The power of silence; an interpretation of life in its relation to health and happiness

Preface

The present volume is the outgrowth of more than a half-century of inquiry on the part of those to whom the author is chiefly indebted. This inquiry began with the researches of Dr. P. P. Quimby, of Belfast, Me., who devoted more than twenty years to the investigation of mental phenomena in relation to health and happiness. With him the author's father and mother were associated for several years previous to his death in 1866, and from him they learned many practical truths of the inner life. But Dr. Quimby left no published work, and they were long prevented by adverse circumstances from making any public use of his investigations. Yet they never lost sight of his teaching. It became a life with them, and bore the test of all the experiences in the category of sorrow and suffering. They created a home atmosphere of hope, of quiet strength and healthy inquiry, into which it was a rich heritage to be born.

Out of these household discussions grew in time many courses of lectures delivered to small audiences in Boston and elsewhere. The following pages represent the last of these courses, delivered in Boston during the past year by the author in co-operation with Mrs. A. G. Dresser. Chapter II., on "The Immanent God," has already appeared in pamphlet form ; and the kind reception accorded it has led to the revision and publication of the other papers in the series. In this task the author has been constantly guided by the advice and suggestion of Mrs. Dresser, to whom he is especially indebted for the subject matter of the concluding chapter. The volume may, therefore, be fairly taken to represent our co-operative thought, and in a way to reflect the lives of the two pioneer workers in this field, whose unsparing devotion was, for us, the best evidence of its truth while thev were still here.

H. W. D.

481 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass., March 25, 1895.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGB

I. Introductory 9

II. The Immanent God 17

I. Introductory

One characteristic stands out above all others in the century of thought now rapidly drawing to a close. It is an age of persistent and unsparing inquiry, of search for causes, sources, origins. It is not content with faith alone, but seeks reasons. The distinctions between schools and systems of thought are fading out in the light of the larger sympathy and sense of brotherhood which the age inspires. The ideal of a universal human society, a universal science, and a universal religion, is already dawning upon us. Students of history, of nature, of human thought and society, are endeavoring to draw an accurate picture of the world-life of the past out of which the present has necessarily proceeded. There is a new demand made upon man, — to understand himself in the light of all the causes that have operated to produce him, his thought, his daily experience, his joy and suffering. This desire to know the origin of beings and things as a progressing whole gives the clue to the method and purpose of the present volume.

IO

Its first object is to be helpful, but not in the traditional way. It urges no mere acceptance of its doctrine, proposes no name for its theory, and claims neither originality nor finality for its teaching. It offers reasons for certain phases of the inner life which have hitherto remained mysterious. It is offered as a possible stimulus to systematic and patient inquiry. But it has a far deeper object than this, a purpose in which it will fail unless it be perfectly clear from the outset that this volume is something more than a restatement of the great and beautiful truths which were enunciated so long ago.

This purpose will become apparent by considering the difference between one person and another. Life is a problem which has for each an individual solution. No one can wholly solve it for us or take from it the element of personal responsibility. It has its own particular history and meaning in each individual case. Difference in temperament and in experience gives infinite variety to these personal solutions*-/ The utmost that one individual can do for another is to enunciate the principles which underlie all experiences, however varied. Truth is not truth for us until we have made it our own through reflection, until we have applied it in daily life

It is hoped, then, that the reader will stop every important point, as the discussion ap

II

proaches daily life, to make the thought his own through quiet realization of its spirit and its meaning. Let him pause in restful silence to ask, without forcing himself to think, What does this mean for me? How does it explain, how does it accord with my experience? Have I ever devoted time and reflection — alone with my deepest self — to realize the full bearing of the profoundest and sublimest truths of life? Have I ever made them my own and actualized them in daily life, or is there still a chasm between theory and practice?

If the reader will keep this practical object constantly in view, unsuspected applications of well-known truths will become apparent before the volume is finished.

This book does not, however, advise rigorous self-analysis of the personal self alone. It seeks a way of escape from narrowing introspection and self-consciousness. It seeks the Origin of all consciousness and all life. It proceeds on the principle that man cannot fully understand himself without constant reference to the omnipresent Spirit in whom he lives, and that in this profoundest wisdom is to be found the one unfailing resource in every moment of need. It is not an inquiry alone. It is a chapter from life, an appeal to life, and aims to give the thing itself, so far as possible, instead of talking about it. The principles on which it insists are the outgrowth of experience emphasized by reason. It therefore appeals both to the reason of the reader and to those deeper feelings which find their reason in our relationship to the great Over-Soul. How else can one hope to unite philosophy and life?

It is obviously better to be true to all aspects of life as it appears from the angle of one's own temperament and experience than to force all facts into a particular system. The deepest facts are usually slighted, if not excluded, by the latter process. No formula seems large enough to cover all we know and feel. There is an element in experience that always eludes us. i Some experiences can never be told. They are part of us. They are sacred, and one hesitates to speak of them. Yet one can suggest them, ior at least let it be known that in these rarest jmoments of existence one seemed most truly to live. Only in this way does the soul, or that part of us which is most truly individual, find partial expression in language. Only in this way does the unfetterec!*?£*^show its freedom from prejudice and dogma. Allegiance to a person or tlie%^ limits one to the particular view of life represented by that person or theory. To claim finality for one's system of thought would be equivalent to affirming that progress shall end with that particular discussion. Our theories serve us well so long as we remember that life itself is larger.

Life, then, is large, and demands a broad way of thinking about it. To the majority, it is true, life is a mystery into which it is futile to delve too deeply, or it is a series of experiences at once so contradictory and fragmentary that no one can deduce any meaning from them. We have no sense of what our total self means. We suffer, and we seek relief. We are absorbed in the present, in its needs and woes, unaware that our whole past lives, our inheritance and our temperament, may affect this bit of suffering nature which for the moment limits our thought. Thus experience everywhere lacks perspective. Our thinking is painfully narrow. We do not look far enough. We live as though time were soon to cease, and prudence would not permit us an hour for quiet reflection.

Yet a new phase, and to some the happiest phase, of life begins when we become conscious of our intimate relation to eternity, when we stop hurried thought, and try quietly to realize what life means as a progressing whole. If life be one, and reveal one purpose, one God, can any other interpretation be rational, will the parts ever assume their true relationship in our minds except when viewed in the light of the whole? If all power be one, and resident in the universe, acting through something or somebody, can we not discover how it is acting, and thereby learn the course of events as related to our own lives? Can we not become adjusted to the situation as it actually is, and stop this continual rebellion, this sense of dis-ease and lack of harmony with the inevitable? Possibly our suffering is largely unnecessary, and is caused by our own attitude. Possibly, too, it has a deeper meaning than we had suspected.

B^ before we can bring about a change of attitude, before we can realize the power of silence, we must have a firm basis to stand upon, we must know what that power is. The presence of an unwordable element in our deepest experience is no excuse for vagueness. The thoughtful mind of to-day is no longer content with mere scepticism or with mere unproved assertion. We must have a reason for our faith: otherwise it is no faith at all, and the first trying experience will set us once more adrift at the mercy of fear and opinion.

Finally, then, this book aims to be positive and hopeful, in spirit and in teaching. Its first proposition is : —

Experience is best explained by its immediate environment. The truth is involved in the very nature of the beings and things by which we are surrounded. It only needs to be evolved or made explicit. All power is immanent. It works through something. Man should not look beyond his own nature, his own temperament, inheritance, education, until he is compelled to do so in order to find an adequate explanation of his experience. He should have a clear conception of the closely related events out of which his own life has proceeded as an inevitable consequence, just as the river is enlarged and shaped in its course by its tributaries and the country through which it flows, yet never rises higher than its source. In a word, he must know his origin, both immediate and remote. He must start with his own personal experience, but should not stop until he have traced it to the very Source beyond which thought can never go. This inquiry leads us to a consideration of the subject of subjects, on which one most of all hesitates to speak, — the nature and life of God. In pursuing this inquiry, the aim will be to use simple, untechnical language, with no historical references and as little dry reasoning as possible. Although this method is open to adverse criticism, it unquestionably serves the purpose of the book, namely, to deal directly with the thing itself out of which grow both philosophy and life. Truth is a sphere into which we must break somewhere. If our inquiry lead us finally i6

to the Reality itself, we shall feel it and know it, and lay little stress on the mere words and forms that led us to the Spirit beneath them. Let us, then, make the start in some well-known fact of existence, which shall lead as quickly as possible to that on which all existence depends.

II.

THE IMMANENT GOD.

Some knowledge of the law of cause and effect lies at the basis of all systematic reflection. When a message is flashed over the wires from town to town, or the electric car transports us quickly and easily through the city streets, we know beyond all question that some cause has produced the effect which serves us so readily. The ease and rapidity with which the effect results do not deceive us. We may know little about the force in question ; but we know that it acts in unvarying accordance with certain laws, the understanding of which enables us to control it. We learn further that every cause has its antecedent. The electricity is generated with energy derived ultimately from the sun. The motion of the ship, as it sails before the wind, is likewise traceable from wind to sun, from the sun to the very primal source of the motion which caused our universe to be. And we stop here only because we know not the antecedent of this first activity.

The chain of related causes and their subsequent effects is in reality endless. I Without a cause nothing can happen, nothing ever happened; and with an eternally active cause in the world something must always happen. ") Every cause, every effect, every event in the history of the universe and in our own lives, is inseparably connected with this infinite series, extending far backward into the irrevocable past, and potentially related to an ever-dawning future. If we start with the simple motion of the hand, or the reflex nerve-action which preceded it, and seek its cause, we inevitably end with this untraceable series of closely related events, which bewilders the thought by its vastness.

What does all this signify? When did cause and effect begin? An absolute beginning is simply unthinkable. One all-embracing series of causes and effects must have existed eternally, of which our world and its activity is a part, and of which all future activity will be an outgrowth. Furthermore, if the motion of my arm is related causally to the activity of my whole body, to my brain, to my physical and mental environment, to my parents and to thousands of others who have thought and acted before me, to the world, the sun, — in a word, to all activity throughout eternity, — then the substance moved is no less a part of eternity.

To grasp this thought fully, try for a moment to conceive the absence of all existences in the

*9

universe, and then imagine the creation or appearance of something or of some being in this infinite void. Such an event is utterly inconceivable, since something could not be a product of nothing, and every result must have an efficient and substantial cause. If, then, something can neither be made from nothing, nor something become non-existent, the sum total of substance must ever be the same. It can be modified, evolved, or dissolved, but must itself be eternal.

Try now to imagine a condition of things in which there should be no motion, and conceive the beginning of motion in the illimitable and perfectly inert universe which you have conjured up. Once more the attempt is futile. Absolute and universal rest, like a perfect void, is inconceivable. Something moving would be needed wherewith to start motion, just as something substantial must have existed before a new product could result. If only one particle moved, then something moving must have caused its motion ; and, if it moved once only, all existing particles would be set in motion, since all particles are causally correlated. Motion could not cease, since only a moving power could stop it, and there would be no power to stop this inhibiting force.

The cessation of motion, then, like its inception, is unthinkable. If it were not continuous, eternal, it could never have become a fact. Moreover, motion implies not only a continuous, all-embracing series of causes and effects, but the existence of the eternally moving substance already postulated. Motion also means change from place to place, from one condition to another. Change in turn implies the experience of rhythm or interval in motion, which we call time. Change also implies the experience of space, or the extension in three directions of that which is moved. Thus an eternally existing substance, uncreated and never-ceasing motion, infinite time and infinite space, are inseparably connected. Any particular substance, motion, interval, or space must be part of a great unitary whole which includes yet transcends them all. There is cause and effect, duration between them, extension of that which is moved or affected, eternal motion, and an ever-moving something whose infinite activity is thus characterized. Out of these we have constructed the universe in imagination, and this grand result is implied in the simple statement that every effect has a cause.

And what does this reasoning further signify? That there is one, and only one, eternal, omnipresent Reality, whence came all that ever existed, or ever will exist, which includes and is all that ever proceeds from it, the one, ultimate, all-embracing Cause, which needs no farther explanation. It is self-existent, uncreated, indestructible, at once the basis and the essence of all being, the one source to which all activity is ultimately traceable. It is simply Reality, — that for which we need seek no proof, since we are compelled to assume it in the very reasoning whereby we hope to prove its existence. It simply is, its own best reason for being. It is substance and power; it is life and consciousness itself, the knowledge of the existence of which is the one surest possession of human intelligence. It is, if you will, the infinite Spirit, the eternal Father, the unseen and permanent basis of the visible and transient series of causes and effects which constitute world-experience and human life. It is the great Whole, to which there is no space and no time, no beginning and no ending, whose activity is continuous, and whose substance is all there is, to which we are ultimately led if we pursue our reasoning to its last conclusion.

Were we to conceive the existence of a vast number of causes in place of the one Reality, these causes would still be correlated; they could not be independent, since every cause is the resultant of some antecedent cause, and no reality could be independent but the all-inclusive origin of which we are speaking. The last cause, could we conceive an end to the infinite chain, would still be a unit, uncreated and eternal, and would therefore be the sum total of all that ever could exist. Otherwise stated, if there were more than one reality, then these other realities would possess activity and substance revealed in space and time. No one of these realities would be omnipresent, independent, or self-existent. There would still exist an all-uniting, omnipresent Reality which would be the life and substance of all others and superior to all limitations of space and time. For the origin, being the All, is therefore infinite, including yet transcending all bounds, including and revealing itself through all forms and qualities.

When, therefore, we speak of a being or substance with limitations, when we give names and assign attributes, such as "God is love," we mean some portion of this one eternal, omnipresent, all-sufficient Reality, the one substance, the one life, the sum total of all that actually exists. Could we know this one, could we define it, we should be this one. It is known to us through its infinite self-revelation as the universe. This universe of the correlated many must exist for one supreme purpose and be governed by one transcendent law. Could we state this law and define this purpose, we should once more be this one which the many reveal. We may define it as intelligence, power, love, substance. But we have not defined It, but rather a certain attribute or manifestation as we know it. We may say that we know him, meaning a personal God. But we know him only in the one phase which appeals to our finite intelligence. The Reality is still the basis of all phases, of all attributes, of all manifestations of power and form.

Again, we may deem him imperfect, and actively engaged in thinking out his mighty problems, of which this great, pulsating universe of ours is the objective representation, part by part corresponding to his thought, and our lives representing some special phase of this problem. But why, then, this definiteness of motive, revealed alike in all the kingdoms of nature, this co-operation toward an apparently preconceived end, if he is merely experimenting with us ? Would not this limited being be part of a larger Self, who knew all things from eternity, and is unlimited, infinite, and utterly beyond all definition? Conceive and define him as we may, there still remains a Reality which no statement describes, which ever recedes as we seek to grasp it, but which is all we mean when we use the terms "God," "Spirit," "life," "the universe," — yet more, which we cannot deny, since we assume it before we deny it, which imbues our thought with its presence, — yes, is our thought, is the thinker, the all in all.

But I have thus far spoken of God only as the transcendent Reality which no language can define, a Reality which some dismiss as the unknowable, while others conceive it in purely mechanical terms. It follows from the foregoing that he is also immanent, that, whatever he may be as the absolute Reality, he is known in part to us as the God of our life and of our world. While, then, in one sense there can be no space and no immanency to an All, we must consider the relationship of the whole to its parts, and see how the world of manifestation of the Many proceeds necessarily from the nature of the One.

We have seen that the events of life and of the universe are causaHy correlated, that they are joined in an unbroken series. And, since this series of events is part of a great unit, and there is only one Reality, all activity originates within and never outside this Reality. It is impossible, then, that some man-like God should have impressed his energy upon the primeval nebulous mass, and then retired we know not where, or that he should have made the world out of nothing in six days, and then interfered with it from time to time by miraculous providences. For there is no extra-natural Deity. The sum total of substance and force does not change. And evolution, not creation,H is the law of life.

The manifold changes which have brought the world to its present state, the endless working of force against force, of animal against animal, and man against man, and the ups and downs of human history, are probably just as important and require the divine presence just as much as the impulse which first brought our world into being. Either, then, — note the alternative, — God put forth his own being as the world, immanent yet transcendent, and is with it, transforming it through phenomena, as much now, in this age, in these changing times, in this room, as in the irrevocable ages of the past, or there is no God at all. For whatever exists is a part of and within the one Reality. Nature's God, the immanent God, is the only possible God. Let me repeat. Either God is revealed through the cohesive force which holds matter together, and holds the planets in their positions in space, through the love which draws man to man, and the fortunes and misfortunes which characterize his progress, through the insensible gradations by which our politics are changing and our own conflicts are making us true men and women, or there is no divine Father at all; for science tells us of no other development but that of ever-gradual and never-ceasing evolution, due to resident forces.

Life, then, all life, yours and mine, all that holds it together and links it with the eternal forces of the universe, is a continuous, divine communication. There is no separation between our own souls and that Spirit in whom, in the most literal sense, we live and move and have our being, between the world in which we live and that eternal Reality of whose substance and of whose activity it is a part. The life which sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, and awakens to consciousness in man, is the same, the one great life, which is revealed just as clearly in the fortuitous changes that spur us on to progress as in the exact movements of the planets. All nature reveals God. The sea, the sky, the mountains, the complex life of great cities, the simple life of the country, the admiration of the poet, the thought and feeling of all men, all nations, all books, all churches, all religions. All thinkers, all artists and lovers of the beautiful, are feeling after him. All state in their own terms, and according to their degree of intelligence, the conception of a divine Father, which I have tried to make clear as it appears to me; namely, that he is nature, yet more than nature, personal, yet more than person; on the one hand, the great unit, omnipresent force and substance whence all things and beings proceed, impersonal, infinite, unknown, transcendent, indefinable; on the other hand, relatively known, finite, immanent, personal; an intelligent power, large enough to be the author of all life, and near enough so that Jesus could name him Father, and so that we can perceive his activity in our daily lives; an omnipresent Reality, whose complete nature is revealed in the total universe, and so much as we can comprehend in our own lives; a Spirit which has no form, but which all forms reveal; a God who is unknown and unperceived in this larger and deeper sense, except by those who have thought and suffered deeply, he whom we refuse to recognize when we look afar into the heavens for a god of our own fancy; a God who is not only immanent, but is that in which he dwells, — a continuous, all-pervasive, all-pervaded Spirit; a Friend who is just as near to us in this present happy moment as in the countless aeons of eternity of which this fleeting moment is an integrant part.

Do we realize what this nearness means, what it is to dwell with God consciously? Let me try to bring him yet nearer.

Sometimes one seems to look far into the eyes of a friend and to see the soul gazing from unseen depths in return; and, as the face softens into a smile, one draws still nearer to that elusive somewhat called the human spirit, as it lends life and beauty to the features, itself invisible, yet so plainly revealed that one can almost locate its vanishing touch. There are days in the country in summer — noticeably in June and September — when a divine stillness seems to rest over all the world. We feel an unwonted and indescribable peace which lifts us above our petty selves to the larger Self of eternal restfulness which nature's calm suggests. We almost worship nature at such a time, so near it brings us to the Spirit which imbues the very vibrations of the atmosphere. Again, when standing near some grand mountain, or when looking far into the clouds at sunset, we seem to perceive the strength and the vanishing glory of him who is almost revealed to our longing eyes, yet forever remains beyond our keenest vision.

And, if we push our analysis still farther, do we not discover that all that is best and dearest in human life, all that is most useful in nature, is like this retreating beauty of a soft landscape: the mechanism is visible, but the beauty is of the mind? I saw my friend, you say. Yet you only saw his face, not his soul, just as you see the world, but not the Life which animates it. You feel love, you use wisdom, you reap the inner benefits of goodness; but all is intangible. No one ever saw force : we see and make use of its effects. Yet no one doubts its existence. We know it through its manifestations. And some affirm that there is no dense material, simply varied modes of motion of one infinite force, of one underlying Reality; while other philosophers describe the universe as a system of ideas produced in us by the great Reality behind all phenomena. Whatever the ultimate nature of matter may be, and this is a question which we cannot profitably discuss here, it is evident that the Reality is somehow made known to us. No one denies it, yet no one ever saw it; so intimate is the association between motion and that which moves, between cause and effect.

The retreating beauty of nature, then, seems typical of our deepest associations with the Father, a union to which Emerson has given the best expression in his "Over-Soul." We are conscious of the human part; and, when in times of sorrow we seem comforted from on high, we are dimly aware of the divine. Yet we cannot grasp it : we can only affirm that God resides in and is the source of our being, just as the grandeur of nature resides in a landscape whose beauty we can never locate. Take love, take wisdom, start with any quality in human life which points to a common nature, and, tracing it to its source, one's thought is lost in contemplation of the great Reality which must be all these qualities, since there could be but one perfect love and wisdom, which all share in greater or lesser degree, just as surely as the force with which I move my arm is related to the power which, from all time, has caused the planets to revolve and the infinite series of causes and effects to be active.