, he is aware of the fact; and he refers to it, when there is opportunity, through another totally disconnected medium (cf. Chapter XXI, Part II). In every way he has shown himself anxious to give convincing evidence. Moreover, he wants me to speak out; and I shall.

I am as convinced of continued existence, on the other side of death, as I am of existence here. It may be said, you cannot be as sure as you are of sensory experience. I say I can. A physicist is never limited to direct sensory impressions, he has to deal with a multitude of conceptions and things for which he has no physical organ: the dynamic theory of heat, for instance, and of gases, the theories of electricity, of magnetism, of chemical affinity, of cohesion, aye and his apprehension of the Ether itself, lead him into regions where sight and hearing and touch are impotent as direct witnesses, where they are no longer efficient guides. In such regions everything has to be interpreted in terms of the insensible, the apparently unsubstantial, and in a definite sense the imaginary. Yet these regions of knowledge are as clear and vivid to him as are any of those encountered in everyday occupations; indeed most commonplace phenomena themselves require interpretation in terms of ideas more subtle,—the apparent solidity of matter itself demands explanation,—and the underlying non-material entities of a physicist’s conception become gradually as real and substantial as anything he knows. As Lord Kelvin used to say, when in a paradoxical mood, we really know more about electricity than we know about matter.

That being so, I shall go further and say that I am reasonably convinced of the existence of grades of being, not only lower in the scale than man but higher also, grades of every order of magnitude from zero to infinity. And I know by experience that among these beings are some who care for and help and guide humanity, not disdaining to enter even into what must seem petty details, if by so doing they can assist souls striving on their upward course. And further it is my faith—however humbly it may be held—that among these lofty beings, highest of those who concern themselves directly with this earth of all the myriads of worlds in infinite space, is One on whom the right instinct of Christianity has always lavished heartfelt reverence and devotion.

Those who think that the day of that Messiah is over are strangely mistaken: it has hardly begun. In individual souls Christianity has flourished and borne fruit, but for the ills of the world itself it is an almost untried panacea. It will be strange if this ghastly war fosters and simplifies and improves a knowledge of Christ, and aids a perception of the ineffable beauty of his life and teaching: yet stranger things have happened; and, whatever the Churches may do, I believe that the call of Christ himself will be heard and attended to, by a large part of humanity in the near future, as never yet it has been heard or attended to on earth.

My own time down here is getting short; it matters little: but I dare not go till I have borne this testimony to the grace and truth which emanate from that divine Being,—the realization of whose tender-hearted simplicity and love for man may have been overlaid at times and almost lost amid well-intentioned but inappropriate dogma, but who is accessible as always to the humble and meek.

Intercommunion between the states or grades of existence is not limited to messages from friends and relatives, or to conversation with personalities of our own order of magnitude,—that is only a small and verifiable portion of the whole truth,—intercourse between the states carries with it occasional, and sometimes unconscious, communion with lofty souls who have gone before. The truth of such continued influence corresponds with the highest of the Revelations vouchsafed to humanity. This truth, when assimilated by man, means an assurance of the reality of prayer, and a certainty of gracious sympathy and fellow~feeling from one who never despised the suffering, the sinful, or the lowly; yea, it means more—it means nothing less than the possibility some day of a glance or a word of approval from the Eternal Christ.

(373 end of Chapter XVI)

378 CHAPTER XVII

THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF GOD

A PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY1

INVESTIGATION is laborious and unexciting; it takes years, and progress is slow; but in all regions of knowledge it is the method which in the long-run has led towards truth; it is the method by which what we feel to be solid and substantial progress has always been made. In many departments of human knowledge this fact is admitted—though men of science have had to fight hard for their method before getting it generally recognised. In some departments it is still contested, and the arguments of Bacon in favor of free experimental inquiry are applicable to those subjects which are claimed as superior to scientific test.

If it be objected that not by such means is truth in religious matters ascertained, if it be held that we must walk by faith, not by sight, and that never by searching will man find out any of the secrets of God, I do not care to contest the objection, though I disagree with its negative portion. That no amount of searching will ever enable us to find out the Almighty to perfection is manifestly true; that secrets may be revealed to inspired ‘babes’ which are hidden from the wise and prudent is likewise certain; but that no secret things of God can be brought to light by patient examination and inquiry into facts is false, for you cannot parcel out truth into that which is divine and that which is not divine; the truths of science were as much God’s secrets as any other, and they have yielded up their mystery to precisely the process which is called in question.

We are part of the Universe, our senses have been evolved in and by it; it follows that they are harmonious with it, and that the way it appeals to our senses is a true way; though their obvious limitation entitles us to expect from time to time fresh discoveries of surprising and fundamental novelty, and a growing perception of tracts beyond our ancient ken.

1 Hibbert Journal, July 1911.

Some critics there are, however, who, calling themselves scientific, have made up their minds in a negative direction and a contrary sense. These are impressed not only with the genuineness of the truth afforded us through our senses and perceptions, but with its completeness; they appear to think that the main lines of research have already been mapped out or laid down, they will not believe that regions other than those to which they are accustomed can be open to scientific exploration; especially they imagine that in the so-called religious domain there can be no guides except preconception and prejudice. Accordingly, they appear to disbelieve that anyone can be conscientiously taking trouble to grope his way by patient inquiry, with the aid of such clues as are available; and in order to contradict the results of such inquiry they fall into the habit of doing that of which they accuse the workers,—they appeal to sentiment and presumption. They talk freely about what they believe, what they think unlikely, and what is impossible. They are governed by prejudice; their minds are made up. Doubtless they regard knowledge on certain topics as inaccessible, so they are positive and self-satisfied and opinionated and quite sure. They pride themselves on their hard-headed scepticism and robust common sense; while the truth is that they have bound themselves into a narrow cell by walls of sentiment, and have thus excluded whole regions of human experience from their purview.

It so happens that I have been engaged for over forty years in mathematical and physical science, and for more than half that period in exploration into unusual psychical development, as opportunity arose; and I have thus been led to certain tentative conclusions respecting permissible ways of regarding the universe.

First, I have learned to regard the universe as a concrete and full-bodied reality, with parts accessible and intelligible to us, all of it capable of being understood and investigated by the human mind, not as an abstraction or dream-like entity whose appearances are deceptive. Our senses do not deceive us; their testimony is true as far as it goes. I have learned to believe in Intelligibility.

Next, that everything, every single thing, has many aspects. Even such a thing as water, for instance. Water, regarded by the chemist, is an assemblage or aggregate of complex molecules; regarded by the meteorologist and physiographer, it is an element of singular and vitally important properties; every poet has treated of some aspect of beauty exhibited by this common substance; while to the citizen it is an ordinary need of daily life. All the aspects together do not exhaust the subject, but each of them is real. The properties of matter of which our senses tell us, or enable us to inquire into in laboratories, are true properties, real and true. They are not the whole truth, a great deal more is known about them by men of science, but the more complex truths do not make the simpler ones false. Moreover, we must admit that the whole truth about the simplest thing is assuredly beyond us; the Thing-in-itself is related to the whole universe, and in its fulness is incomprehensible.

Furthermore, I have learned that while positive assertions on any given subject are often true, error creeps in when simple aspects are denied in order to emphasise the more complex, or vice versa. A trigonometric sine, for instance, may be expressed in terms of imaginary exponentials in a way familiar to all mathematical students; also as an infinite series of fractions with increasing factorials in the denominators; also in a number of other true and legitimate and useful ways; but the simple geometrical definition, by aid of the chord of a circle or the string of a bow, survives them all, and is true too.

So it is, I venture to say, with the concept God.

It can be regarded from some absolute and transcendental standpoint which humanity can only pretend to attain to. It can be regarded as the highest and best idea, which the human mind has as yet been able to form. It can be regarded as dominating and including all existence, and as synonymous with all existence when that is made sufficiently comprehensive. All these views are legitimate, but they are not final or complete. God can also be represented by some of the attributes of humanity, and can be depicted as a powerful and loving Friend with whom our spirits may commune at every hour of the day, one whose patience and wisdom and long-suffering and beneficence are never exhausted. He can, in fact, be regarded as displayed to us, in such fashion as we can make use of, in the person of an incarnate Being who came for the express purpose of revealing to man such attributes of deity as would otherwise have been missed.

The images are not mutually exclusive, they may all be in some sort true. None of them is complete. They are all aspects—partly true and partly false as conceived by any individual, but capable of being expressed so as to be, as far as they go, true.

Undoubtedly the Christian idea of God is the simple one. Overpoweringly and appallingly simple is the notion presented to us by the orthodox Christian Churches:—

A babe born of poor parents, born in a stable among cattle because there was no room for them in the village inn—no room for them in the inn—what a master touch! Revealed to shepherds. Religious people inattentive. Royalty ignorant, or bent on massacre. A glimmering perception, according to one noble legend, attained in the Far East—where also similar occurrences have been narrated. Then the child growing into a peasant youth, brought up to a trade. At length a few years of itinerant preaching; flashes of miraculous power and insight. And then a swift end: set upon by the religious people; his followers overawed and scattered, himself tried as a blasphemer, flogged, and finally tortured to death.

Simplicity most thorough and most strange! In itself it is not unique; such occurrences seem inevitable to highest humanity in an unregenerate world; but who, without inspiration, would see in them a revelation of the nature of God? The life of Buddha, the life of Joan of Arc, are not thus regarded. Yet the Christian revelation is clear enough and true enough if our eyes are open, and if we care to read and accept the simple record which, whatever its historical value, is all that has been handed down to us.

Critics often object that there have been other attempted Messiahs, that the ancient world was expectant of a Divine Incarnation. True enough. But what then? We need not be afraid of an idea because it has several times striven to make itself appreciated. It is foolish to decline a revelation because it has been more than once offered to humanity. Every great revelation is likely to have been foreshadowed in more or less imperfect forms, so as to prepare our minds and make ready the way for complete perception hereafter. It is probable that the human race is quite incompetent to receive a really great idea the first time it is offered. There must be many failures to effect an entrance before the final success, many struggles to overcome natural obstacles and submerge the stony products of human stolidity. Lapse of time for preparation is required before anything great can be permanently accomplished, and repeated attempts are necessary; but the tide of general progress is rising all the time. The idea is well expressed in Clough’s familiar lines:—

‘For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.”

So it was with the idea of the Messiah, which was abroad in the land, and had been for centuries, before Christ’s coming; and never has he been really recognised by more than a few. Dare we not say that he is more truly recognised now than in any previous age in the history of the Church—except perhaps the very earliest? And I doubt if we need make that exception.

The idea of his Messiahship gradually dawned upon him, and he made no mistake as to his mission:—

The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.

As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do.

The words which I say unto you I speak not of myself;

the Father which dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.

The Father is greater than I.

But, for all that,

He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.

Yes, truly, Christ was a planetary manifestation of Deity, a revelation to the human race, the highest and simplest it has yet had; a revelation in the only form accessible to man, a revelation in the full-bodied form of humanity.

Little conception had they in those days of the whole universe as we know it now. The earth was the whole world to them, and that which revealed God to the earth was naturally regarded as the whole Cosmic Deity. Yet it was a truly divine Incarnation.

A deity of some kind is common to every branch of the human race. It seems to be possessed by every savage, overawed as he necessarily is by the forces of nature. Caprice, jealousy, openness to flattery.and rewards, are likewise parts of early theology. Then in the gods of Olympus—that poetic conception which rose to such heights and fell to such depths at different epochs in the ancient world—the attributes of power and beauty were specially emphasised. Power is common to all deities, and favouritism in its use seems also a natural supposition to early tribes; but the element of Beauty, as a divine attribute, we in these islands, save for the poets, have largely lost or forgotten—to our great detriment. In Jehovah, however, the Hebrew race rose to a conception of divine Righteousness which we have assimilated and permanently retained; and upon that foundation Christianity was grafted. It was to a race who had risen thus far—a race with a genius for theology—that the Christian revelation came. It was rendered possible, though only just possible, by the stage attained. Simple and unknown folk were ready to receive it, or, at least, were willing to take the first steps to learn.

The power, the righteousness, and other worthy attributes belonging to Jehovah, were known of old. The Christian conception takes them for granted, and concentrates attention on the pity, the love, the friendliness, the compassion, the earnest desire to help mankind—attributes which, though now and again dimly discerned by one or another of the great seers of old, had not yet been thrown into concrete form.

People sometimes seek to deny such attributes as are connoted by the word ‘Personality’ in the Godhead—they say it is a human conception. Certainly it is a human conception; it is through humanity that it has been revealed. Why seek to deny it? God transcends personality, objectors say. By all means: transcends all our conceptions infinitely, transcends every revelation which has ever been vouchsafed; but the revelations are true as far as they go, for all that.

Let us not befog ourselves by attempting impossible conceptions to such an extent that we lose the simple and manifest reality. No conception that we can make is too high, too good, too worthy. It is easy to imagine ourselves mistaken, but never because ideas are too high or too good. It were preposterous to imagine an over-lofty conception in a creature. Reality is always found to exceed our clear conception of it; never once in science has it permanently fallen short. No conception is too great or too high. But also no devout conception is too simple, too lowly, too childlike to have an element—some grain—of vital truth stored away, a mustard seed ready to germinate and bud, a leaven which may permeate the whole mass.

I would apply all this to what for brevity may be called Human Immortality. It is possible to think of that rather simply; and, on the other hand, it is possible to confuse ourselves with tortuous thoughts till it seems unreal and impossible. It is part of the problem of personality and individuality; for the question of how far these are dependent on the bodily organism, or whether they can exist without it, is a scientific question. It is open to research. And yet it is connected with Christianity; for undoubtedly the Christian idea of God involves a belief in human immortality. If per impossible this latter could be authoritatively denied, a paralysing blow would have been struck at the Christian idea. On the other hand, if by scientific investigation the persistence of individual memory and character were proved, a great step in the direction of orthodox theology would have been taken.

The modern superstition about the universe is that, being suffused with law and order, it contains nothing personal, nothing indeterminate, nothing unforeseen; that there is no room for the free activity of intelligent beings, that everything is mechanically determined; so that given the velocity and acceleration and position of every atom at any instant, the whole future could be unraveled by sufficient mathematical power.

The doctrines of Uniformity and Determinism are supposed to be based upon experience. But experience includes experience of the actions of human beings; and some of them certainly appear to be of a capricious and undetermined character. Or without considering human beings, watch the orbits of a group of flies as they play; they are manifestly not controlled completely by mechanical laws as are the motions of the planets. The simplest view of their activity is that it is self-determined, that they are flying about at their own will, and turning when and where they choose. The conservation of energy has nothing to say against it. Here we see free will in its simplest form. To suppose anything else in such a case, to suppose that every twist could have been predicted through all eternity, is to introduce preternatural complexity, and is quite unnecessary.

Why not assume, what is manifestly the truth, that free-will exists and has to be reckoned with, that the universe is not a machine subject to outside forces, but a living organism with initiations of its own; and that the laws which govern it, though they include mechanical and physical and chemical laws, are not limited to those, but involve other and higher abstractions, which may perhaps some day be formulated, for life and mind and spirit?

If it be said that free-will can be granted to deity but to nothing lower, inasmuch as the Deity must be aware of all that is going to happen, I reply that you are now making a hypothesis of a complicated kind, and going beyond knowledge into speculation. But if still the speculation appears reasonable, that only the Deity can be endowed with free will, it merely opens the question, What shall be included in that term? If freedom is the characteristic mark of deity, then those are justified who have taught that every fragment of mind and will is a contributory element in the essence of the Divine Being.

...

Raymond or Life and Death

by Sir Oliver Lodge

edited by Ned Snead

132-pages

$10.95