Читать книгу Science and the Infinite; or, Through a Window in the Blank Wall - Sydney T. Klein - Страница 5

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The proof that the Human Race is still in its infancy may be seen in the fact that we still require Symbolism to help us to maintain and carry forward abstract thought to higher levels, even as children require picture books for that purpose. The Glamour of Symbolism, Rapture of Music, and Ideal of Art, which come to us in later years, had their beginnings when to the child every blade of grass was a fairy tale and a grass plot a marvellous fairy forest. The great aspiration of the Human Race is to gain a knowledge of the Reality, the Noumenon behind the phenomenon; but the fact that from infancy we have been accustomed to confine our attention wholly to the objective, believing that to be the reality, has surrounded us with a concrete boundary wall through which we can only at times, with difficulty, get transient glimpses of that which is beyond. It is only in recent years that we have been able to realise that it is the Invisible which is the Real, that the visible is only its shadow or its manifestation in the Physical Universe, and that Time and Space have no existence apart from our physical senses, in short, that they are only the modes or limits under which those senses act or receive their impressions and by which they are necessarily rendered finite.

The difficulty is that our physical senses only perceive the surface of our surroundings, and that we have hitherto been looking at the Woof of Nature as though it were the glass of a window covered with patterns, smudges, flies, &c., comprising all that we call physical phenomena and which, when analysed in terms of Time and Space, produce the appearance of succession and motion. It requires a keener perception, unbounded by these limitations, to look through the glass at the Reality which is beyond. I propose then in a series of short views, through a window not hitherto unshuttered and in a direction which I believe has not before been attempted, to lead those of my readers who have the necessary aspiration, patience, and, above all, strenuous persistence, to a watch-tower, situated well above the mists and illusions of our ordinary everyday thoughts, whence they will find it possible to get a glimpse of a strange new country, and where those who have by practice once attained to its clear perception, will be able to continue the study by themselves and thus get further insight into that wonderful region of Thought which I have called "True Occultism"—the knowledge of the Invisible which is the Real in place of the Visible which is only its shadow.

Let us first try and understand the conditions under which phenomena are presented to us. In our perception of sight, we find the greater the light, the greater the shadow; a light placed over a table throws a shadow on the floor, though not sufficient to prevent our seeing the pattern of the carpet; increase the light and the shadow appears now so dark that no pattern or carpet can be seen; not that there is now less light under the table but the light above has to our sense of sight created or made manifest a greater darkness. Thus, throughout the Universe, as interpreted by our Physical Ego, we find phenomena ranging themselves under the form of positive and negative, the apparently Real and the Unreal.

The Good making manifest its negative Evil.

The Beautiful " " " " Ugly.

The True " " " " False.

Knowledge " " " " Ignorance.

Light " " " " Darkness.

Heat " " " " Cold.

But the negatives have no real existence. As in the case of light we see that the shadow is only the absence of light, so the negative of Goodness, i.e. Evil, may in reality be looked upon as folly or wasting of opportunity for exercising the Good. Owing to their limitations our thoughts are based upon relativity, and it is hardly thinkable that we could, under our present conditions, have any cognisance of the positive without its negative; we shall in fact see later on that it is by examining the Physical, the negative or shadow, that we can best gain a knowledge of the Spiritual, the positive or real.

The first step to a clear understanding of this, is to recognise that it is not we who are looking out upon Nature but that it is the Reality which is ever trying to enter and come into touch with us through our senses, and is persistently trying to waken within us a knowledge of the sublimest truths. It is difficult to realise this, as from infancy we have been accustomed to confine our attention wholly to the objective, believing that to be the reality.

Let us try and grasp this fact. If we analyse our sense of sight, we find that the only impression made on our bodies by external objects is the image formed upon the retina; we have no cognisance of the separate electro-magnetic rills forming that image, which, reflected from all parts of an object, fall upon the eye at different angles, constituting form, and with different frequencies giving colour to that image; that image is only formed when we turn our eyes in the right direction to allow those rills to enter; and, whereas those rills are incessantly beating on the outside of our sense organ when the eyelid is closed, they can make no impression unless we allow them to enter by raising that shutter. It is not then any volition from within that goes out to seize upon and grasp the truths from Nature, but the phenomena are as it were forcing their way into our consciousness. This is more difficult to realise when the object is near to us, as we are apt to confound it with our sense of touch, which requires us to stretch out our hand to the object, but it is clearer when we take an object far away. In our telescopes we catch the rills of light which started from a star a thousand years ago and the image is still formed on the retina now although those rills are in fact a thousand years old and, invisible to our unaided eye, have been falling upon mankind from the beginning of life on this globe, trying to get an entrance to consciousness. It was, however, only when, by evolution of thought, the knowledge of optics had produced the telescope that it became possible not only for that star to make itself known to us but to declare to us its distance, its size, and conditions of existence, and even the different elemental substances of which it was composed a thousand years ago. Yet, when we now allow its image to form on the retina, our consciousness insists on fixing its attention upon that star as an outside object, refusing to allow that it is only an image inside the eye and making it difficult to realise that that star may have disappeared and had no existence for the past 999 years, although in ordinary parlance we are looking at and seeing it there now.

I have referred above to the sense of touch; it is, I think, clear that the first impression a child can have of sight must take the form of feeling the image on its retina, as though the object were actually inside the head, and it could have no idea that it was outside until, by touching with the hand, it would gradually learn by experience that the tangible outside object corresponded with the image located in the head; this is fully borne out by the testimony of men who, born blind, have, by an operation, received their sight late in life; in each case their first experience of seeing gave the impression that the object was touching the eye, and they were quite unable to recognise by sight an object such as a cup or plate or a round ball which they had commonly handled and knew perfectly well by touch; in fact, the idea of an object formed by the sense of touch is so absolutely different to that formed by the sense of sight that it would be impossible without past experience to conclude that the two sensations referred to one and the same object. The image formed on the retina has nothing in common with the sense of hardness, coldness, and weight experienced by touch, the only impression on the retina being that of colour or shade, and an outline; it is, however, hardly conceivable that even the outline of form would be recognised by the eye until touch had proved that form comprised also solidity and that the two ideas had certain motions in common both in duration in Time and extension in Space.

Again, our senses of sight and hearing are alike based on the appreciation of frequencies of different rapidity; brightness and colour in light are equivalent to loudness and pitch in sound, but in sound we have no equivalent to perception of form or situation in space; it gives us no knowledge of the existence of objects when situated at great distances, nor can movements be followed even at short distances without having material contact, by means of the air, with the object; sight indeed appears to have to do with Space- and sound with Time-perception. In examining Nature by means of our senses we find we are so hemmed in by what we have always taken for granted and so bound down by modes of reasoning derived from what we have seen, heard, or felt in our daily life, that we are sadly hampered in our search after the truth. It is difficult to sweep the erroneous concepts aside and make a fresh start. In fact the great difficulty in studying the Reality underlying Nature is analogous to our inability to isolate and study the different sounds themselves which fall upon the ear, if our own language is being uttered, without being forced to consider the meaning we have always attached to those sounds.

Let us now go back to the contention that it is not we who are looking out upon Nature but that our senses are being bombarded from without; we are living in a world of continuous and multitudinous changes, and as our senses require change or motion for their excitation, without those changes we could have no cognisance of our surroundings, we should have no consciousness of living; but if we base our thought entirely on sense perception, taking for granted that Time and Space have reality instead of recognising that they are only modes or limits under which those senses act, the Wall will ever remain opaque to us. Let us try and make this clearer. If we analyse the impression we receive from Motion, we find it is made up of the product of our two limitations, it is the time that an object takes to go over a certain space. We must come therefore to the conclusion also that Motion itself has no existence in reality apart from our senses. The result of not being able to appreciate this, is that the finiteness of our sense, caused by its dependence on Motion for excitation, surrounds us with illusions; one of these illusions is what we call solidity or continuity of sensation. If you hold a cannon-ball in your hand, perception by the sense of touch tells you that it is continuous, or what is called solid and hard; but it is not so in reality except as a concept limited by our finite senses. A fair analogy would be to liken it to a swarm of bees, for we know that it is composed of an immense number of independent atoms or molecules which are darting about, and circling round each other at an enormous speed but never touching; they are also pulsating at a definite enormous rate; we can at will increase their motion by heat or reduce by cold; if our touch perception were sensitive enough we should feel those motions and should not have the sensation of a solid. We have a similar case of limitation in our other senses, which we shall grasp better in another View through our Window. We can hear beats only up to fifteen in a second, beyond that number they give the sensation of a musical or continuous sound. In our sense of sight we can see pulsations or intermittent flashes up to only six in a second, beyond that number they give the sensation of a continuous light; a gas jet, if extinguished and relit six times in a second, can be seen to flicker, but beyond that rate is to our sense of sight a steady flame. The effect may also be shown by making the top of a match red-hot; when stationary or moving slowly, it is a point of light, but, moved quickly, it becomes a continuous line of light.

Even apart from our senses we find Motion giving the characteristics of solidity: a wheel with only a few spokes, if rotated quickly enough, becomes quite impermeable to any substance, however small, thrown at it; a thin jet of water only half an inch in diameter, if discharged at great pressure equivalent to a column of water of 500 metres, cannot be cut even with an axe, it resists as though it were made of the hardest steel; a thin cord, hanging from a vertical axis, and being revolved very quickly, becomes rigid, and if struck with a hammer it resists and resounds like a rod of wood; a thin chain and even a loop of string, if revolved at great speed over a vertical pulley, becomes rigid and, if allowed to escape from the pulley, will run along the ground as a hoop.

Now with regard to this limit of time perception, which gives us the phenomenon of Solidity, I have lately been able to devise an arrangement which, acting as a microscope for Time, gives the sensation of an increase in sight perception up to several thousand units per second; it is based on the fact that though the eye can only see six times per second it can see for the one-millionth part of a second. An example of this is the well-known experiment of seeing a bullet in its flight; the bullet makes electrical connection resulting in a spark which illuminates the bullet when opposite the eye. The electrical spark exists only for the millionth of a second, and as the bullet in that time has no perceptible movement it is seen standing absolutely still with all marks upon it quite visible to the eye. When Sight perception is increased up to the rate at which time may be said to flow for any particular object we apparently get into the reality, the permanent now where motion ceases to exist as a sensation. A tuning-fork, kept vibrating, by means of an electro-magnet, at 2000 times per second, may to our sense of sight be gradually slowed down and, optically, brought absolutely to a standstill, for as long as desired, and the smallest irregularity of its surface may be minutely examined, though it continues to be heard and felt vibrating at that enormous rate. I have made several experiments in this direction, and some very curious facts connected with the sensation of Motion are brought to light by means of this increase in perceptive power. If the sense of sight is increased to 125 units per second, motion at the rate of one inch per second is barely visible; taking the common house-fly, whose wings vibrate about 400 times per second, its units of perception would appear to be about two-thirds of those beats, as I found it had no cognisance of Motion below two inches per second; you can put your finger on any fly provided you do not approach it faster than the above rate, it turns its head up to look at your finger but can see no motion in it; if you approach at over three inches per second it will always fly away before you are within a foot. I found that a dragon-fly, whose wings vibrate about 200 times per second, had only half the number of unit perceptions of the fly and could apparently see motion at about one inch per second but not under. In the converse of the above we have then the principle of a Microscope for Time, somewhat similar to the Microscope for Space of our laboratories. If our perception were increased sufficiently we could slow down any motion for examination, however rapid; there would be no difficulty in following a lightning flash or even arresting its visible motion for purposes of investigation without interfering with the natural sequence of cause and effect.

If, on the other hand, our perception were decreased below six times per second, all motion would be accelerated, until with perception reduced to one unit in twenty-four hours the sun would appear only as a band across the sky, and we could not follow its motion any more than, as we have seen, we could follow the point of a red-hot match. If perception were reduced far enough, plants and trees would grow up visibly before our eyes. But we must leave this subject now, as this and the Time Microscope will be treated in a later View.

Let us try and appreciate the fact that, under our present conditions, our conceptions of the immense and minute—namely, extension in Space, and that of quick and slow or duration in Time—are purely relative, and that from this arise those pseudo-conceptions which we call the infinitely extended and the infinitely lasting. Under our present limitations it is impossible for us to grasp the whole of any Truth, if we could do that, there would be no such mystery of Infinity to puzzle us; we could, as it were, see all around it, but that is again looking through another window. We are now considering relativity. If we cut off the very end of the point of the finest needle, we get so minute a particle of steel that it is hardly visible to the naked eye, and yet we know that that small speck contains not only millions but millions of millions of what are called atoms, all in intense motion and never touching each other. Try and conceive how small each of these atoms must be, and then try and grasp the fact, only lately proved by the discovery of Radio-activity, that each of these atoms is a great family made up of bodies analogous to the planets of our solar system and whose rate of motion is comparable only to that of Light. This is not theory, it is fact clearly demonstrated to us by the study of Radio-activity. Curiously enough, we know more about these bodies than we do of the atom itself; we actually know their size and weight and the speed with which they move. We do not yet know what is at the centre of this system, but we do know that each of these bodies is as far away from the centre as our planet is from the sun (93,000,000 miles), and as far from its neighbours as our planet is, relatively to its size. And now, for the purpose of grasping this subject of relativity, I want you to ask yourself whether it is conceivable that a world, so small as those bodies are, could possibly be inhabited by sentient beings. Leaving you to form your own conclusion upon this point, I will ask you to follow me down another path leading to the elucidation of the same subject.

If at this moment we and all our surroundings were reduced to half their size and everything were moving twice as quickly, we should absolutely have no cognisance of any change, neither could we possibly note any difference if everything were reduced to a hundredth part of the original size and were going a hundred times quicker; and even when reduced a thousand or a million times, or to such minuteness that the whole of our solar system with its revolving planets became no larger than one of those atoms in the needle point, and the whole of the starry universe therefore reduced to the size of the needle point, its millions of suns coinciding with the millions of planetary systems in that steel particle—our earth would still revolve round the sun, though no larger than one of those minute planetary particles and travelling at the rate of light, but we should still have no knowledge of any change, in fact, our life would go on as usual, though it was difficult a few minutes ago to think it conceivable that so small a globe could be inhabited by sentient beings.

Once more let us consider that the change is made in the direction of expansion in space and slowing down of Time; let all our surroundings be so enormously increased that each of the atoms in the steel point became as large as our solar system and the steel point as large as the visible universe, each atom therefore taking the place of a star, and motion being reduced in proportion; it is still absolutely inconceivable that we could know of any change having taken place, though the length of our needle, which was at first, say, one inch, would now be so great that light, travelling 186,000 miles per second, would take 500,000 years to traverse its length, and the stature of each one of us would be so great that light would require over 36,000,000 years to travel from head to foot, and that 36,000,000 years would have to be multiplied 163,000,000 times, making 5860 millions of millions of years to represent the time that an ordinary sneeze would take under such conditions. And yet we have only gone towards the infinitely great exactly as far as we at first went towards the infinitely small, and it is still absolutely inconceivable that we could be conscious of any change, our everyday life would go on as usual, we should be quite oblivious to the fact that every second of time, with all its incidents and thoughts, had been lengthened to 5860 millions of millions of years. Do we not now begin to grasp the fact that immensity and minuteness in extension, and motion in duration, are figments only of our finite minds, that Time and Space have no objective reality apart from our physical senses, that they are only the modes under which we receive impressions of our surroundings? With perfect perception we should know that the only Reality is the Spiritual, the Here comprising all Space and the Now all Time.

One more look through the window before we part, and we may see what I consider the greatest miracle in our everyday life: The Inner-self of each one of us, being part of the Reality or Spiritual, is independent of Space limitations and must therefore be Omnipresent, is independent of Time and therefore Omniscient. This inevitable deduction will be explained more fully in another View.

It is from this store of knowledge that our Physical Ego is ever trying to win fresh forms of thought, and, in response to our persistent endeavours, that Inner-self, from time to time, buds out a new thought; the Physical Ego has already prepared the clothing with which that bud must be clad before it can come into conscious thought, because, as Max Müller has shown us, we have to form words before we can think; so does the Physical Ego clothe that ethereal thought in physical language, and by means of its organ of speech it sends that thought forth into the air in the form of hundreds of thousands of vibrations of different shapes and sizes, some large, some small, some quick, some slow, travelling in all directions and filling the surrounding space; there is nothing in those vibrations but physical movement, but each separate movement is an integral part or thread of that clothing. Another Physical Ego receives these multitudinous vibrations by means of its sense organ, weaves them together into the same physical garment, and actually becomes possessed of that ethereal thought—an unexplained marvel, and probably the most wonderful occurrence in our daily existence, especially as it often enables the second Physical Ego to gain fresh knowledge from its own Real Personality. Now, in connection with this, consider the fact, already emphasized, that it is not we who are looking out upon Nature, but that it is the Reality which is ever trying to make itself known to us by bombarding our sense organs with the particular physical impulses to which those organs can respond, and, if we aspire to gain a knowledge of what is behind the physical, it is clear that all our endeavours must be towards weaving these impulses into garments and then learning from them the sublime Truths which the Reality is ever trying to divulge to us.