XXVIII
SUPREMACY AND GOD

 

ONE of the most interesting of Stephen's discussions was on the character of God and that ultimate goal which he so hopefully insists all must reach, and which he has termed Supremacy."

 

As I go over my notes I find that I asked a number of questions scarcely relevant to the subject, yet interesting in view of the answers they called forth. The questions and answers follow.

 

Q.—Where do babies go when they die?

A.—Back to the degree from which they were born. Q.—Those that die too young to have developed any

quantity at all?

A.—But surely.

Q.—Have they an opportunity for development there? A.—Indeed yes. Lacking great quantitative development of their own, they share, through leavening, in the quantitative gift each individual of their degree brings from earth.

Q.—You said sudden death was the one great tragedy. Is this true also for little children? (This question was prompted by the accidental death of a child living in our neighborhood.)

A.—Children are so close to that from which they came that a sudden going back is for them no tragedy. Earth has not had time to submerge completely their knowledge of our great everywhere. Sudden graduation is startling only for those who have been so educated that they no longer remember their eternal youth, and even they are soon met and cared for, as I have told you.

Q.—Is the idea of purgatory a glimpse?

A.—But surely. There are many mansions in the house of consciousness. One of those mansions is life as you know it; another is life as I know it; and many are the mansions that line the road both you and I must travel before we reach supremacy.

Q.—How do you recognize one another on the qualitative plane?

A.—We recognize one another not facially, as men recognize each other, but by the individual degree of quality.

Q.—Why don't we here on earth recognize one another in the same way?

A.—You do; only you fail to note the fact. Often you recognize what you call soul in an individual the very first time you meet that person. Take, for example, the so-called instinctive likes of animals, of infantile minds and blind persons.

Q.—Will man on earth ever evolve into a higher species?

A.—That is a difficult question. As an affair of nature, biological evolution is largely the result of adaptation on the part of the living organism to its environment. Man is already so high in the scale that to a great extent he is master of his environment—that is, he adapts his environment to himself. However, there are great changes of perception and mentality in store for man. For example, let your senses broaden their present scope, and the veil between my plane and yours will be lifted.

Q.—There would, in truth, be no death then, would there? A.—There is no death now. There is only failure to recognize graduation as such.

Q.—What will happen when the physical conditions of earth no longer can support life?

A.—Earth has already developed many new earths out of the old earths that have passed away. Your man of scientific research tells you this, and you believe. He also knows there are, must be, new earths to come. I tell you there will be new heavens, too.

 

The supremacy discussion, in which the foregoing questions and answers were embedded, began with Stephen's saying: "Three things I have told you about the supreme degree of consciousness. First, in the beginning, which never was, every particle of the all possessed the potentiality of supremacy, so that all that is must ultimately become supreme. Second, there are those who have reached supremacy. Third, from out the supreme degree there is no rebirth.

 

"Now the supreme degree is made up of individual consciousnesses. It is the quintessence of pluralistic monism. As a whole it is a thing of absolute oneness. For the individual it is the height of self-realization.

 

"Experience, we have seen, indicates that all things are, in any analysis approaching finality, individualistic. The scientist speaks of the atom, the electron. Your own observation teaches you individuality pervades life. Every such individual particle of consciousness, all that your eye or ear or touch has sensed, must go on toward the supreme, individually. I mean this literally. Every stone, the component parts of which are unseen by you, the plant that is bursting into bloom on Joan's table, the little cat that used to curl about your neck as she lay on your shoulder, all travel toward the supreme degree as individuals.

 

"There have gone on toward supremacy individual consciousnesses that on the earth-plane were of a degree now passed away from earth forever. There were, for example, forms of prehistoric man, of which you know nothing save as science builds an imaginary body around the meager parts it excavates. The consciousness of those individuals has gone on; the consciousness of certain of those individuals has reached supremacy. Everything develops, until in supremacy each individual is the equal of every other. And when all of consciousness is supreme there will be but one degree."

"What about the supremacy of evil?" I asked.

"Supreme consciousness is the height of positiveness," replied Stephen. "There can be nothing negative in the supreme."

 

He continued:

 

"The fact of supreme consciousness, I think, is not beyond your conception. Truly, the world has had its vision of the supreme. The world has known the quality of him the ages have called the Christ. That quality was so near the height that, quantitatively fulfilled—and it was so fulfilled—it attained, at earth graduation, the height. But, though the fact of supremacy is within your conception, its attributes, as I have indicated, are what you on your earth-plane cannot imagine, any more, indeed, than I can.

"I have never been to what an Oriental, in his hypothetical way, might call the seventh heaven. From it I, like you, am many graduations removed. Therefore my information is limited to that which I have been told here by those nearer supremacy than myself, and to those things I have learned out of the very nature of my qualitatively free existence. And such knowledge of supreme attributes as I have I cannot make clear to you; earth lacks terms for conveying my thoughts. Will you ask questions?"

"You hold," I said, "that all is evolutional up to the supreme, yet you say the supreme itself is not reborn. How do you explain the contradiction between the becoming of things less than supreme and the fixed state of supremacy itself?"

"The supreme is the ultimate," Stephen answered. Silence a moment—then he added, "There is one with me here who says that the supreme may evolute within itself."

"Stephen," I asked, "is the nature of the supreme logical or ethical?"

"Logical," he replied, "and, I think you will agree with me, ethical as well, as it is the supreme of all that you know."

"The supreme," I asked, "is subjective only? It possesses no world corresponding to what we term the objective?"

"Why do you say that?" Stephen said. "What you call the objective world is made up of consciousnesses other than yourself and the attributes of those others. The supreme, I have told you, is pluralistic, and it is possessed of attributes."

 

With such questions I but delayed the bigger query that was in my mind, though, for that matter, Stephen already had answered that query time and time again.

 

I said at last, "The supreme of consciousness exists now—"

"Like the core of an apple," Stephen interjected.

"And," I went on, "millions of years ago there was no life as earth now knows it. Hence there was a time when the supreme did not exist. Yet we have long believed that there existed, even before the dawn of life, a God, a being of omnipotence, perfection, changelessness, and that by Him life was made. Shall we dismiss that always existing God of always existing supremacy?"

And Stephen answered, "We must."

"Anyway," I ventured, "science already has shaken that conception of deity from its pedestal."

"Surely," said Stephen. "Yet science now must learn that, though understanding of material law has routed the dogmas of religion, spirituality remains unannihilated. Science must learn not simply to destroy, but also to construct. It must replace the God it destroys with a better. For God is. Men find God in their hearts; He is not to be denied.

"Consciousness is its own creator, its own savior. But, if you will, translate the supreme degree of consciousness as God. And if you are shocked by the thought that supremacy was not always existent, except as a potentiality, consider that consciousness, being the all, is time itself."

 

I asked for more detail concerning time and a word relative to space.

 

"Time and space," said Stephen, "are attributes of consciousness. Consciousness, being a pluralistic oneness in process of evolution, is, as your every-day experience tells you, necessarily a thing of relationships. Those relationships that are evolutional you know temporally. Those that result from the pluralistic character of the whole you know spatially. As attributes of consciousness time and space are real, as reason or will or form is real. But time and space do not mean to you what they mean to