The Uniform Soul of Cosmos

Rosa G.S. Abbott (1920)

Henri Bergson, regnant French SAVANT, mediator ’twixt metaphysical Orient and Material Occident, has been the target of taunt and jibe, having posited One Unitary Vital Force and Substance in all disparate and divergent phenomena, form, and ideation, and he is ironically challenged to illumine the appalling paradox of antagonism, strife and predacious extermination that is perennially renewed (to the amaze and horror of the philanthropic spectator) in this divine Unitary body, as though a logical defense of the schematic anomaly were impossible.

Yet it is easily reconcilable with all Cosmic action, and with the psychologic disposition of man himself and the behaviour of his veering will.

Hermes tells of a universal force of attraction and of projection; two opposing and contrary activities, ever mounting and ever descending; like unto the Sun and his diametrically opposite characteristics of attraction and repulsion of satellites.

Immediate solution of the entire problem is seen in the fact that electricity is neither positive nor negative unless directed through a magnet; as all polar forces attain equilibration through tension, shock and fusion of extremes.

Polarity, or axial and opposite magnetism, is seen not only in light and dark, heat and cold, odd and even numbers, but in geometric forms of crystals, in wars, in religions born of race-antagonisms, in the Sun, the lordly quickener, the autocratic death dealer, and in fire the creator of water.

Polarity is seen where Liberty timorously walks ’twixt the twin terrors of Tyranny and Anarchy in their recurrent cycle in free states.

Each new thought in the mental sphere, each scientific innovation, exposes the occult phenomenon of Polarity by the opposition aroused toward it.

Faust knew two souls within himself; one aspirant and starry, the other prone to earth’s mire.

The mystery of Mona Lisa lies in her possession of the twin poles of nature and of soul. In her meet forces twain in complemental strife. In her combine Madonna and Medusa, ready to move easily in either direction of the unitary circle. She is the sum of her contrasting psychic elements; which, delivered from negative stress, evolve for the purified progress of the race.

Our first need is to perceive the psychologic unity of Cosmos, and to realize its dynamism, its centrifugal and centripetal movement, and we prove this by axiomatic laws of Conservation of Energy in transmutation, that expand into Conservation of Essence. We find evolution in heavenly bodies as in earth forms, in ebb and flow of action toward the circumference, accompanied by a resultant known as evil; yet decentralization is as essential to life in the Cosmic body as in the human body with its outflow and recall of the blood current, for there is no life without activity, and no activity without transformation.

Centrifugal and Centripetal forces are in affinity, as each begets the other. Circles move in antithetic directions.

The Chaldean Grand Man was disposed as a circle in embryo; with soles of feet to back of head: symbolic of the Universal all-inclusive life.

Kant found that every concept has two aspects: objective and subjective. We develop from the subconscious to the conscious and return thereto: in the manner of the Hindu trinity: Brahma weaving the living tissues, Vishnu vitalizing and preserving them, and Siva destroying them for renewal and revivification.* We perceive this rhythm between our dream world and objective, waking life, and the swing between extremes of Being is visible in seasonal oppositions, in plantary orbits, in rise and fall of empires, in passions and aspirations of the race-mind; and in all forces of attraction and projection that wax and wane, as the Sun alternately draws and repels the planetary bodies.

Magnetic thrills vibrate throughout Universe, controlling tides, winds and vital influx and efflux upon our far-cast earth.

Mathematics posits Unity as the Sun of the parts, fractions being of value merely as they identify and incorporate with Unity. Unity contains its parts, yet Unity is self-existent, self-sustaining, self-complicating, self-adjusting, self-sufficing, orderly and eternal.

Buddhism rejects material atoms, preferring psychical units as more intelligible and worthy of the divinity within them.

The emanation theory of Tlato and of India, by which Brahm condenses to fire, water, air, etc., is but the essential centrifugal movement in the Vast, living Totality, and if this be accorded (and the emanation idea is never doubted by any philosophic or Biblical school)—then we have the Key to all that follows: projection from the centre and return; flux and reflux, surge between the poles of the eternities, with a resultant of apparent evil in recessional stress: yet with compensating augmentation and deification of the rational faculties in ascensional reaction.

The formation impulse is an internal projection and the totality of the life—rhythm cannot be other than the divine principle itself in emanation. Oversoul lives in the Whole and directs its involutions and evolutions; its respirations as it were, precisely as the human soul acts through its body. Could this idea of the living-rhythm within the Cosmic body— the Stupendous Systole and diastole, the action and counter pull of compensating forces constituting the profoundest law of Being, be graven upon our consciousness, each barrier of evil, grief and longing would fall, and our progressive union with the mighty Sun of Wisdom would become vital and luminous; for we are enrooted in Cosmos—our effort is the effort of the Larger Life that finds achievement through our onward striving wills; evolutionary pain being felt by the Totality more than by the particles. This is the supreme sacrifice.

Religion is the consciousness that God actually lives and acts in us, fulfilling orderly growth through us. Spirit pulsates throughout Nature. Ideation enfolds in the seed, the seed becomes the tree, the tree returns to the seed, and thus all things proceed from the invisible and return to the invisible.

Buddhism teaches God’s immanence in all forms; and, as clouds, steam, snow, ice, rivers, lakes and drops are water- form that are to return to the Sea that gathers all waters to its bosom; so all life-forms are a differentiation of Deity in whom they are to deliquesce in the repose of Being.

Organisms live daily in two worlds: the personal and the I Universal. By the universal life each lives in the other, since the animating soul of all things is the same. In Embryo, in sleep, in religious ecstasy, in trance, we revert to the universal, with Time and Reason reft from us, yet with increase of sub conscious power. The centre of gravity transfers from outer to inner manifestation. Personal life is but a loan from the Totality of life.

During stressful seasons, when evil forces are in high ascension and arrogant vice stalks commandingly above prostrate virtue; when alliance with Mammon appears the discreative part of ideal valor; when judgment inclines toward the decision of Odin, seeing the powers of darkness vanquishing the powers of Light, how may one re-assure oneself—how find God in His heaven, and all well with the world?

The greatness of Shakespeare and the immortals lies in their vision of the biform soul of Cosmos: and it is precisely this long-distance generalization that lacks in the average mind; and thus strife and blight, englutition of the weak and the bloody reign of terror receive undue emphasis; albeit heredity binds fast in fate, evolution, and correlation of forces are essentially arbitrary and fatalistic, and freewill poses as delusive mockery. Also, Spencer tells us that ill-controlled national character breeds despotic government. If the Second Charles was the inevitable reaction from Cromwell, what may not arise from the Chaotic freedom and disorder of 1920? If tyranny springs from abuse of popular government, may not our incipient democracy be in the throes of reversion to oligarchy?

Yet, the Crimean war liberated Russia’s serfs, the Black Plague led to emancipation of labor by advancing its market prices; Civil War abolished the slavery that threatened industrial paralysis, and all injustice is righted betimes by the benignly fateful laws of Conservation of Energy that exact from antecedents their equivalent sequence with a geometric precision that caused the ancients to exclaim “The Law is a Person ”!!

Recurring war merely marks the rise of a new generation, that enacts the stored Karma of previous lives.

If liquid air proves the unreality of heat and cold, the dual order of Being proves the unity and harmony of extremes, and assures immortal life; for the teleologic perspective reveals a pre-determined impulse toward a goal; and when subtle mysteries are comprehended the identity of man and God be comes apparent and we feel the grandeur of the claim “the Father and I are one.”

Aberration is not a Cosmic blunder but a Cosmic triumph. Mephisto attempts to do evil, but it reacts into good. Paul is bettered by having been Saul. Earth’s dilemma arises from lack of balance; but a compensating check is ever provided for restoration of equilibrium, or, in other words, our mammoth aeroplane, like other sailing craft, “makes head by tacking.”

When consciousness of the vast solidarity of all life is visualized, divinity awakes within us, and the unreality of dual tension becomes evident. At this point we aspire to Nirvana, and the “beyond-good-and-evil” repose in Oversoul that harbors its divergent aspects as a working necessity for the revitalization of circumferential matter, for there is no progress without polar tension and fusion.

Let us rely upon the rhythmic law by which plants unfold to outer manifestation and unfold again into the mothering subconscious infinite.

Realization is quickened by goodwill and kindness to all life. Love will rout competitive feuds as chemic affinities are overcome by finesse. Also, when the higher ego controls the lower ego, conflict ceases in man’s bipolar disposition.

To know oneself part of the sublime order of Universe, affords truest ethical motives toward perfection and supplies the impetus par excellence to rational conduct

Revelation is measured to the growth of the organism, and Nature whispers her secrets to the attentive and ready ear; granting recompense for suffering during periods of illusion and inadequate beliefs and thus we are on the breast of the all-enfolding mother, with scientific evidence that the Known is evolved from the unknown, and that so-called matter and force, good and evil, are but variable appearances of a sole and infinite Reality, that becomes progressively intelligible as the measure of our intelligence; for all intelligence translates into terms of Cosmic perceptivity, with God as a stupendous life-spirit engendering and containing all forms of life.

Peace and discord, harmony and dissonance are in affinity; as musical accord proceeds from basic discords, and the “Biologos” of Science is but the subjective aspect of the ubiquitous Pan of the Greeks; while Pan metamorphoses into the Biform Soul of Cosmos, or the Merged polar variants of the Radioactive Infinite.

Formerly man thought of God as apart from himself. Henceforth humanity will honor itself in loving God; perceiving individual puissance in its rising intuiton of the deific goal, the return current of circulating life units to the vital heart of creation.

“As everything doth upward tend and farther is from earth, so still more clear and fair it grows.”