Alice Bailey - The Soul and its Mechanism - VII

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The Soul and its Mechanism - Conclusion

Another effect claimed for this relationship between the two head centers and their corresponding glands is that the interplay between the two produces the shining forth of a light. There is much corroborative evidence in this connection in the Scriptures of the world, including Christ's injunction to His followers to "let their light shine." There is cumulative evidence also in the lives of [143] the mystics, who again and again in their writings bear testimony to a light that has been seen. I sent out a letter to a group of students (who have been studying meditation for several years) asking if they were aware of any phenomena of interest as the result of their work. The letter was not sent to neurotics and visionary types, but to men and women of good standing in the business, artistic and literary fields, and with accomplishment to their credit. Seventy-five per cent testified to seeing a light in the head. Were they hallucinated? Were they the victims of their imaginations? What was it they saw? and constantly see?

An interesting field for investigation lies here also, and the results may have a basis in the fact, now recognized by science, that light is matter, and matter is light. When the soul is functioning and the man has achieved conscious union with that soul, he may then, through the extra stimulation involved, become aware of the light of the etheric body at its main point of junction with the physical body at the most important center in the body, the head center. Professor Bazzoni says:

"We have seen that all forms of matter on the earth are made up of 92 different kinds of atoms grouped into molecules which, taken together in countless millions, form all of the bodies which we see about us and indeed for that matter, our own bodies. Now, any one of these 92 kinds of atoms when stimulated in certain ways well known to science can be made to give off light - generally colored light - and the nature of [144] this light is peculiar and characteristic for each the 92 atoms."
- Bazzoni, C. B., Kernels of the Universe, p. 31.

Does this throw any light on our problem, provided the hypothesis of an etheric body is admitted? Is the halo around the heads of saints and deity in all the ancient pictures of both hemispheres an indication that the artists knew they were painting illuminated men in the physical as well as in the spiritual sense? These things should be investigated, and either proved or disproved.

The possibility of unifying the two great schools of thought which seek to account for the unit man in terms of Western achievement and of Eastern philosophy based on a technique of soul control is therefore in the nature of an experiment. Given the willingness to accept what the Western student regards as hypothetical and given an open mind what can be done of specific and practical import to demonstrate as truth or to reject as false the arguments put forward in this book?

Maeterlinck quotes Herbert Spencer to the effect that:

"Perpetually to construct ideas requiring the utmost stretch of our faculties and perpetually to find that such ideas must be abandoned as futile imaginations, may realize to us more fully than any other course the greatness of that which we vainly strive to grasp... By continually seeking to know and being continually thrown back with a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowing, we may keep alive the consciousness [145] that it is alike our highest wisdom and our highest duty to regard that through which all things exist as the Unknowable."
- Maeterlinck, Maurice, The Light Beyond, p. 95.

But may it not be possible, however, to clear our vision somewhat and "deepening our conviction," arrive at a better understanding of the forms and aspects which veil that unknowable Essential Reality in whose Body we "live and move and have our being?"

Granted that it is the phenomenal world, whether it is the human family we are considering, or the forms visioned and contacted in the Kingdom of the Soul, it may be eventually proved true that, progressively, the forms (as they mount in the scale of being) may reveal to us expanding truths about that Essential Life. As the mechanism develops and improves so may our concepts of Divinity. Edward Carpenter expresses this idea in the following words:

"Dr. Frazer, in the conclusion of his great work, The Golden Bough, bids farewell to his readers with the following words: 'The laws of Nature are merely hypotheses devised to explain that ever-shifting phantasmagoria of thought which we dignify with the high sounding names of the World and the Universe. In the last analysis magic, religion and science are nothing but theories (of thought); and as science has supplanted its predecessors, so it may hereafter itself be superseded by some more perfect hypothesis, perhaps by some perfectly different way of looking at phenomena, of registering the shadows on the screen - of [146] which we in this generation can form no idea.' I imagine Dr. Frazer is right in thinking that 'a way of looking at phenomena' different from the way of science, may some day prevail. But I think this change will come, not so much by the growth of Science itself or the extension of its 'hypotheses,' as by a growth and expansion of the human heart and a change in its psychology and powers of perception."
- Carpenter, Edward, Pagan and Christian Creeds; Their Origin and Meaning p. 278.

Maeterlinck sums this up very succinctly when he says: "It behooves us therefore to clear away conceptions that emanate only from our body, even as the mists that veil the daylight from our sight emanate only from the lowlands. Pascal has said, once and for all: 'The narrow limits of our being conceal infinity from our view'."
- Maeterlinck, Maurice, The Light Beyond, p. 73.

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