Related to Speculation regarding the future evolution of mind (c.1850-1940)
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'And so in the present day a new problem arises, namely how to account for the appearance of this great Phenomenon, with its orderly phases of evolution, and its own spontaneous growths in all corners of the globe—this phenomenon which has had such a strange sway over the hearts of men, which has attracted them with so weird a charm, which has drawn out their devotion, love and tenderness, which has consoled them in sorrow and affliction, and yet which has stained their history with such horrible sacrifices and persecutions and cruelties. What has been the instigating cause of it?

The answer which I propose to this question, and which is developed to some extent in the following chapters, is a psychological one. It is that the phenomenon proceeds from, and is a necessary accompaniment of, the growth of human Consciousness itself—its growth, namely, through the three great stages of its unfoldment. These stages are (1) that of the simple or animal consciousness, (2) that of SELF-consciousness, and (3) that of a third stage of consciousness which has not as yet been effectively named, but whose indications and precursive signs we here and there perceive in the rites and prophecies and mysteries of the early religions, and in the poetry and art and literature generally of the later civilizations.' (16)

 

'in this third stage, it would seem, one comes upon the real FACTS of the inner life—in contradistinction to the fancies and figments of the second stage; and so one reaches the final point of conjunction between Science and Religion.' (17)

 

'As with the first blossoming of self-consciousness in the human mind came the dawn of an immense cycle of experience... so now the redemption, the return, the restoration has to come through another forward step, in the same domain. Abandoning the quest and the glorification of the separate isolated self we have to return to the cosmic universal life. It is the blossoming indeed of this 'new' life in the deeps of our minds which is salvation... It is the return home, the return into direct touch with Nature and Man - the liberation from the long exile of separation, from the painful sense of isolation and the odious nightmare of guilt and 'sin.' Can we doubt that this new birth - this third stage of consciousness, if we like to call it so - has to come, that it is indeed not merely a pious hope or a tentative theory, but a fact testified to already by a cloud of witnesses in the past... ?' (235-236)

 

'The second stage of human psychologic evolution is an aberration, a divorce, a parenthesis. With its culmination and dismissal the mind passes back into the simple state of union with the Whole. (The state of Ekdgratd in the Hindu phil- osophy: one-pointedness, singleness of mind.) And the consciousness of the Whole, and of things past and things to come and things far around — which consciousness had been shut out by the concentration on the local self — begins to return again. This is not to say, of course, that the excursus in the second stage has been a loss and a defect. On the contrary, it means that the Return is a bringing of all that has been gained during the period of exile (all sorts of mental and technical knowledge and skill, emotional de- velopments, finesse and adaptability of mind) back into har- mony with the Whole. It means ultimately a great gain. The Man, perfected, comes back to a vastly extended harmony. He enters again into a real understanding and confidential relationship with his physical body and with the body of the society in which he dwells — from both of which he has been sadly divorced; and he takes up again the broken thread of the Cosmic Life.' (250)

 

'Not only does the Third Stage bring illumination, intuitive understanding of processes in Nature and Humanity, sympathy with the animals, artistic capacity, and so forth, but it necessarily brings a new Order of Society. A preposterous — one may almost say a hideous — social Age is surely drawing to its end. The debacle we are witnessing to-day all over Europe (including the British Islands), the break-up of old institutions, the generally materialistic outlook on life, the coming to the surface of huge masses of diseased and fatuous populations, the scum and dregs created by the past order, all point to the End of a Dispensation.' (254)

 

'With the Cosmic stage comes also necessarily the rehabilitation of the whole of Society in one fellowship (the true Democracy). Not the rule or domination of one class or caste — as of the Intellectual, the Pious, the Com- mercial or the INIilitary — but the fusion or at least consen- taneous organization of all (as in the corresponding functions of the human Body)... The liberated and emancipated Man passes unconstrained and unconstraining through all grades and planes of human fellow- ship, equal and undisturbed, and never leaving his true home and abiding place in the heart of all. Equally necessarily with the rehabilitation of Society as an entirety will follow the rehabilitation of the entire physical body in each member of Society... Why should the head brag of its ascendancy and domination, and the heart be smothered up and hidden? It will only be a life far more in the open air than that which we lead at present, which will re- store the balance and ultimately bring us back to sanity and health.' (255-256)

 

'it seems that we are now on the edge of a further stage when the theories and the creeds, scientific and religious, are on the verge of collapsing, but in such a way as to leave the sense and the perception of Unity — the real content of the whole process — not only undestroyed, but immensely heightened and illuminated. Meanwhile the taboos — of which there remain some still, both religious and scientific — have been gradually breaking up and merging themselves into a reasonable and humane order of life and philosophy.' (262-263)

 

It may, therefore, happen — and this quite independently of the growth of a World-cult such as I have described, though by no means in antagonism to it — that a religious philosophy or Theosophy might develop and spread, similar to the Giianam of the Hindus or the Gnosis of the pre-Christian sects, which would become, first among individuals and afterwards among large bodies over the world, the religion of — or perhaps one should say the religious approach to the Third State.' (268)

 

'We have seen that there has been an age of non-differentiation in the Past — non-differentiation from other members of the Tribe, from the Animals, from Nature and the Spirit or Spirits of nature; why should there not arise a similar sense of non-differentiation in the Future — similar but more extended more intelligent? Certainly this will arrive, in its own appointed time. There will be a surpassing of the bounds of separation and division. There will be a surpassing of all Taboos. We have seen the use and function of Taboos in the early stages of Evolution and how progress and growth have been very much a matter of their gradual extinction and assimilation into the general body of rational thought and feeling. Unreasoning and idiotic taboos still linger, but they grow weaker. A new Morality will come which will shake itself free from them. The sense of kinship with the animals (as in the old rituals)- will be restored; the sense of kinship with all the races of mankind will grow and become consolidated; the sense of the defilement and im- purity of the human body will (with the adoption of a generally clean and wholesome life) pass away; and the body itself will come to be regarded more as a collection of shrines in which the gods may be worshiped and less as a mere organ of trivial self-gratifications;^ there will be no form of Nature, or of human life or of the lesser creatures, which will be barred from the approach of Man or from the intimate and penetrating invasion of his spirit; and as in certain ceremonies and after honorable toils and labors a citizen is sometimes received into the community of his own city, so the emancipated human being on the completion of his long long pilgrimage on Earth will be presented with the Freedom of the Universe.' (269-270)

 

'We can see that in modern times the huge and unlimited powers of production by machinery, united with a growing tendency towards intelligent Birth-control, are preparing the way for an age of Communism and communal Plenty which will inevitably be associated (partly as cause and partly as effect) with a new general phase of consciousness, involving the mitigation of the struggle for existence, the growth of intuitional and psychical perception, the spread of amity and solidarity, the disappearance of War, and the realization (in degree) of the Cosmic life.' (272)

 

'there remains in the end a self-consciousness which need by no means be abandoned, which indeed only comes to its true fruition and imderstanding when it recognizes its affiliation with the Whole, and glories in an individuality which is an expression both of itself and of the whole.' (273-274)

 

'Fear bred by Ignorance. From that source has sprung the long catalogue of follies, cruelties and sufferings which mark the records of the human race since the dawn of history; and to the overcoming of this Fear we perforce must look for our future deliverance, and for the discovery, even in the midst of this world, of our true Home. The time is coming when the positive constructive element must domi- nate. It is inevitable that Man must ever build a state of society around him after the pattern and image of his own interior state... With the restoration of the sentiment of the Common Life, and the gradual growth of a mental attitude corresponding, there will emerge from the flood something like a solid earth — something on which it will be possible to build with good hope for the future.' (275-276)

 

'The first condition of social happiness and prosperity must be the sense of the Common Life. This sense, which instinctively underlay the whole Tribal order of the far past — which first came to consciousness in the worship of a thousand pagan divinities, and in the rituals of countless sacrifices, initiations, redemptions, love-feasts and communions, which inspired the dreams of the Golden Age, and flashed out for a time in the Communism of the early Christians and in their adorations of the risen Savior — must in the end be the creative condition of a new order: it must provide the material of which the Golden City waits to be built. The long travail of the World-religion will not have been in vain, which assures this consummation. What the signs and conditions of any general advance into this new order of life and consciousness will be, we know not. It may be that as to individuals the revelation of a new vision often comes quite suddenly, and generally perhaps after a period of great suffering, so to society at large a similar revelation will arrive — like ''the lightning which cometh out of the East and shineth even unto the West" — with unexpected swiftness. On the other hand it would perhaps be wise not to count too much on any such sudden transformation.' (276-277)

 

'Dr. Frazer [author of The Golden Bough] is right in thinking that "a way of looking at phenomena" different from the way of Science, may some day prevail. But I think this change will come, not so much by the growth of Science itself or the extension of its 'hypotheses,' as by a growth and expansion of the human heart and a change in its psychology and powers of perception... Gradually, out of an infinite mass of folly and delusion, the human soul has in this way disentangled itself, and will in the future disentangle itself, to emerge at length in the light of true Freedom.' (278)

 

'To-day... taboos and terrors still linger, many of them, in the form of conventions of morality, uneasy strivings of conscience, doubts and desperations of religion; but ultimately Man will emerge from all these things, free — familiar, that is, with them all, making use of all, allowing generously for the values of all, but hampered and bound by none. He will realize the inner meaning of the creeds and rituals of the ancient religions, and will hail with joy the fulfilment of their far prophecy down the ages — finding after all the long-expected Saviour of the world within his own breast, and Paradise in the disclosure there of the everlasting peace of the soul.' (279)

 

'that which we are seeking is indeed something very vast — something far extending around, yet also buried deep in the hidden recesses of our minds. How far, how deep, we do not know. We can only say that as far as the indications point the true self is profounder and more far-reaching than anything we have yet fathomed.' (298)

 

'The external apparatus of thought is of no use. Argument is of no use. But experience and direct perception are possible; and probably all the experiences of life and of mankind through the ages are gradually deepening our powers of perception to that point where the vision will at last rise upon the inward eye.' (305)

 

'The word Democracy indicates something of the kind — the rule of the Demos, that is of the common life. The coming of that will transform, not only our Markets and our Law Courts and our sense of Property, and other institutions, into something really great and glorious instead of the dismal masses of rubbish which they at present are; but it will transform our sense of Morality.' (307)

 

'At last there comes a time when we recognize — or see that we shall have to recognize — an inner Equality between ourselves and all others; not of course an external equality — for that would be absurd and impossible — but an inner and profound and universal Equality. And so we come again to the mystic root-conception of Democracy. ' (308)