XXIII
DEGREES

 

MY narrative of the coming of the philosophy has now caught up with and passed Stephen's directing Joan and me to "his record," contained, he had said, in a recently published book. We had, by this time, found the book, its confirmation of the sometime existence of Stephen L—— startling us into realization that our endeavor to explain the philosophy as some strange expression of my own mind could not ignore Stephen himself.

 

Granted that somehow I had subconsciously worked out the philosophy and somehow was now releasing it, my subconscious mind could not have fabricated even in guess the definite fact of Stephen L——'s earthly existence and the concrete circumstances of his death. But before Stephen had finished his discussion of quantity, such reasoning, so far as my subconscious mind was concerned, had been rendered futile. The spellings, we now knew, came not through me, but Joan; and Joan lacked all knowledge of metaphysics or instinct for it.

 

It was in the course of this new phase of our bewilderment that Joan's faculty of sensing the letters before they were pointed out on the board developed, with the consequence that her announcement of them was frequently ahead of the tripod. The confusion that resulted was coped with for a while by Joan's keeping silent and my reading the board alone. Then the tripod struck a new gait, deserting its old-time bobbing stride for what, on occasions, was a really furious pace.

 

Thus handicapped we reached detailed discussion of degrees.

 

"By degree," spelled the swiftly moving tripod, "is meant that state of consciousness with which a man, or a woman, is born, and with which, subject to development in the mean time through, assimilation of mortal experience, he is graduated.

 

I asked if a man, despite quantitative development during his earth life, graduated with the same degree of consciousness with which he was born.

 

"Why, yes," answered Stephen. "But let me illustrate. Take a common field daisy. It will, in its earthly character, always be a daisy, though by cultivation it may be made a thing of many petals, of intricate life. So it is with the individual."

"Go slower!" I pleaded.

"I shall try to," answered the board. "The receiving station is becoming very practised."

He continued: "The definition of degree I just gave you is, to be sure, a human-value definition. Degrees, however, are as characteristic of all that is as of men and women. Now, because you do not see matter or force in their component parts, it is difficult for you to understand that a stone and electrical energy are manifestations of degrees of the same thing. Yet take carbon. In one form you know it as coal, in another as graphite, and in a third as a diamond. But all the time it is carbon."

"You must go slower," I interjected. "Your speeches have become so long and you reel them off so rapidly!"

"There is not so much need of questions now," Stephen replied. "You are more understanding than you were in the beginning. I think, though, Joan, that we can go slower if we try."

 

Joan did not know what she could do about it; yet soon the tripod did slacken its pace, running at a speed considerably in excess of that of the early days, yet slow enough for us to catch the words.

"Listen," Stephen resumed. "You will agree with me that the earth is round, though you have never circled the globe; the proofs assigned appear to you to be reasonable. So it should be with the degrees of consciousness., the truth of which is indicated by modern science.

 

"Biology asserts that man is ascendant from a lower form of life; more and more the scientist hesitates to draw the line which shall definitely divide living matter and what you call inorganic matter. The physicists now hold light to be a form of electricity; in other words, they are coming to regard the phenomenon you know as electricity as evolutional and, therefore, as appearing in degrees. The original glimpse biological evolution afforded has become a more or less clear glimpse of cosmic evolution.

 

"And yet science has told but half the truth—the quantitative half. The thought that somewhere qualities must develop, just as do quantities in the so-called natural world, apparently has failed of recognition. What I propose is that science shall search out the nature of quality with as much industry as that displayed in its examination of quantity.

 

"That quantitative evolution on earth should have been accompanied by a quality development on another plane, real though unseen by man, is a thought wholly necessary to complete understanding of the actuality of evolution.

 

"Listen! Force, matter, chemical reaction, life, these constitute the ascent, qualitative as well as quantitative, of consciousness."

"And so," said Joan, when Stephen had finished, it would appear, after all, that life sprang from matter?"

 

I wonder if I can make it quite clear that Stephen said no such thing. But let Stephen tell his own story.

 

"Force, matter, chemical reaction, life itself," he said, "are not, as you observe them, degrees of consciousness, strictly speaking. They are attributes of degrees of consciousness, manifestations of consciousness, if you will.

"My difficulty lies in a lack of earth terms, missing because earth does not see matter in its component parts. What I am about to say should, therefore, be accepted simply as suggestion, not as exact statement of fact.

"In the beginning, then, that never was consciousness was— an intangible existence, a whole of which quality and quantity were the halves. Now, consciousness by contact with itself intensified itself, just as two rays of light crossing each other might intensify the combined luminosity, just as your individual consciousness intensifies itself by contact with another individual's consciousness. And this intensification developed, let us say, the atom.

"For the atom to have been developed, it was, of course, essential that the atomic potentiality should have inhered in consciousness from the beginning.

"Science sets forth that the atom, in one form or another, is the basis of all matter, all energy. The only thing I have to tell you is that it is the basis of all consciousness, of all degrees of consciousness from that intangible existence we have just postulated right up to supremacy itself. But keep clearly in mind that the atom is consciousness; nothing new was introduced; degree simply was developed.

"There was no creation; there is but the development of higher and higher degrees of consciousness. Yet for your understanding, think of consciousness as having created itself. This will not be so difficult a thought if you will recall how magnetic force creates itself through contact of two halves, the positive and the negative."

 

I looked up from setting down Stephen's words, and saw Joan's lips moving.

 

"What are you mumbling about?" I asked.

"I am saying my prayers," she answered; "at least I think I am, though I am not sure whether I have been listening to a sermon pointing the way to eternal bliss or to a lecture by a heretical professor bent on knocking the bottom out of Genesis."

 

"I have put a real bottom into Genesis," spelled Stephen, "by knocking a hypothetical one out. The story of a six-day creation is a great glimpse of the cosmic evolution. As for my 'sermons,' I wish there were a less dry way to tell you the things you must understand, but all good things come at a price. And the 'eternal bliss' part of it, Joan, is true. For just as surely as humanity regards life as its most precious possession, so it knows death as its only real fear. My gift to you is the elimination of fear. May I go on with the discussion?"

 

Joan consented.

 

"And now," Stephen continued, "our world is afloat, a world of force and matter, yet still consciousness. Finally, then, life makes its appearance, a degree higher than those that have gone before it, yet in its early form so low as scarcely to be called life at all. Behold what in earth terms is called protoplasm, a degree of consciousness infinitely primitive, but not so primitive as the original atom; protoplasm, let us say just for purposes of illumination, developed out of those degrees of consciousness manifested as force and matter, by way of an intervening degree known to you as chemical reaction. Behold the simple undifferentiated cell of living matter, capable of growth and reproduction." "May I interrupt?" I asked.

"But surely," answered Stephen.

"Well," said I, "if soul is the quality of my consciousness, what is the quality of the consciousness of protoplasm?"

"Every degree of consciousness," spelled the tripod, "has its quality, its soul. Just as your consciousness is qualitative and quantitative, so also is protoplasmic consciousness."

"Do you mean," I asked, "that even protoplasm graduates into your plane?"

"But surely," answered Stephen. "All consciousness graduates out of the quantitative world of so-called nature into the qualitative world of supernature, and, too, the quality of protoplasm is reborn, just as truly as is the quality of human consciousness."

"But, Stephen," said Joan, "do you really mean that there is immortality even for life in its lowest? Do you see immortal protoplasm on your plane?"

"To both your questions, yes," Stephen answered. "Consciousness, many-degreed, is all there is, and of the all nothing can be lost. On this plane I see the degree of the quality of consciousness which corresponds to what you term protoplasm."

There was a pause. The tripod had been racing. After the pause it moved more slowly again.

 

"Listen!" Stephen continued. "Consciousness in kind is ever the same. Many are its degrees. Such general earth terms as force, matter, chemical reaction, and life give but slight conception of the variety of degree gradations. Observe the countless shades of life itself—the almost chemical activity of the weed, the but little less chemical life of the amoeba, the blind instinct of the bee, the reason-tinged instinct of the higher animals, finally the free-will degree of consciousness, man.

 

"Now, if force is force, whether it be gravitational or centrifugal, so life is life, whether it be the life of an amoeba or the life of a man. What is true of man's future development here on the qualitative plane must as well be true, in degree, of development of any form of life less than man.

 

"Man's consciousness is as it is only because through long eons of quantitative evolution on your plane, plus qualitative development on my plane, it has risen through birth and rebirth, step by step, degree by degree, from blind force to reason and free will. Evolution is an actuality more potent than earth theorists have dreamed.

 

"One thing more: All degrees of consciousness, human or less than human, are entities quite real. So real are degrees that an individual on my plane feels and sympathizes with the experience of his entire degree. This is also true of the individual on your plane, with the difference that, whereas we here understand, you there grope. Go ahead with your questions now. They will help."

 

"Perhaps," said Joan, "some of the moods that now and then so unaccountably take possession of us are really but the reflex of experiences other members of the same degree are undergoing."

 

"Exactly," Stephen replied. "Women are peculiarly sensitive in this respect. Many a woman in America has suffered intensely as the result of the experience, for example, of some war-stricken woman in France whom she of America has never heard of. Physicians in a future day will be on the lookout for the new diagnosis of certain hysterical disorders."

 

"What becomes of savages when they graduate?" I asked.

 

"They come to their degree here," answered Stephen. "They're off in their own reservation, as it were, though of course degrees here are no more physical than they are with you. The fact that persons of lower degrees on earth seek out their own kind is a glimpse. So, without knowing why, men in speaking of a seventh heaven have expressed a glimpse of the supreme degree and of the fact that it is attained by passage through lesser heavens or degrees."

"Well," I questioned, "can high degrees on your plane

communicate with qualitative savages?"

"To be sure we can communicate with them," the ouija­

board replied. "We aid them in their development."

"Do you have laws to control these savages?" I asked. "Consciousness is the law," Stephen answered. "Yes," said I, "but isn't consciousness the law here?" "Surely," the ouija-board spelled, "but man does not allow it

to rule."

"Can't the law be broken on the qualitative plane?" I asked. "No," Stephen replied. "No more than you can break the law of gravitation."

"But," said I, "why doesn't the law of consciousness operate here as does the law of gravity?"

"Man's free will," Stephen answered. "Your will, too, is free," I argued.

"Yes," Stephen responded, "but we see here not as through a glass darkly."

Joan spoke. "Why fuss over savages?" she said. "Stephen, the world has broached many definitions of genius. Men of genius have been called everything from gods to maniacs."

"There are two kinds of geniuses," answered Stephen's tripod. "There is the man who is, as you say, psychic. His work is wonderful; yet, when men meet him face to face, they find his personality unsatisfactory. Such a man simply puts into words the thoughts of some greater mentality living here. The world calls this type of man a genius, yet—I speak without disparagement of his gift—he is not truly so.

"The true man of genius is one whose degree of consciousness is unusually high. His quality was vouchsafed him from a degree here approaching the supreme. The recognition the world gives him will depend in large measure on how completely he fulfils that degree of quality by development of proportionate quantity. Of course, high quality, too, may be, and in fact often is, psychic."

"Well," said I, "if genius of exalted order can exist on earth, and if, at the same time, savages return on graduation to that degree of consciousness which on your plane corresponds to their degree here, it follows that earth has many individuals of a consciousness higher than the lower degrees of your plane."

 

"But surely," answered Stephen. "Remember, however, that in the end all consciousness must reach supreme."