Science and the Infinite by Sydney T. Klein (black male authors .txt) 📕

In the Vesica Piscis (vide frontispiece) we see two Equilateral Triangles formed on the same base, similar to what we found in the ground-plan of Chartres and other Gothic Cathedrals; these two triangles symbolised to the Mediæval Builders the Divine and Human Natures of the Logos, the Word, the Creator; they are both procreated and enclosed in the Vesica; the one having the Apex pointed upwards, represented Divine or Spiritual Life, and in that I have placed the "Tetragrammaton," the Word or name of God (Jehovah), which, throughout the Jewish race for thousands of years, was held to be so sacred that they did not dare to utter it aloud. It was, at this time, depicted in the Equilateral Triangle, the symbol of the Logos, becoming thus the Masonic Word of the Middle Ages, and was probably used, exoterically, for purposes of recognition among members of the Great Building Societies, with the introduction of Gothic Architecture; but the esoteric teaching, which was known only to the élite of the Craft and not by the Ordinary Operatives, was the mystical procreation of that triangle, the doctrine of Spiritual or New Birth, symbolised by that mysterious figure which we have seen was the very foundation stone of Geometry, and therefore of Tectonic Art, the Head of all learning, and the great Secret of Gothic Architecture, called for esoteric purposes "Vesica Piscis." The Triangle, having the Apex pointing downwards, represented Human or Physical Life, and I have placed therein a representation of sacrificial death, which we shall see was introduced, as a necessity, for the good of the Race.

As "everything in Heaven has its counterpart on Earth," so may we see, by introspection, that the reflecting surface, the thin, physical film between the Human and Divine, is represented by that Base, and Human Life then becomes truly, as it should be, the reflection of the Divine.

One more glance through the Window at what I will call—

"The Mystery of the Apex."

The earliest forms of Life, the unicellular "Beings," whether animal or vegetable—for both divisions, if they can be said to be divided, have the same protoplasmic cell as basis of life—were, and are still, immortal except for accidents; they are not subject to natural death as we know it; they multiply by fission and not by "budding." It was only with the building up of cell upon cell into communities, and the advent of polycellular beings of greater and greater complexity of structure, that the "Wisdom" behind natural laws introduced death as an adaptation, to prevent monstrosities in the shape of mutilated specimens being perpetuated on the earth. Life is purely physical and, in conformity with the modes under which our physical senses act, has the appearance of tri-unity. As white light is seen to be composed of but three primary colours, as Music is based on the Triad, as Space is known to us in three dimensions only, and Geometry, "the Head of all Learning," is based upon the Circle, Square, and Triangle, so may we see life in its three primary aspects: the Animal, Vegetable, and Material. The last-mentioned aspect, though long suspected, from the investigation of Crystallography, to have in some mysterious way a common basis with the animal and vegetable, was not fully grasped until, in the last few years, we have been able to study in our laboratories the actual evolution, or more correctly devolution, of matter from one form to another; and as all plants and animals are found to be built up of the same identical protoplasmic cells, so are we now able to break down and analyse not only these cells but even the very structure of matter, and find that all substances are built up of exactly the same bricks, the different forms known to us as Elements being the designs of the great Architect upon which each structure has been built; and these completed designs again are used and become the "ashlars" of the higher forms of plant and animal structure. As Evolution in the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms has given us Species, so in the Material it has developed Elements. The structures of animal and vegetable life are of comparatively recent formation, and are still apparently progressing in the direction of complexity, whereas the structures of matter appear to have long passed the stage of highest complexity, and the elements are now undergoing the retrograde process of being transformed, by radio-activity, from the more complex into simpler elements of lower atomic denominations—namely, having fewer bricks in each atom.

All these material designs are more or less radio-active—namely, changing into other elements, but some, like radium, polonium, &c., are active to an extraordinary extent. Each molecule or atom may be looked upon as an aperture, more or less open, through which we have flowing the equivalent of what may be called a leak from the Infinite, the changing of one element into another being represented by the change of shape or activity of that aperture. Countless ages ago these apertures were, by evolution, growing more and more complex in shape, but when the limit of complexity was reached and the Apex was passed, an adaptation, somewhat analogous to death in the animal and vegetable, must have come into play, with the result that these apertures are now becoming more and more simple in their shape and activity. The Infinite referred to above may be diagnosed by some as being in the fourth dimension of space, or it may even be comprised within the Ether of our known three dimensions, for the discovery of radio-activity has enabled us to see that Ether is not only as dense as iron, but millions of times denser than that metal, every cubic foot, or probably cubic inch, being capable of supplying millions of horse-power if it could only be tapped. A homely simile of this leak from the Infinite may be seen in a glass of aerated water, where an irregularity of surface, a crumb of bread, or a grain of sand becomes the means by which carbonic-dioxide escapes from the interstices of the water.

Radio-active substances then are really forges for forming new structures of matter or forms of energy, rather than quarries from which they are cut, and we seem to get a glimpse of the origin of life, perhaps itself the cause of "retrogression" in the material, coming through from the Reality, the Infinite beyond the physical Universe.

Life and its processes are well symbolised by a triangle, the base of which is the "Divide" between the Real and its reflections or shadows on the Material plane, and through which all energy percolates. One side of the triangle represents anabolism, or the process of building up, and the other katabolism, the process of breaking down, and at the Apex is the Mystical "Terror of the Threshold," the "Ainsoph" (vide frontispiece), which introduced sacrificial death to the Physical, as an adaptation in the evolution of, and for the good of, the Human race. With the death of the Physical, the rending of the Veil, as we have seen in View Two, all Shadows and Reflections disappear, and, in place of "seeing as through a glass darkly," the Soul has its true birth, and at last enters upon its heritage in the Divine Life, face to face with the Reality, the Good, the Beautiful, and the True.

In the preceding Views we have seen that Time and Space have no real existence apart from our physical senses; they are only modes or conditions under which those senses act, and by which we gain a very limited and illusory knowledge of our surroundings. Our very consciousness of living depends upon our perception of multitudinous changes in our surroundings, and our very thoughts are therefore also limited by Time and Space, because change is dependent on those two limits, the very basis of perceived motion being the time that an object takes to go over a certain space; we must therefore look behind consciousness itself, beyond the conditioning in Time and Space, for the true reality of Being. We have seen that man is the offspring of two distinct natures—the Spiritual or Transcendental and the Material or Physical; the former is the Real, the latter is only a shadow. If we now try to consider the connection between these two natures, we have to recognise that, with all our advance in Knowledge during the last hundred years, we are indeed still as children playing with pebbles on the sea-shore, knowing neither why we are placed there, nor what those pebbles are, or whence they came. Though we seem ever to be discovering fresh truths concerning their relations one with another, when arranged in different patterns, built up into new forms, or split up into smaller fragments, we have to acknowledge (substituting thoughts for pebbles) that we are still only learning our alphabet and the simple rules of multiplication, addition, and division, which must be mastered before we can hope to take the real step towards understanding.

We are surrounded by mysteries; we are indeed a mystery to ourselves, we do not even know how the Physical Ego is connected with the physical world; how the sense organs, receiving the impression of multitudinous and diverse frequencies of different intensities, transmit them to the brain, and how the mind is able to combine all these impressions and form concepts. But by examining the Physical Universe, we seem to see clearly that the only Reality is the Spiritual, the Here, and the Now, that our real Personality being Spiritual is independent of Space and Time limitations, and is therefore Omnipresent and Omniscient; it may indeed be not only connected with the Physical Ego of this World, but be in close working connection with other Physical Egos in the Universe, and may, in some wonderful process, through its affinity with the Great Spirit, be helping them to progress in other directions possibly quite beyond our power to conceive under the conditions we are accustomed to here.

A great forest tree forms each year a multitude of separate buds; each of these buds is an independent plant which has only a temporary existence and has no present knowledge of the other buds, but it is by means of all these buds and the leaves they develop, that the tree is nourished and increases from year to year. Still more wonderful is the fact that it is these temporary existences which, in accordance with the general law of life-production, form special "ovules," which we call seeds, each of which has the potentiality for growing up into a great forest tree, which, in its turn, is capable of pushing forth temporary existences in countless directions. We have, in the above process of creating a forest tree, a likeness on the Physical Plane to what I would suggest is the process not only of the creation of the Race, but, on the Transcendental Plane, the multiplication of permanent personalities by means of, or in connection with, the temporary and Space-limited Human Physical Ego.