Man: whence and whither?

Front matter

iMlliMiii

MAN:

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Introduction

Having been privileged to read the original manuscript of this book, I gladly accept the author's invitation to "criticise" it in a few introductory paragraphs.

Dr. Jamison is widely known as a successful practitioner in a special field of medicine, and for his numerous contributions to medical literature. But it will come as a surprise to many of his friends and most of his professional brethren to learn that he is gifted with a clairvoyant faculty that enables him to see certain things and discern operations of natural law that are at present hidden from more than ninety-nine per cent, of the human race.

The work is not the outcome of any "course of reading," nor of philosophic reflection, nor of intellectual speculation. It is the result of direct psychic perception, and may be described, briefly, as an inquiry into racial origins, evolutionary processes, and the spiritual destiny of mankind. The line of thought is not consecutive, the chapters being presented in the form of essays that relate to various aspects of the weighty theme — the primal source and ultimate goal of the genus homo. •

While much space is devoted to a consideration of the eternal purpose of man's existence on the earth and elsewhere, the book derives a peculiar timeliness from the current recrudescence of the old conflict between theology and evolution. Although Dr. Jamison apparently con-

^ 6 Introduction \ cedes the applicability of the Darwinian theory to the de-C velopment of ty/>e.y, and in tracing man as a corpormljt^ organism to an anthropoidal ancestry, he parts company W at this point with both the evolutionist and the theologian; for he holds that the real man is a spiritual being and has never been anything else.

The fundamental weakness of Darwinism lies in its failure to account for the uniqueness of man — his exclusive possession of the faculty of imagination* Within the annals of recorded time there has^ not been the slightest structural change in the bee-hive, the ant-chamber, the spider's web, the beaver's dam, or the nest of any bird; iwhereas the abode of the human being has undergone thousands of modifications and improvements from the time of the rock-cave dweller to that of the occupant of a modern royal palace. The difference is due solely to the fact that man has an imaging faculty that "alt-iother creatures are without.

It is not surprising that certain orders of animate being that inhabit the same plane, draw their sustenance from the same source, are subject to the same environmental limitations, are equipped with the same physical senses, and. are forced to reproduce their kind in the same way, should present certain anatomical similarities. But the creative power of mind displayed by man alone is shown by Dr. Jamison to point to a wholly different origin for this highest order of earthly life.

There is a vital distinction between the evolution of types and the evolution of species. Nature is jealous of infringements upon the latter, and even frowns upon the

Introduction 7

mixture of human breeds. In Mexico and our own South it is the half-breed that displays the most marked criminal tendencies. The pure-bred Indian is not often a rebel at heart. The coal-black negro is seldom lynched. When man attempts to interfere with natural law by crossing the horse with the donkey, a mule results ; but the mule does not reproduce itself. This sterility of the hybrid tends to refute the evolutionary claim of the mutation of species.

The author seems to accept to a limited degree the principle of reincarnation as explaining Nature's method of leading the individualized entity from lower to higher planes of consciousness and causation. He has little sympathy, therefore, with affirmations that are based upo* the Biblical story of man's "descent." The indictment of Pauline Christianity presented by the inception, duration and barbarities of the World War, and by the crimes, miseries' and degeneracies that have followed in its wake after nineteen centuries of dogmatic teaching, discounts the value of literal interpretations of New Testament theology as well as of the biology and anthropology of Genesis.

The advent of Darwinism served to accentuate the dawn of doubt, which decreed the doom of dogma. It is everywhere evident, therefore, that the religious world of today is in urgent need of a new revelation. Perhaps in the following pages we have a preliminary glimpse of what awaits us in the future life, combined with a rational attempt to blend true science with true religion — to their mutual profit.

Some of Dr, Jamison's assumptions will not be in-

8 Introduction

dorsed or accepted by the strict logician or the scientist accustomed to measure everything by the yardstick of materialism. Yet we must admit that the inventor of the multiplication table, which forms the basis of our only exact science (mathematics), was obliged at the outset to assume the existence of the unit.

The author's faith and confidence in the accuracy of his own psychic observations and the reality of his experiences will be shared only by those who have trodden the same occult path of investigation. Yet scores of the commonplace facts and scientific verities and utilities of today were among the dreams of 'Visionaries" of an earlier date.

Dr. Jamison makes no pretense of literary excellence nor presumptuous claims of originality; yet in an epoch of intellectual transition like the present, in which most of his conclusions have the full indorsement of such profound thinkers and scholars as Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Professor Charles Richet, it would seem that his book is worthy of an unprejudiced perusal. It is certainly a unique and significant addition to the metaphysical literature of our time.

John Emery McLean.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — The Origin of Man n

II. — Qualities of Incarnate Satanic Man . . 18 III. — The Study of Psychonomy and Psy-

Prefatory Note

The author's object in presenting to the reader in this volume an impressionist word-picture of the operations of God through unvarying natural laws is to suggest a critical, logical, and intellectual conception of the domains of philosophy and religion.

It may be regarded as presumptuous on the part of the author to attempt even a partial solution of so vast a series of problems. But it is his hope that others will carry on the study of these questions, so that, like many other seemingly insurmountable problems in Nature, they may eventually be solved or at least greatly clarified.

A. B. J.

MAN: Whence and Whither?

Chapter I The Origin Of Man

Mind is a unit of consciousness and of motion, and its armor or instrument is called spirit, an uncreated, indestructible, archetypal form, or organism, from which and through which all natural phenomena are made manifest.

There is but one archetypal psychic substance (call it an element, if you like) in Nature, and this is made up of organized units of mind, each clothed in an armor or instrument called spirit. We are told that God is a Spirit and is immanent, or present, in all the diversified phenomena of Nature, and that He created the phenomenon called man in His own image and after His likeness — potentially, we should add.

Innate in every spirit organism there is the divine essence, together with its attributes, its law, and its creative power (called the word), and collectively or in varied aggregations these constitute and make possible the incarnate phenomenal world and the natural laws that govern all of its diversified functions.

Behind and within all the varied phenomena of Nature we find mind, or spirit, as a factor and as a recipient; we therefore make no mistake when we say that all is mind, or spirit. Thought is a word, and in the begin-

ii ning of the creation of a world it is the word, which is ever being made manifest through the laws of integration and disintegration, or incarnation and excarnation, governing all the diversified phenomena of a world and its countless forms of incarnate and excarnate life.

There is no empty space, or vacuum, in Nature. Space is only seemingly empty — empty only to those who have limited vision. There is no mystery, there are no secrets in Nature for those whose comprehension is sufficiently developed to observe natural phenomena with unclouded vision.

Spirit is in all and through all, pervading, inhabiting, and functioning in the immense region called space. The aggregate of phenomena in any region that is more densely incarnated than the rest is called a planet, and this is actually not greatly unlike the immense region which those of limited observation designate as space.

The innate, involved, latent power possessed by spirit is a mental dynamic force that seeks to_ express itself and is called forth through the operation of need, want, and desire, which are the basic factors in the evolution of mind, or spirit.

Spirit in its involved state seeks to unfold its potential attributes of mind, and in consequence it puts forth its primal creative effort, which naturally results in the simplest form of embodiment or incarnation in the phenomenal world. In order to sustain its created armor or instrument, which is so essential in the phenomenal world, it must contend with many obstacles that tend to interfere with its incarnate existence; and this struggle, like its creation of a body, develops its mental powers by the stimulating activity of thought. Sooner or later it must succumb to the destructive forces that environ it, and then excarnation takes place, adding another chapter to its mind-unfoldment.

The Origin of Man 13

The excarnated spirit's mind continues to express its needs, wants, and desires, and again it puts forth its creative effort, with greater confidence due to its past experience. Thus each cycle of the phenomena we call respectively birth, incarnate existence, and death produces another chapter in the development of its mind and of its power of thought. And the dauntless spirit in the course of its evolution passes through countless cycles of this kind, perhaps during billions of years, as it wends its way toward its spiritual and mental goal.

Nature's Cosmic School takes no account of the time and labor that the evolving spirit must expend in the cosmic incubator — that is, in the more ethereal incarnate regions or in the denser region called the earth. The dynamic urge and push from within the mind increases as experience and knowledge are gained in consequence of the spirit's ceaseless efforts and laborious struggle in the cosmic thought-incubator, in which it is compelled to think more and more as new chapters of gestation, birth, sin, sickness, sorrow, and death are multiplied for the attainment of some purpose or end of which it knows naught. Being a child of Nature, and not knowing from what distant port it has set sail or what harbor it is destined to reach in the end, the spirit endures the stern, relentless, unpitying, merciless tutorship of Nature, which hears no prayer because the mind of its ward is utterly unprepared to pray.

Up through each conscious plane of existence, as through a graded school, the ascending spirit wends its way through many cycles of gestation, birth, and incarnate and excarnate life, attended by labor, sin, sickness, sorrow, and death as its tutors, thus simply obeying the law of need, want, and desire — a potential, innate law of mind existing within its own organism as a means to further its own ascent to a physical, mental, and spiritual goal as yet exceedingly remote.

Gestation of a spirit within the womb of an incarnate planet permits of no estimate of the time when such spirit, now dependent, will attain a higher plane of consciousness and become a law unto itself. As one geological period followed another in the history of the formation of the earth's crust, all the phenomena of the ascending scale of being were manifested in conformity with the various changing planetary conditions. In consequence of this progressive creative effort, which was compatible with the ascent of spirit, there was a constant gain in experience, knowledge, and ability to think; and, urged and pushed from within by needs, wants, and desires, the spirit strove to attain greater physical efficiency — a most essential attainment for the survival of the fittest in mental activity and physical dexterity.

From the time of the first incarnation of spirit to the period when it acquired the ability to incarnate in a form that slightly resembled the phenomenon called man, countless epochs marked its mental and physical ascent; and from that period to the incarnation of the ape-like man there elapsed another immense period of time, which was followed by still another great interval before the manifestation of the phenomenon of articulate man. At this epoch the spirit in its long ascent attained the ability to incarnate, though in a primitive way, in its archetypal form, or in the image of spirit, but it still possessed an animal consciousness dominated by ignorance and resembled the savages such as even now inhabit portions of the earth, being mentally and physically not greatly unlike the gorilla, orang-outang, and chimpanzee, which, like the savage tribes of the earth, also inhabit certain

The Origin of Man 15

regions of this planet and have a language commensurate with their mental and physical development.

Perhaps fifty to a hundred thousand years have been added to the age of Mother Earth and Father Time since the first dawn of the crowning effort of creation, when there came into existence a grotesque caricature of what the incarnate phenomenon called man should be. And yet, despite this lapse of time, the incarnate form known as man is still a physical gargoyle and a mental tyke, fastened to the old wheel of time and going through the cycle of gestation, birth, and incarnate existence with its attendant drudgery, sin, sickness, sorrow, and ultimate dissolution. Death, the termination of incarnate existence, again casts the individual being into the excarnate world, about which it knows no more than it does about the phenomenal world from which it was dispossessed for lack of mental funds. So the shuttle of evolution has kept up the movement back and forth in order to weave an incarnate form in the image and after the likeness of God.

For the period of perhaps more than eight thousand years of which we have some knowledge, Mother Nature and Father Time have been recasting their incarnate products, constituting so-called civilization. While civilization has seemingly risen and fallen, spirit-man has continued to be bound to the ever-moving shuttle, passing back and forth between incarnate and excarnate existence, as do also the ape-like men, dumb animals, and the lesser incarnate forms of life that creep or crawl, swim or fly. All accompany proud man back and forth in the stern, unpitying, merciless cosmic shuttle; for Nature's law takes no account of the being's suffering due to labor, sin, sickness, sorrow, or death. Nature's activities are directed toward developing each of its dependents into a beautiful and symmetrical incarnate being in the image of God and endowed with a godlike mind that knows no error in creative efforts. Each being thus becomes one with the innate law and attributes of its own mind, the creator of all things on earth and in the regions of less density which those deficient in sight call ' 'space.' '

Mother Earth and Father Time have not yet succeeded in unfolding a God-fearing civilization of incarnate men on this planet; hence the grotesque, burlesque beings masquerading today in the guise of civilized nations. A being should not be classified as man merely because of the nature of the form in which he is incarnated, so long as he possesses only an animal consciousness and the five physical senses for the gathering of information that he has in common with the lower animals that also inhabit the earth. He has needs, wants, and desires — as have the insects, the ox, the horse, and the lion; and he performs the same functions, generally speaking, as his animal fellow-creatures. They do not know whence they come, what the purpose of life is, or whither they go. Neither does spirit-man in his partially developed state; therefore he is called the king of beasts — Satanic man, the most colossally destructive creature that Nature has produced in her effort to evolve a being incarnated as a perfect replica of its Creator.

So far in our word-picture of the working of natural laws we have described the origin of Satanic man, a very ancient historical character and personality, who resides in both the incarnate and excarnate realms of ignorance in order to be able to remain in close touch with Satanic fellow-beings, whose minds are constantly filled with woes and regrets and with forebodings of dire calamities and catastrophes following one another

The Origin of Man 17

in close succession. The mind of each being has thus been shown to pass through innumerable psychological periods, just as the earth has passed through geological periods, so that fossil ideas and creations may be destroyed and be replaced with something better and more modern.

The unsatisfied needs, wants, and desires ever in the Satanic being's mind may require more than forty thousand years of the same old refining process of Nature, in which the mask of the evolving being will be frequently changed by the successive processes of the cycle of birth (incarnation), life (incarnate existence), death (excarnation), and life after death (excarnate existence), which cycle must be repeated over and over until at length the animal consciousness of Satanic man is converted into a refined product of Nature entitled to be called Man, the son of God.

Chapter II

Innate in the incarnate being called man we find the essence, the law, and the attributes of mind. One of the functions of this being is to think, and with every thought he sends forth the creative word, which becomes manifest in his organism and in the phenomenal world that environs him. Such manifestation results in accordance with the law governing the accretive process of creation or incarnation, which signifies the calling together of numerous sentient units, or servitors, the aggregations of which constitute the sentient structural material necessary to complete the particular thought-creation, for whatever purpose it may be designed.

In order that an excarnate being may function in the incarnate human form, it must create through this accretive process an armor or instrument in which it can exist and function in the particular kind of environment that it desires to enter for the purpose of gaining experience and knowledge and of thus further unfolding its potential mental as well as physical powers.

The incarnate protective equipment of the being called man is not adapted to the environmental conditions of life in the material elements known as water and air. Hence he creates for himself an armor or instrument called a diving-suit, and with the protection that this affords he is able to exist and function in the watery depths, thus gaining experience and knowledge concerning the life phenomena of the incarnate inhabitants that possess bodies able to exist and function in that particular sentient element or substance, which also constitutes a part of the phenomenal world. He has likewise created the necessary bodily protection and means by which he can exist and function in the sentient substance called air, which occupies so-called space and is filled with incarnate world-stuff of slightly less density of life-embodiment than the region known as the earth, yet presenting all of the earth's phenomena in a more ethereal form.

Nature has many diversified kindergartens and schools that serve as a continuous series of aids to the evolution of the mind and of its psychophysical instrument, which is modified or. changed to suit the plane of consciousness it has reached in the phenomenal world.

Nature's Cosmic School naturally has many grades of mental and physical advancement, as indicated by the stupendous array of life units that, singly and collectively, annihilate the thought of space and of the seeming emptiness separating the planets and the stars, which present to the undeveloped mortal senses of spirit-man a more densely incarnated series of phenomena than do the limitless contiguous regions.

The incarnated Satanic being that is improperly classified as man is a natural product of the evolution of the mind and its attending physical phenomena that so recently emerged from the lower incarnate conscious plane or domain of Nature. He must naturally continue in his slow ascent from the animal plane of mind and form, since the mind and body he now possesses are only caricatures of the ideal mind and body yet to be attained.

The spirit being, up to the time of its present denser incarnation as man, possessed a personality and an individuality that represented the sum total of its mind unfoldment, and in passing through the psychophysical accretive process of gestation there were also grafted on the incarnating being's mind and body in a greater or less degree the personality and individuality of the parents, together with the conglomeration of engrafted ancestral traits of mind and body accumulated during the past hundred million or more years. These ancestral traits constitute a menagerie, exhibiting inherited mental and bodily characteristics of tailed, narrow-nosed African and Asiatic man-like apes (not to mention ape-like men), of the gorilla and the orang-outang, of wild and domestic animals, and of other creatures that might be mentioned as phases in the earlier stages of the evolution of the being destined ultimately to be manifested in the true image and after the likeness of God.

The extreme regret and humiliation that we now experience are due to the fact that the~ being properly called Satanic man has disgraced his long line of decent, Nature-abiding ancestors by all sorts of dissipation too vile to discuss in detail, such as the use of alcoholic beverages and narcotic drugs, sex abuse, gormandizing, and neglect of all the laws of mental and bodily health and growth. Therefore he cannot properly be classed either as an animal or as a man, but has the distinction of being called by the Biblical writers a Satanic being — a cognomen to which there has been no objection up to the present time.

Now, what is all this pandemonium of deviltry in the mind of the Satanic man for? And what good or bad service is it likely to render him in the future?

From the time when mind, or spirit, uttered the creative word and incarnate phenomenal existence began, the operation of Nature's immutable law of mind has compelled spirit-man to think more and more, whether wrong or right, abnormally or normally; and, while placing no restriction on his thinking, it has forced him to abide by the inevitable consequences of his mental output, in accordance with the law of cause and effect, however painfully disastrous or enjoyably good it may have been. The mind of a being can evolve only by incessant thinking, and by normal creative efforts keeping pace with the newest need, want, or desire, which stimulates in turn more active thought and new creative powers that have no limitations if they are normally used when normal conditions exist on the planet.

Will it be possible for the diversified incarnate regions of this section of the universe to continue their normal existence and functions of evolution long enough to evolve a phenomenon that may be described as man in the image and after the likeness of God? The history of the rise and fall of so-called civilization and the present deplorable state of mundane affairs may indicate that Nature's Cosmic School will soon cease to function, and that its disintegration, or involution, will take place, thus relegating all the dependent things in the school to some storage plane to await the development of a new world.

Ignorance has always greatly handicapped spirit-man, as the following dialogue will make plain :

"Whither goest thou?" said the angel. "I know not." "And whence hast thou come?" "I know not." "But who art thou?" "I know not." "Then thou art man. See that thou turn not back, but pass on to the place where thou shouldst go."

Proud spirit-man is quite as ignorant of the whence, the purpose, and the whither of his existence as the gorilla, the orang-outang, ape-like man, and the creeping, crawling, swimming, and flying creatures that are his companions.

Do the five mortal senses of the incarnate being known as man give him any more information about his environment than the physical senses possessed by the pig, horse, ox, or lion? They hear and know the language of their kind; they see and feel the phenomenon of birth; they know how to struggle for existence, procreate, and care for their young ; they are acquainted with death ; they feel heat and cold, hunger and thirst; they know day and night, land and water, and the change of the seasons; they are intuitive and impressionable; they reason from cause to effect; and finally, they feel fear of danger and terror of death when they see, smell, hear, or otherwise discern the approach of man, the arch-enemy of all incarnate life on land and in the water and in the air.

Practically the entire population of the earth classified as civilized man does not gain any more information through the use of the five mortal senses than do the animals and all the varied lower species of incarnate life that environ Satanic man.

Every incarnate being of the type we have described as Satanic man is, like his ancestors, bound to Nature's shuttle and is shoved back and forth from one incarnate state of existence to another, all the while subject to sin, sickness, sorrow, death, and subsequent rebirth because he will not think normally and thus unfold the innate potential creative powers of his mind. Few individuals think at all, and they but seldom.

Nature issues no free pass into her storehouse. You have to pay the full price at once for value received. Abnormal aversion to thinking and working creates excessive thirst for pleasure to pass away the time. Hence the prevalence of lawlessness and the attitude of revolt against government, indicating the disintegration of our semi-civilization brought about almost wholly by the predominance of the animal consciousness of the multitude over the understanding, vision, and spiritual enlightenment of the truly civilized minority, who know the whence, the purpose, and the whither of the incarnated being called man.

The semi-animal consciousness that Satanic man possesses accounts for his lack of desire to think and to work. Hence he is content, like the animal, with food, comforts, safety, and kindergarten amusements to while away the time from the cradle to the grave. Mental and physical laziness is the dominant trait of his character; hence his blind acceptance of authorities and his notion that everything desired ought to be supplied without effort on his part.

Animals are innately lazy creatures, and so is the animal-minded being called man; consequently, it takes psychological calamities of one sort or another to drive man to think and to find a way out of Mammon's dilemma. Thus he gradually learns to dispel the ancient Lethe that has so long put his brain to sleep, and comes to realize the purpose of his life and the rich inheritance in store for him if he will but think and act normally. Not one per cent, of the people of the earth are really doing anything worth while. The thinkers, the doers, the inventors, the benefactors of the world have been jeered at, despised, and persecuted by the very people they sought to benefit and befriend. Satanic man's redemption or emancipation from ignorance can come only through knowledge of the fundamental laws of Nature.

In this connection it is of interest to note the views of the eminent scientist, Professor Ernst Haeckel, who tells in one of his books, entitled "The Riddle of the Universe," how in his opinion the bodies of human beings were first formed. As stated in simple language by Herbert N. Casson, his ideas are as follows:

"For thousands of years it was believed to be wicked for people to learn how their own bodies were formed. No one, not even a physician, was allowed to take a dead body to pieces for the purpose of studying how it was made. Any man who did this was put in prison or sentenced to death. The name of the first man who was brave enough to find out the facts was Vesalius, a Belgian physician. He was sentenced to death because of his knowledge, but escaped and fled to a foreign country. He was chased from place to place, and soon afterward lost his life in a shipwreck.

"Sixty-five years ago it was discovered that every human body as well as every other living thing is made up of millions and millions of tiny cells, just as a beach is made up of tiny grains of sand. Some animals are so low and so small that they are made up of only a single cell. Under the microscope they look like tiny jelly-fishes. They are called the Infusoria and the Rhizopods. A human body is composed of millions of these little cells of ever so many different kinds.

"So far as our bodies are concerned, we are very much like the lower animals. For instance, a man has the same kind of backbone as a cow or a horse. The arm of a man and the wing of a bird are made of the same sort of bones. The skeleton of a frog is very much like that of a man.

"Apes are nearest to men in the way that their bodies are made. They have five fingers, thirty-two teeth, and 200 bones, just as a man has. There is gray matter in their brains, just as there is in ours. In fact there is more resemblance between the body of a man and that of an ape than there is between an ape and a baboon, which is the lowest and most stupid kind of monkey. Apes have a family life of their own. They are not guilty of some of the crimes that occur in the cities of civilized human beings. They are only a few degrees lower than some tribes of savages.