Spiritual Law in the Scientific World

Preamble

I feel a great affinity with Henry Drummond. Like him, I was brought up in a strict Scottish Presbyterian form of Christianity and had a predominantly "scientific" education. Like him, I feel completely certain that there is no essential conflict between science and religion, but that all apparent conflict arises only from our superficial individual points of view. However, much more strongly than Drummond, I feel that there must be something seriously wrong with any religion that seeks to separate people instead of bringing them together.

As Drummond explains in his Preface, his book is a collection of essays in which he attempted, originally for his own benefit, to translate his religious convictions into scientific language and thus convey the idea of the essential unity of the material and spiritual worlds. He adopted the scientific Principle of Continuity as the key to the resolution of any apparent conflicts between them.

This is a most praiseworthy endeavour which the Ardue Web Site wholeheartedly supports. Nevertheless, as a spiritual "friend" of Drummond, I find myself critical of certain aspects of his work. I appreciate the difficulty inherent in using everyday practical language to convey non-material ideas and I grant that Drummond was well aware of the danger lurking in over-reliance on analogy, but I cannot help wondering whether and to what extent he felt obliged to modify his published exposition so as to remain within the bounds then tolerated by the narrowly dogmatic Christianity of the Church which employed him.

I chose Drummond's book to form a foundation for the Ardue Temple Library more than a decade ago, publishing one chapter at a time and simultaneously writing what I hoped was a constructive criticism of it. Later, as contrasting books were added to the library, I withdrew the critical essays having come to feel that, taken separately, they were too fragmented to be helpful, and tended to discourage readers from taking Drummond as seriously as much of his writing deserves. Now that the Ardue Library has reached a certain maturity, I again feel justified in drawing attention to some of the defects I see in Drummond's work and attempting to rectify them. I hope readers will join me in this endeavour.

The following remarks on Drummond's essays are compiled mainly from those earlier criticisms, written from the scientific-mystical point of view adopted throughout this site and implicitly or explicitly supported by nearly all the other books now in the Ardue Temple Library. I take Natural Law as being a fundamentally spiritual law and the visible, tangible, material world as being a "working model" of the invisible intangible ideal. I am enough of a mystic to interpret the workaday world as the physical expression of a metaphysical system in much the same way as a computer programme is a practical implementation of a purely mental design. Hence I see the task Drummond sets himself as being one of "reverse engineering", analysing the application in the hope of understanding the underlying mental "program".

The mystic works in the opposite direction, taking a "top-down" instead of a "bottom-up" approach. I think of myself as a tiny part of the Universal system and in resonance with it, not merely intellectually but also — and perhaps principally — emotionally. I find myself persuaded less by rational logic than by feelings of "rightness" — which is why I have chosen as the heading for this essay a re-arrangement of the title of Drummond's book. I hope the reader will notice that there is nothing to prevent any conclusion mystically arrived at from being adopted as a scientific hypothesis, tested by scientific experiment, and accepted or rejected in the same way as any other scientific hypothesis. The history of science suggests that a goodly proportion of the most eminent scientists have had a mystical element in their personalities.

The sub-headings below refer to the individual essays in Drummond's book.

Introduction — Part 1

However Drummond, like David Hume, saw that the phenomena of Natural Law are revealed to us not as matters of cause and effect but only as orderly sequences of occurrences and that any cause-effect relationships assumed to exist between phenomena are merely hypothetical interpretations by the observer. It is only by patient test and trial of such hypotheses by ingenious experiment that what seems to be Natural Law may also be provisionally recognised by the physical scientist as scientific law. I doubt if the biological scientist can be equally rigorous, even if he or she does not shrink from conducting experiments which may be thought cruel upon living subjects.

In any case, I feel that it is only by looking within and conducting psychological experiments upon myself that I can question the operation of Natural Law in matters concerning motivation, cause, and effect. Likewise, it is only from within that the scientist is able to design experiments to test the validity of candidates for adoption as physical or biological laws.

It takes a further, a truly mystical, step to begin to understand one's own place in the framework of Universal Law. Such understanding is essentially individual: it is not susceptible to the sort of validation by repeated experiment and peer review that the scientist relies on. But all too many scientists fail to realise that even "scientific" laws cannot be finally "proved"; they can only be "taken on trust" unless and until they are disproved by experiment. Some blinkered scientists do not see that trust is a metaphysical quality.

Introduction — Part 2

A similar phenomenon is observed in religion — particularly in "Christianity", which keeps splitting into smaller and smaller denominations and thus losing most of its power to influence people. I hope the Christian reader will forgive me for sincerely doubting whether this is in accord with the "will of God" or that Jesus would look favourably upon it.

If we are to interpret the Universe correctly, our best strategy would seem to be to accept ourselves as integral parts of it and to adopt as our principal hypothesis that any Law of Continuity works within ourselves as well as outside us. This is the ancient Hermetic Principle: "as above, so below; as below, so above". If everything in the Universe derives its being from one and the same Spirit, then getting to know ourselves is our only means of solving the Kantian problem of getting to know "things in themselves". By finding our own centre, we find a centre from which the Law of Continuity radiates. As we draw closer to our own centre, we also find ourselves drawing ever closer to one another. We then find it increasingly difficult to escape the intellectually illogical conclusion that the Universe is a mental Universe, and that its centre is wherever our own centre happens to be. This is the strikingly uniform conclusion reached by all the great mystics known to history, and the Hermetic Principle is found to underlie the "Law of Laws" to which Drummond refers. See The Kybalion and The Fourth Dimension for further light on this proposition.

Drummond also implicitly recognises another Hermetic Principle — that there is a hierarchy of laws, and that a higher law takes precedence over a lower. The greatest scientists hunt the higher laws. They do not merely beaver diligently away among the lower extremities of a system seeking technological and commercial applications. These have their place, and present-day civilisation owes much of its comfort and convenience to their labours: but they will never solve the great problems arising from the fears which separate human individuals from each other and thus fracture the world by breaking the Law of Continuity. A motley collection of disparate genes is hardly likely to be a satisfactory substitute for the Living God we find when we truly find ourselves.

Finally and crucially, Drummond points out that laws are neither forces nor causes: they only keep matters in order. He says that "Laws are only codes of operation, not themselves operators". In other words, laws make their presence known only when it becomes clear that certain actions are possible only under certain conditions. Anyone who has ever attempted to program a computer with serious intent knows not only that the laws built into the operating system and the programming language must be obeyed, but that additional "lesser" laws must often be imposed to make the projected application proceed strictly along the intended lines. And, as Drummond also says, "our knowledge of higher laws must be limited by our knowledge of the lower".

I have referred above to "intellectual illogicality" implying that to understand the higher laws of the spiritual world, a logic superior to the merely intellectual is required, and I hope in a future essay to expand on that idea. In the meantime, I suggest that the reader refer to Tertium Organum by P D Ouspensky and ponder the following lines penned by Oliver Goldsmith (1731-1774):

Biogenesis

He starts by discussing a long-running controversy about whether life can be spontaneously generated from inanimate matter or can come only from pre-existing life, and he relies on the authority of T H Huxley and others to come down firmly on the side of the latter possibility.

Thus Drummond immediately lays himself open to at least two criticisms. First, by flying in the face of his own dictum that 'Authority — man's Authority, that is — is for children', he is by his own admission, being 'childish'. Secondly, regardless of how life on Earth originated, we know it as a fact. Whether life originated 'spontaneously' in different places at different times through some magic process of 'evolution', or 'once for all' through the agency of a deity, seems to the ordinary person to be an open question which does not require an answer.

Whilst I personally accept the mystical account of a living Universe emanated by a Living God, there is no logical argument I can employ to persuade anyone else. Likewise, there is no unanswerable intellectual argument that can be employed against me, even if a genuinely living being is produced directly from 'the dust of the earth' in a scientific laboratory. For the purposes of this essay, I am content to accept Life as a 'given' and refrain from inevitably inconclusive speculation as to its origin and detailed development.

When Drummond argues by far-fetched analogy that what he calls 'the Spiritual Life' is hermetically sealed from 'Natural' life, I cannot in all conscience find it in me to agree with him. I wonder whence comes what seems to me to be his totally artificial distinction between the 'Natural' and the 'Spiritual' life, a distinction that his Preface and Introduction are at pains to deny. In particular, it seems to flout his own Principle of Continuity.

I have long been persuaded by training and experience to the view that there is only one kind of human Life which, as I have argued elsewhere in the Temple essays, has spiritual as well as physical attributes. Once the Spirit has departed from the body, the body is dead. To drive a wedge between Spirit and body is tantamount to murder.

Drummond seems to be committed to a different view: one which distinguishes a special kind of 'Spirituality' which, as becomes clear later in his essay, is peculiar to Christians.

Let us examine his own words:

'The religion of Jesus has probably always suffered more from those who have misunderstood than from those who have opposed it. Of the multitudes who confess Christianity at this hour how many have clear in their minds the cardinal distinction established by its Founder between "born of the flesh" and "born of the spirit"? By how many teachers of Christianity even is not this fundamental postulate persistently ignored? A thousand modern pulpits every seventh day are preaching the doctrine of Spontaneous Generation. The finest and best of recent poetry is coloured with this same error. Spontaneous Generation is the leading theology of the modern religious or irreligious novel; and much of the serious and cultured writing of the day devotes itself to earnest preaching of this impossible gospel.'

If so many preachers, poets and novelists have no difficulty in accepting this 'impossible gospel', could it not perhaps be Drummond who is mistaken and that the people who have most seriously misunderstood the religion of Jesus are those who call themselves "Christians"? The Old Testament Book of Genesis clearly states that God intended the Earth to 'bring forth living creatures of every kind' and the 'gospel' is 'impossible' only if the spiritual nature of 'natural' man is denied. We may note in passing that such a denial seems to contradict the assertion also made in Genesis that 'God created man in his own image'. Unless this implies that 'natural' man has been given a "Godly", and therefore presumably spiritual, attribute, there is nothing to distinguish man from other animals.

In driving a wedge between the "Natural" and the "Spiritual", I believe Drummond was honestly mistaken — an intellectual prisoner of the religion in which he had been brought up. The central tenet of this brand of Christianity goes back many generations — at least to the ninth century, the age of the great Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches which finally parted company after the Council concluded in Constantinople around 869. It was while this crucial Church Council was under way that Pope Nicholas I declared that Man was no longer to be considered as a trinity of Spirit, Soul and Body but merely as body and soul. The Spirit of God in man was relegated to the lowly estate of a mere "intellectual quality" within the soul itself. Thus men and women were denied direct communion with God and each other through their common Spirit. The dogma of the Roman Church became the only recognised source of revelation.

For obvious, if 'unspiritual', reasons, the clerics of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were reluctant to push their reforming zeal so far as to abandon a dogma which provided their sole justification for mediating between God and individual men and women; such a drastic step would deprive them of their authoritative temporal power over the hearts and minds of their adherents.

Relying so much on analogy, Drummond is inclined to interpret parts of the Bible rather too literally, and this despite the warnings given by Jesus himself. For instance, in Luke, chapter 8, verse 10, Jesus says, addressing his disciples: 'Unto you is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing, they might not see, and hearing they might not understand'. It seems to me that the church in all its forms has relied on a too literal interpretation of parables in popular form because they at least provide a glimpse of the underlying moral science without requiring initiation into the science itself; but in doing so it has, perhaps unintentionally, promoted misunderstanding. Perhaps the end does not always justify the means.

Loyal to his religious background, Drummond works hard at trying to justify the 'fundamental postulate' that the 'natural' man is spiritually 'dead'. Most of his case seems to hang on his interpretation of the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus as reported in St John, chapter 3. It may be instructive to repeat here what Ιdouard Schurι has to say about it in 'Jesus, The Last Great Initiate':

'If such was the public and purely moral teaching of Jesus, it is evident that in addition he gave private instruction to his disciples, parallel with and explanatory of the former, showing its inner meaning and penetrating to the very depths of the spiritual truth he derived from the esoteric traditions of the Essenes and from his own experience. As this tradition was violently crushed by the church from the second century onwards, the majority of theologians no longer knew the real bearing of the Christ's words, with their sometimes double and triple meanings, and saw none but the primary and literal signification. For those who deeply studied the doctrine of the mysteries in India, Egypt, and Greece, the esoteric thought of the Christ animated not merely his slightest word, but every act of his life. Dimly perceptible in the three Synoptics, it springs into complete evidence in the Gospel of John. Here may be stated an instance touching an essential point of the doctrine:-

'Jesus happens to be passing by Jerusalem. He is not yet preaching in the temple, though he heals the sick and gives instruction to his friends. The work of love must prepare the ground into which the fruitful seed shall fall. Nicodemus, a learned Pharisee, had heard of the new prophet. Filled with curiosity, though unwilling to compromise himself in the eyes of his sect, he requests with the Galilean a secret interview, which is granted. The Pharisee calls at his dwelling by night and says to him: "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." Jesus replied: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus asks if it is possible for a man to enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born. Jesus answered: "Verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."

'Under this evidently symbolical form, Jesus sums up the ancient doctrine of regeneration already known in the mysteries of Egypt. To be born again of water and of the Spirit, to be baptised by water and by fire, mark two degrees of initiation, two stages of the inner and spiritual development of man. Water here represents truth perceived intellectually, i.e. in an abstract and general manner. It purifies the soul and develops its spiritual germ.

'A new birth by the Spirit, or baptism by (heavenly) fire, signifies the assimilation of the truth by the will in such a way that it may become the blood and life, the very soul of every action. From this results the complete victory of spirit over matter, the absolute mastery of the spiritualised soul over the body transformed into a docile instrument; a mastery which awakens its dormant faculties, opens its inner sense, and gives it an intuitive insight into truth, and a direct action of soul on soul. This state is equivalent to the heavenly one which Jesus Christ called the kingdom of God. Baptism by water, or intellectual initiation, is accordingly the first step in rebirth; baptism by the spirit is total rebirth, a transformation of the soul by the fire of intelligence and will, and consequently, to a certain extent, of the elements of the body — in a word, a radical regeneration. From this come the exceptional powers it gives to man.

'This is the earthly signification of the eminently theosophical conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus. There is also a special signification which might briefly be called the esoteric doctrine concerning the constitution of man. According to this doctrine, man is threefold: body, soul, and spirit. He has an immortal and indivisible part, the spirit; a perishable and divisible part, the body. The soul which unites the two shares in the nature of both. Living organism as it is, it possesses an ethereal and fluidic body, similar to the material body, which, but for this invisible double, would have neither life, movement, nor unity. According as man obeys the suggestions of the spirit or the impulses of the body, according as he attaches himself to the one or the other, the fluidic body becomes etherealised or dulled; unifies or becomes disaggregated. Accordingly, it happens that, after physical death, the majority of men have to submit to a second death of the soul, which consists in their being cleansed from the impure elements of the astral body, sometimes even in undergoing slow decomposition; whilst the completely regenerated man, having formed on this earth his spiritual body, possesses his heaven in himself and enters the region to which his affinity attracts him. ... Now water, in ancient esoterism, symbolises fluidic matter which is infinitely transformable, as fire symbolises the one spirit. In speaking of rebirth by water and spirit, the Christ makes allusion to the double transformation of his spiritual body and his fluidic envelope which awaits man after death, and without which he cannot enter the kingdom of lofty souls and purified spirits. For "that which is born of the flesh is flesh (i.e. chained down and perishable), and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (i.e. free and immortal)".

'Let us note one more important point in this teaching. According to the materialistic doctrine, the soul is an ephemeral and accidental resultant of the forces of the body; in the ordinary spiritualist doctrine it is something abstract, without any conceivable bond with the body; in the esoteric doctrine — the only rational one — the physical body is a product of the incessant work of the soul, which acts upon it by the similar organism of the astral body, just as the visible universe is only the dynamics of the infinite Spirit. This is the reason Jesus gives this doctrine to Nicodemus as explanation of the miracles he works. It may indeed serve as a key to the occult healing art, practised by him and by a small number of adepts and saints before as well as after Christ. Ordinary medicine combats the evils of the body by acting on the latter. The adept or saint, being a centre of spiritual and fluidic force, acts directly on the soul of the patient, and by his astral on his physical body. It is the same in all magnetic cures; Jesus operates by means of forces existing in all men, but he operates in large doses by powerful and concentrated projections. He gives the Scribes and Pharisees his power of healing bodies as a proof of his power to pardon and heal the soul, his higher object.'

Because of his literalist doctrinal misunderstanding of the nature of man, Drummond, in marked contrast with Schurι, is led to propose a strange, improbable, and contradictory route by which man may be provided with a spirituality which he "naturally" is supposed to lack. Although the explanation is by no means clear to me, this route implies that the man Jesus, the principal 'hero' of the New Testament Gospels, is also somehow uniquely Son of God; and believing this is enough to do the trick of bringing the individual man, 'dead in trespasses and sins', to spiritual life. "He that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not Life".

Now as Drummond frankly admits, this 'great Law distinguishes Christianity from all other religions. It places the religion of Christ upon a footing altogether unique. There is no analogy between the Christian religion and, say, Buddhism or the Mohammedan religion'. But in saying this, is Drummond not flying in the face of the scientific Principle of Continuity upon which he said he was going to rely? How can he possibly reconcile such a separatist, exclusive religion with the holism implied by the Principle? Without some such doctrine as reincarnation (which most Christian churches flatly deny) we must assume that if Drummond is right, the countless individuals who lived and died before Jesus physically appeared on Earth must have remained spiritually 'dead'. The same applies to those countless individuals who lived in later centuries and who did not, or now do not, subscribe to this curious dogma.

Is it not far easier and more satisfying to consider instead that every man and woman already possesses an immortal Spirit, just as Jesus did, but that few of them are aware of the fact? If we substitute 'sleep' for Drummond's 'death', it seems to me that we have a much more satisfactory analogy for the nature of the ordinary man as someone who has not yet 'wakened up' to the realisation of personal spirituality. Such a person may be described as 'dead to the Spirit' in the same way as someone in a deep sleep is said to be 'dead to the world'. But that is only to speak metaphorically. When Spiritual realisation dawns, it comes as if awakening from sleep, and is 'baptism by water'. Then begins 'baptism by fire', the tests and trials of which continue during the remainder of life on Earth.

Without any sort of 'spirituality' to appeal to, what would be the point of 'The Sermon on the Mount' (St Matthew, chapter 5) in which Jesus attempted to expound some fundamental moral principles to 'the crowds', presumably hoping to 'awaken' some of them?

Many Christians have been inspired by what Thomas ΰ Kempis called 'The Imitation of Christ'. How much more inspiring it is to realise that it is possible for the individual man or woman to go beyond mere imitation and actually acquire the same powers as Jesus himself possessed! This is not to deny the divinity of Jesus; it is to assert the potential divinity of every human being.

Of course, it requires long and diligent work on oneself to realise this potential, but inspiration and practical help may be obtained from many of the writings on this site. See, for instance, Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning, Christianity and the New Testament, and the Hermetic Philosophy lectures in The Ardue University.

The preparation of this particular section of commentary has been something of a struggle for me because I have felt obliged to be highly critical of Drummond who, I have every reason to believe, was a very "good" man. Nevertheless, I felt that I must persevere in an attempt to dispel misunderstandings which are still prevalent in certain quarters more than a century after Drummond penned his essays. I have been strengthened in my resolve by correspondence with other trained modern mystics and I have much pleasure in repeating what six of them have kindly given me permission to quote:

1. I was very disenchanted with the hypocrisy of religion generally, and with the Catholic Church specifically, when I was learning about mysticism. By studying where religion comes from in the human psyche, I learned that I am my own priest, rabbi, shaman, minister, imam, guru and psychoanalyst. I can now look with affection at all religions and say that on some level I am a believer in parts of all of them. Now that I see that the founders of all religions are using spiritual tools to which we have access, I don't have to assume that any religious leader is any more developed than I have the capacity to be within myself.

2. Although I am a Muslim, I find religions too limited for myself. It is for practical reasons that I am a Muslim and raise my children as such. We all live our relation with the Cosmos and I feel at ease within any religion or religious ceremony — Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or Christian. Because of my studies I am able to filter out the words and ceremony and get to the core, the meaning of it all, and that's the same in every religion.

3. I have found that now I no longer have a single religious denomination; instead I find that my faith in all denominations has grown from one of intolerance to seeing the underlying truth in them all.

4. We can reflect that too often the World judges the messengers by their superficial appearance and does not listen to the message they bring. The most precious jewel can only sparkle when light shines through it.

5. Might it not also be that the "Second coming of Christ" refers to the initiation into the "Christ (cosmic) Consciousness" as a personal experience from within rather than being a second physical reappearance of Jesus without?

6. The outward customs and trappings of the various religions may be incompatible with one another; this requires tolerance. But the inner beliefs, though they may be expressed in different words and forms and from many different viewpoints, all boil down to the same thing: reverence for the supreme intelligence of the universe.

I find all these six views perfectly consistent with Drummond's Principle of Continuity and with my own knowledge and inner conviction. I feel quite certain that if he happens to be incarnate today, Drummond will be glad to have the blinkers of dogmatic 'churchianity' torn from his eyes, to have his contradictions reconciled, to appreciate the deeper truths which sparkle in the greater light, and to rejoice in the glorious liberty of what he will more easily recognise as 'the children of God' however they may describe themselves.

Degeneration

Does not the Principle of Reversion to Type to which Drummond refers in this essay give the lie to the "Positive" materialist doctrine of "evolution" which seems always to be taken to mean a gradual but inevitable "progress" — whatever that means? I do not deny the fact of evolution; but I strongly deny that it is "inevitable" in any particular case. Nature is essentially (i.e. "spiritually") experimental, constantly producing new forms and variations on old ones. As the ecological and economic environment changes, some bodily innovations and modifications are favoured, and the rest die out. This is not a matter of intentional "competition" between forms: it is just the unsentimental way in which Nature works.

To the best of my knowledge, the only species that has either evolved towards, or been endowed with, the potential of evolving deliberately is the human species; and the vast majority of members of the species are either not aware that they possess the potential or cannot be bothered to work at its realisation.

Drummond writes:

'We are wont to imagine that Nature is full of Life. In reality it is full of Death. One cannot say it is natural for a plant to live. Examine its nature fully, and you have to admit that its natural tendency is to die. It is kept from dying by a mere temporary endowment, which gives it an ephemeral dominion over the elements — gives it power to utilize for a brief span the rain, the sunshine, and the air. Withdraw this temporary endowment for a moment and its true nature is revealed. Instead of overcoming Nature it is overcome. The very things which appeared to minister to its growth and beauty now turn against it and make it decay and die. The sun which warmed it, withers it; the air and rain which nourished it, rot it. It is the very forces which we associate with life which, when their true nature appears, are discovered to be really the ministers of death.'

I have already pointed out that death is Nature's way of eliminating uneconomical forms of living creatures. It is also Nature's way of eliminating immoral forms. Even if all power corrupts, the corrupt powerful shall sooner or later certainly be removed from the scene. The one thing we can be sure of in material Nature is that no observable forms in it are permanent. Death is the indispensable friend of continuity of Life by removing cancerous forms which threaten to prove too harmful for other forms to withstand. Can we not now begin to see humankind as such a potentially cancerous form? Please refer to Looking Backwards and Forwards and Global Warming.

It seems to me that the pessimism betrayed by Drummond's attitude to death springs from an unhealthy preoccupation with the material manifestations of Life while over-looking, or being unaware of, its Spiritual source. The dissolution of a physical form is not death: it is merely a transformation. The Spirit that gave rise to the daisy never dies; and it will in due time and in appropriate conditions produce either more daisies or perhaps something even more beautiful. Even physics, traditionally the most materialistic of sciences, has long acknowledged this as the Law of Conservation of Energy.

Hence I am entirely confident that the death of my body does not necessarily imply the extinction of either the Spirit which animates me or the 'Soul Personality' which that Spirit has developed in a succession of physical bodies. Just as the death of every individual physical structure inevitably follows its birth, so it is entirely reasonable to assume that the spirit released from its bondage in a particular physical form will at some time appear in a new form. All Nature reveals a cyclical progression and the Principle of Continuity, on which Drummond himself relies, does not require that the life of Man be any different in this respect from other manifestations of Life.

Drummond next turns to "Salvation" and refers to the quotation at the head of his essay:

'There must be some hidden and vital relation between these three words, Salvation, Neglect, and Escape — some reasonable, essential, and indissoluble connection. Why are these words so linked together as to weight this clause with all the authority and solemnity of a sentence of death?'

The key word here is 'Salvation'. What does it mean?

Drummond asserts that forgiveness of sin is "the first and the greatest" meaning of Salvation. And he explains:

'It takes in that whole process of rescue from the power of sin and selfishness that should be going on from day to day in every human life. We have seen that there is a natural principle in man lowering him, deadening him, pulling him down by inches to the mere animal plane, blinding reason, searing conscience, paralysing will. This is the active destroying principle, or Sin.'

This prompts me to ask: If Sin is a 'natural principle', why should anyone need forgiveness for behaving naturally? As this is a question to which neither Drummond nor church Christianity gives any reasonable answer, I turn elsewhere.

In In Search of Stones, M. Scott Peck writes:

'In The Road Less Travelled, I suggested that laziness might be the essence of what theologians call original sin. By laziness I did not so much mean physical lethargy as mental, emotional, or spiritual inertia.'

I can endorse this from personal experience — which is why the doctrine of 'Original Sin' does not feature in the Ardue Temple essays. I cannot interpret forgiveness as meaning anything but a readiness on the part of the individual to recognise and acknowledge personal omissions and mistakes and resolve not to repeat them. I think it is the Divine Spirit in Man that does the forgiving and not any external agency. If I am right, it follows that it is recognition of the Divine Spirit in individual man which constitutes Salvation.

Drummond begins his final paragraph thus:

'And last of all there is the great capacity for Love, even for the love of God — the expanding capacity for feeling more and more its height and depth, its length and breadth.'

In common with many people, Drummond seems to think of Love only as a feeling. Once again, let me enlist the aid of M Scott Peck who, in The Road Less Travelled writes:

'I have said that love is an action, an activity. This leads to the final major misconception of love which needs to be addressed. Love is not a feeling. ... A genuinely loving individual will often take loving and constructive action towards a person he or she consciously dislikes, actually feeling no love toward the person at the time and perhaps even finding the person repugnant in some way.'

Later, he says:

'Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truly loves does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. ... When we extend ourselves, when we take an extra step or walk an extra mile, we do so in opposition to the inertia of laziness or the resistance of fear. Extension of ourselves or moving out against the inertia of laziness we call work. Moving out in the face of fear we call courage. Specifically, it is work or courage directed toward the nurture of our own or another's spiritual growth. ... The principal form that the work of love takes is attention.'

Does this understanding of love not immediately clarify what Jesus meant when he said: 'Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you'? [Luke 6:27] The impulse, even the compulsion, to love springs not from some sort of sentimental feeling but from Spiritual awareness that all forms of Life are manifestations of the one Spirit which we all share. It is a recognition simultaneously of our Spiritual Oneness and our physical separateness. This realisation sets us free from any suggestion that we must pretend to have 'loving' feelings when what we really feel is a realisation that something needs to be done just because it is holistically 'right' to do it.

Let me give one more quotation from The Road Less Travelled:

'Although the act of nurturing another's spiritual growth has the effect of nurturing one's own, a major characteristic of genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the other is always maintained and preserved. The genuine lover always perceives the beloved as someone who has a totally separate identity. Moreover, the genuine lover always respects and even encourages this separateness and the unique individuality of the beloved. Failure to perceive and respect this separateness is extremely common, however, and the cause of much mental illness and unnecessary suffering.'

We might also add that such failure is also the cause of much mistaken "intervention", whether socially, nationally, or internationally. Failure by one party to respect the integrity of the other produces resentment and all too often results in outright conflict.

Drummond ends this essay by saying:

'Till that is felt no man can really understand that word, "so great salvation", for what is its measure but that other "so" of Christ — God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son? Verily, how shall we escape if we neglect that?'

This is, of course, an allusion to the Christian dogma that 'Salvation' can come only as some mysterious result of the 'Sacrifice' on the Cross of the one and only 'Son of God'. I could never bring myself to accept this, and I still cannot. I am quite certain that I too am a 'begotten Son' of God. Whether or not Christ was a historical figure and whether or not he was physically crucified, I cannot see how that directly affects me in my personal uniqueness unless I appreciate the Spiritual truth of many of the sayings attributed to Christ. Yet I know that most, if not all, of Christ's teachings had been enunciated by other wise men and women long before Jesus walked the Earth as a man.

I must confess that on first reading, this essay of Drummond's struck me as being so laboured and steeped in churchy dogmatism as to constitute nothing more than political propaganda. But once exclusive Christian dogma has yielded to a liberal interpretation more in keeping with the Principle of Continuity, much of what Drummond writes is as germane to the twenty-first century as it seemed to many people in the nineteenth. And what a relief it is to be able to interpret the words attributed to Jesus as one is inspired to do instead of having to assent to some theological nonsense! As Jesus himself is supposed to have said:

'If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed: and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free'. [John 8:31-32]

One major difficulty with the Bible is that the words attributed to Jesus have too often been edited by theologians to make them accord with their own interpretations. I doubt very much whether Jesus himself would have approved of the spiritual and intellectual bondage imposed on the adherents of the churches which have called themselves after him.

So I suggest we should read the Bible, Drummond, and anything else (including this commentary!) in the light of the Spirit which constitutes our true selves, and accept personal responsibility for our own interpretations.

Growth

I most take issue with Drummond when he claims that in order to live naturally, one has to become a "Christian" in whatever sense is approved by some church or other, and particularly to acquiesce in the notion that the historical man, Jesus, was also uniquely God. This seems to me (and to countless millions of others of various religions and of none) to be so un-natural as to be dismissed out of hand. I have no doubt that if such a person as the historical Jesus actually walked the Earth, he must have been a very remarkable man and teacher — indeed a Master in the finest sense of the word; yet I cannot accept that his Spirit was any more or differently Divine than that which animates every human being.

I write this in early December when people are beginning to look forward to Christmas in a culture in which Santa Claus features at least as prominently as does the Baby Jesus. No-one feels obliged to believe that the character ascribed to Santa Claus is necessarily based on some ancient historical personage; but that does not in any way detract from the spirit of generosity and concern for other people that Santa Claus represents.

In the same way, it seems to me to matter little whether or not the New Testament Christmas story is fact or invention. What matters is that the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament represents an ideal character whose example we should do well to emulate in our own lives as an aid to realising our own Divinity. There is an important sense in which myth contains deeper and more fundamental truth than history. We have to take our history on trust from people who purport to be historians but who frequently disagree with one another; we can validate the truth of myths for ourselves. History at best narrates ephemeral events; myths refer to the eternal psychological principles underlying events. Thus, at least for me, the mythical Jesus is the real Jesus, beyond the distortions of historical interpretation and political 'correction'.

When Drummond says that growth is a mysterious process, I am inclined to agree with him. But when he insists that spiritual growth is a uniquely Christian phenomenon and thus denies the Spirituality of the great majority of mankind, past and present, he is to my mind lumbering Christianity with a dogma that gives rise to contradictions which the honest sceptic must reject.

Some such contradictions are highlighted in Drummond's own words. He grants that a non-Christian 'may attain to a very high character' but denies that 'this is growth'. And he himself seems to grant some validity to the objection that acceptance of Christian dogma 'makes man mere clay in the hands of the potter' and 'destroys man's responsibility for his own soul'. I find his attempt to overcome this objection unconvincing, relying as it does on pushing the analogy between plant growth and human Spiritual growth further than is reasonable. There is a great difference between plant and man; and the most significant difference between man and all other creatures lies in man's ability be be conscious of himself, to act or refrain from acting at will, and thus be capable of taking responsibility for the conduct of his own life. It is only because of these attributes that man becomes subject to anxiety.

Those of us who lean to the view that the essential man is a Spirit are inclined to ask ourselves, "Why inhabit a body?" A possible answer is to slow things down so that cause and effect can be intuited and lead us to a better understanding of the Universe of which we are conscious. This 'slowing down' of the Spirit by the drag of the body produces inertia which must be overcome by Spiritual force. I have suggested above that what Drummond calls 'sin' may consist only in our allowing bodily reluctance to overcome the desire of the Spirit for growth and thus inhibit the kind of activity which is a necessary pre-condition for Spiritual growth. As St Paul put it, "The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak". In this, as in all else, it is necessary for the individual to strike a wholesome balance in the light of experience and prevailing circumstances.

Drummond rightly contends that anxiety is not helpful. And he remarks, "Yet the most anxious people in the world are Christians". Why is this? I suggest it is because the church deliberately foments anxiety by insisting on making a distinction between the 'Christian' and the 'natural' person.

A recurring theme in Christian prayers is a request for 'time for amendment of life'. This presupposes both that 'natural' living is wrong and that life ends with 'death'. It encourages the astute man or woman to take a gamble in this 'Last-Chance Saloon' by living in enjoyable sin for as long as possible but somehow contriving by means of a 'death-bed conversion' to 'save' his or her 'soul' and reap all the benefits that the generality of Christians are expected to earn by refraining from fleshly enjoyments throughout their lives.

I can't accept this. Can you?

So once again, I suggest that this life may only be one of many; that a 'Soul Personality' survives the death of the physical body; that the Soul Personality may be literally 'born again'; that there is plenty of time for 'amendment of life' should that seem desirable; and that any anxiety for the Spiritual development of ourselves or others is superfluous.

Death

I find myself totally our of sympathy with Drummond's stated objective in this essay. He states it very plainly:

'Which of us, for example, enters fully into the meaning of words like these: "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth"? Who allows adequate weight to the metaphor in the Pauline phrase, "To be carnally minded is Death"; or in this, "The wages of sin is Death"? Or what theology has translated into the language of human life the terrific practical import of "Dead in trespasses and sins"? To seek to make these phrases once more real and burning; to clothe time-worn formulae with living truth; to put the deepest ethical meaning into the gravest symbol of Nature, and fill up with its full consequence the darkest threat of Revelation — these are the objects before us now.'

What further evidence do we need that, despite its professed confidence in the power of love, the church has relied chiefly on fear, particularly the fear of death, to whip people into its fold and keep them there? And is it not because people had begun to question the validity of the analogy which portrays the non-Christian as 'dead' that Drummond is here concerned to bolster it up as best he can? He is trying to do a political spin-doctor's job. In order to do this, he starts with a pseudo-scientific definition of death of dubious validity, indulges in some convoluted sophistry, and ends with the absurd conclusion that 'Death is a relative term'.

Most of us are aware that once the animating Spirit has departed from it, the physical body begins to decompose. That is death. It is about as close to an absolute fact as anything can get in this world of relativity. If this were not so, doctors would be much more reluctant to issue 'death certificates'.

So I suggest that if you have enough patience to read the remainder of Drummond's essay, you will find it beneficial to think in terms of relative conscious awareness rather than life and death, and to reject the notion that church Christianity is the only valid expression of Spirituality. It may then be helpful to think of the out-and-out materialist as being relatively 'asleep' rather than 'dead', and to interpret all life's experiences as tending towards a Spiritual awakening on the part of each individual human being — even if it takes many cycles of birth and death to make one fully conscious.

One must suppose that Drummond would be content if all the people in the world were persuaded to become full members of the Free Church of Scotland. This is unlikely to happen as long as there are people in the world with the higher aspiration of achieving full Spiritual consciousness — which implies recognition that all sectarian divisions arise merely out of the relative spiritual unconsciousness that Drummond calls 'death'.

Mortification

If the analogy is to hold, to say that the 'natural' man is 'dead' to the 'spiritual world' would imply that his condition cannot be alleviated short of some magical transformation. And it seems to be some such magical transformation that is supposed to be accomplished by some sort of extraordinary faith in church doctrine. Such a faith, according to Drummond, has the effect of changing the natural man into a spiritual man who is then faced with the problem of reconciling a spiritual existence with the 'natural' environment with which he must remain in correspondence until he dies a physical death. As Drummond puts it:

'The complex and bewildered soul, in fact, now finds itself in correspondence with two environments, each with urgent but yet incompatible claims. It is a dual soul living in a dual world, a world whose inhabitants are deadly enemies, and engaged in a perpetual civil-war'.

Drummond then goes on to say that 'no man can attempt to live both lives. To walk both in the flesh and in the spirit is morally impossible'. This leads him to explore three ways in which the 'spiritual' man can overcome the temptations of the flesh. The first is suicide, i.e. to make death actual instead of merely metaphorical. The second is 'mortification', which seems to be only a slower form of suicide. The third is 'limitation', which is a grudging acceptance that the 'spiritual' man must learn to make some accommodation with his 'deadly enemy' until natural death relieves him of all fleshly temptations.

Readers who, like me, find it difficult to interpret Drummond's reasoning in this essay as anything other than the wriggles of an intellect trapped in an impossible quandary may turn with relief to an alternative philosophy of life and living. A possible starting point is my essay on 'Balance in Personality and Society'.

Eternal Life

This is the opening paragraph of Drummond's essay. The definitions referred to are those in the quotations at the head of the essay:

1. "This is Life Eternal — that they might know Thee, the True God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." — Jesus Christ [John, 17:3].

2. "Perfect correspondence would be perfect life. Were there no changes in the environment but such as the organism had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency with which it met them, there would be eternal existence and eternal knowledge." — Herbert Spencer.

Now to my mind, neither of these actually defines anything, let alone Eternal Life.

The first of the suggested 'definitions' is potentially the more meaningful if it is interpreted in a mystical, as opposed to an historical, sense. While not a definition as such, it asserts that it is possible for human beings to 'know' God through the Spirit, and thus enter into some sort of correspondence with the Infinite. But in thrall to his Christian (or, rather, 'churchian') dogma, Drummond is unable to realise (or admit to realising) such knowledge for himself. He is trapped in characteristic Christian materialism and reliance upon the authority of a historical 'Jesus Christ' with which the church has indoctrinated its adherents since the time of Constantine. But let's not forget that Constantine was a Roman Emperor — and therefore first and foremost a politician, uninterested in Spiritual matters except in so far as they might be adapted to serve his ambition to wield power over the bodies of men. Religious authorities who sided with Constantine were tarred with the same brush. Those who refused to conform were dubbed 'heretics' and cast out from the establishment, while the establishment scriptures were 'doctored' to make them more easily reconcilable with prevailing political practice. Thus the value of the Bible as the 'Word of God' was seriously compromised, and it has since then suffered further in translation.

The most serious handicap under which Drummond labours is best summed up in his own words:

'Meantime let it be noted on what the Christian argument for Immortality really rests. It stands upon the pedestal on which the theologian rests the whole of historical Christianity — the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.'

Contaminated as it is by political materialism, it is hardly surprising that this argument is above all others what has for centuries given rise to conflict between Christians and non-Christians all over the world.

The second 'definition' (which Drummond claims to be 'scientific') is entirely hypothetical. Indeed, if eternity is to mean anything, it must be infinite — and therefore essentially indefinable, i.e. illimitable.

In this essay, as in others, Drummond departs from the intention announced in his Introductory essays in which he hopes by application of the Law of Continuity to derive from the findings of science analogies supportive of the 'truths' of church Christianity. Regrettably, finding himself in the position of being unable to modify (or even question) the expression of those 'truths', he often stretches analogies beyond their breaking point.

Nevertheless, in this long essay, Drummond makes a valiant attempt to enlist the aid of science to illuminate what he calls 'the highest Christian truths' — either unaware of, or deliberately overlooking, the fact that the truths he refers to are essentially mystical truths and not exclusively Christian at all. Indeed, freed from its specifically Christian allusions and quotations, this is a scientific-mystical essay of considerable merit. This may best be illustrated by the following excerpts:

'The desideratum is an organism with a correspondence of a very exceptional kind. It must lie beyond the reach of those "mechanical actions" and those "variations of available food," which are "liable to stop the processes going on in the organism". Before we reach an Eternal Life we must pass beyond that point at which all ordinary correspondences inevitably cease. We must find an organism so high and complex that at some point in its development it shall have added a correspondence which organic death is powerless to arrest. We must in short pass beyond that finite region where the correspondences depend on evanescent and material media, and enter a further region where the Environment corresponded with is itself Eternal. Such an Environment exists. The Environment of the Spiritual world is outside the influence of these "mechanical actions" which sooner or later interrupt the processes going on in all finite organisms. If then we can find an organism which has established a correspondence with the spiritual world, that correspondence will possess the elements of eternity — provided only one other condition be fulfilled.

'That condition is that the Environment be perfect. If it is not perfect, if it is not the highest, if it is endowed with the finite quality of change, there can be no guarantee that the Life of its correspondents will be eternal. Some change might occur in it which the correspondents had no adaptive changes to meet, and Life would cease. But grant a spiritual organism in perfect correspondence with a perfect spiritual Environment, and the conditions necessary to Eternal Life are satisfied.'

Dr Drummond concludes his essay with the following paragraph:

'The sifting of the correspondences is done by Nature. This is its last and greatest contribution to mankind. Over the mouth of the grave the perfect and the imperfect submit to their final separation. Each goes to its own — earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Spirit to Spirit. "The dust shall return to the earth as it was; and the Spirit shall return unto God who gave it." '

Is this not a scientific-mystical revelation par excellence?

Environment

Drummond says: "We are not Creators, but creatures; God is our refuge and strength." But because God is always with us and in us, we can be co-creators. This is what enables us, in Drummond's own words, "to make our Environment at the same time that it is making us".

Drummond's attitude to faith is essentially mystical. He writes:

"The cardinal error in the religious life is to attempt to live without an Environment. Spiritual experience occupies itself, not too much, but too exclusively, with one factor — the soul. We delight in dissecting this much-tortured faculty, from time to time, in search of a certain something which we call our faith — forgetting that faith is but an attitude, an empty hand for grasping an environing Presence."

He goes on:

Now the great point in learning to live is to live naturally. As closely as possible we must follow the broad, clear lines of the natural life. And there are three things especially which it is necessary for us to keep continually in view. The first is that the organism contains within itself only one-half of what is essential to life; the second is that the other half is contained in the Environment; the third, that the condition of receptivity is simple union between the organism and the Environment.

Do we not recognise here the mystical Law of Three which governs all creation?

The mystic seeks to supplement faith with knowledge. The Christian, too, is encouraged to seek personal knowledge of God; but, unlike the mystic, his focus on the 'historical' Jesus leads him to seek God without instead of within. This is what makes Christianity exclusive. The mystic knows that the God who provides, and perhaps even constitutes, his environment is just as accessible to the adherent of any religion — and of none — as He is to the Christian. This is the essential starting point for giving real meaning to the Brotherhood of Man. The same Holy Spirit animates every human being. Only when this is fully and universally realised will religious conflict cease to trouble mankind.

Jesus said: "I came not to send peace, but a sword". — [St Matthew, 10:34].

In saying this, did he perhaps foresee the troubles that would arise from mistaken simplistic, literalist, and inappropriate interpretation of his teaching?

Conformity to Type

To this question, the mystic replies, "Yes, of course."

But then we encounter differences in interpretation. Throughout his essays, Drummond frequently makes a distinction between the 'natural man' and the Christian, and I find it difficult to escape the conclusion that Drummond's 'Christian' is an unnatural man, a distorted adaptation brought about by a church which is determined to shoe-horn the 'natural' man into an artificial dogmatic theology designed to secure an ongoing intermediary bureaucratic role for itself.

The mystic is given to understand that what Drummond calls 'Christ' is not a unique personality. Rather, it is a principle which is inherent in every human being but which lies dormant until it is 'awakened' in some way. In the Temple essays in these pages, this principle is most often referred to as the 'Holy Spirit' or just 'Spirit'. Once its presence is acknowledged as the core of the 'Self', it is able to commence the transforming work which Drummond claims exclusively for 'Christ'. Thus, for the mystic, the Christian emphasis on a unique historical 'Christ' is an unfortunate elaboration which tends to create an unnecessary barrier between the natural human individual and the Eternal Principle of the Universe which Christians call God and Muslims refer to as Allah.

I am grateful to my mystical friend David (whom at the time of writing this section, I had 'met' only on the Internet) for the following note which was written in reference to the recurring tendency to look for a 'second coming' of Christ but which is germane to our current theme.

It has often been asserted that the Piscean age was an age of misunderstandings and dependency, an age when essential truths were, deliberately or otherwise, obscured from the general public. The religious were spoon-fed their beliefs by a priesthood whose own understanding of the scriptures was at best nebulous. Gradually a dependency was formed, with people generally judging the godliness of their own behavior from the reaction of their church. Sainthood, Martyrdom, and Messiah-ship were the ideals promulgated by the church and the erroneous notion that we must abnegate our own nature and die in virtue for the sins of others became enshrined as a household theme. Pain, torment, suffering and the path of victim-consciousness were actively encouraged as sure routes to salvation. For surely if that was the way of the Christ, then it was the ideal towards which all men should aspire.

In view of the general religious misunderstandings of the last two thousand years, it is hardly surprising that there were groups who patiently awaited the physical appearance of a guru, sage or spiritual leader. History shows that whenever the calendar year, or even the date, has involved recursive digits, especially zeros, sixes and nines, there were times of extreme panic, fanaticism, or fear; times when either a saviour or a devil might visit the earth plane. Such superstition derives from a misunderstanding of what the Christos or, indeed, the "Anti-Christ", actually represent: a degree of spiritual evolution or self-mastery whereby the will of the ego or individuality has been entirely aligned to the higher spiritual will. The Master Jesus (or Joshua Bar Joseph as scholars prefer) was one who attained this degree of self-mastery, entitling him to the use of the mystical epithets "Son of the Father", "Logos", and "Son of God". However, I see nothing to suggest that he was the first to achieve this degree of self-mastery. For example, some schools of Buddhism, (which generally speaking tolerates other religious beliefs) do not preclude Jesus' Christhood, but maintain that he was ONE of the Christs. That is to say, he was one of a few illuminated personalities throughout history that have attained to Christhood. Unfortunately, orthodox Christianity excludes in its teachings these other Christs, and asks its devotees to worship none but Jesus. Such a sectarian attitude does not correlate well with the revelations of the mystics. Mysticism is concerned with the path to personal mastership; with the truth that a personality may attain Christhood without the dependency on external dogma, and that the epiphany or theophany may occur in an entirely unique way for each mystic attaining this exalted state.

Just why it is important for certain people to await the appearance of an avatar who has transcended and sublimated his or her lower nature before they themselves will feel any mystical inclination towards self-mastery remains unclear to me. In striving to understand this attitude, we cannot help but come to loggerheads with barren theologies in which we are but spectators of cosmic events, entirely dependent on outside forces for redemption of an original sin of which we had no knowledge. If a being is symbolically crucified in matter to atone for the collective karma, then isn't the being in question a collective being? Isn't the crucifixion of the quintessence on the cross of the elements an ongoing, evolutionary process? To me, life has always seemed a creative action rather than a spectacle, and I feel that in order to understand the idea behind the "second coming" one must at least begin to comprehend the "first".

Thank you, David, for giving me permission to quote you.

As further antidotes to the church interpretation of the significance of the life and death of the 'historical' Jesus, the following books are suggested:

• The Jesus Mysteries by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy, published by Thorsons.
• The Changing Faces of Jesus by Geza Vermes, published by Allen Lane.

Semi-Parasitism

In a Spiritual context, the overall tenor of the essay is such as to support the case for unalloyed mysticism, leading to acceptance of total personal responsibility for the manner in which the individual lives and relates to the rest of Creation.

In a mundane context, is there not a striking analogy to be discerned between the hermit crab (or even the dodder) and the career party politician?

Parasitism

After a brief but devastating critique of a philosophy with which we in the UK have become all too familiar as the foundation of the Welfare State, Drummond criticises the church in terms which the mystic can only admire and applaud. Even his defence of the infallibility of the Bible is couched is terms that imply the need for the truths therein to be searched for beneath their superficial pseudo-historical presentation and independently assimilated into the individual life.

In the section headed "Personal Responsibility", Drummond writes:

He who abandons the personal search for truth, under whatever pretext, abandons truth. The very word truth, by becoming the limited possession of a guild, ceases to have any meaning; and faith, which can only be founded on truth, gives way to credulity, resting on mere opinion.

Whatever we may think of Drummond's loyalty to the doctrines in which he was reared, we cannot doubt but that "his heart was in the right place".

I heartily commend this essay not only to all budding politicians but also to all true friends of Christianity and of any other religion.