CONSCIOUSNESS— SECOND STAGE

ând from other individuals ; the illusion of discrète and isolated individuality arises ; the devil (Diabolos, the divider who flings mists between) enters the Garden of Eden ; grief and pain ensue ; and the whole labyrinth of human problems, religions, political, social, cornes into being.

In a characteristic passage, Carpenter describes the tendency of this period :

The subject and object of knowledge drift ferther and farther apart. The self is left face to fece with a dead and senseless world. Its own importance seems to increase out of ail reason ; and with the growth of this illusion (for it is an illusion) the knowledge itself becomes dislocated from its proper bearings, becomes cracked and impotent, and loses its former unity with Nature, Objects are soon looked upon as important only in so far as they minister to the (illusive) self; and there sets in the stage of Civilization, when self-consciousness becomes almost a disease ; when the désire of acquiring and graspiug objects, or of enslaving men and animais, in order to minister to the self, becomes one of the main motives of hfe; and when, owing to this deep fundamental division in human nature and consciousness, men's minds are tormented with the sensé of sin, and their bodies with a myriad forms of disease.^

The application of the epithet " illusive " ta this second stage of consciousness must be regarded as descriptive only, and not as a criticism ; for the second is necessary to the arrivai of the third stage, and the expériences of this inter-

SELF-C0NSCI01TSNESS IS ULUSIVESS

médiate period minister to the devdopment and deliverance of the deeper areas of personality.

Just as a mass of water, faUing from a height, becomes separated up, before it reaches the ground, into a multitude of isolated drops, so the Infinité Self descending into finite coïKlitions is diff erentiated into a multitude of individualized fragments. Instead of an original solidarity there is apparent isolation ; instead of close and intimate cohésion there is apparent opposition ; the sensé of the Whole is lost in the sensé of séparation. Round each of the multitude of raindrops there is a well-defined drcumference within which the drop is self-contained, and by reason of which it distinguishes itself and is separated from every other ; within the original water-mass, however, those well-defined boundaries did not exist, though ail the drops were there. If we could attribute consdousness to the raindrops, we should say that they were conscious of separateness from each other, and that this consdousness, non-existent in the original wat^-mass, arose for each drop on the circumf erence-surfeice as it gradually difierentiated itself from the others in the descent. In the original mass the consciousness of union was dominant ; in the rain-shower, on the contrary, the consciousness of separateness would be dominant.

Individuals are something like that. We are the fragmentary expressions on this finite plane

28 CONSCIOUSNESS— THIKD STAGE

and one of redintegration sets in ; with this cornes the third stage of consciousness, which has been called the Cosmic Consdousness. The name is bad enough, but the expérience, even though it is fitful and fragmentary, is indubitably real.

There is a consciousness in which the subject and the object are felt, are known, to be united and one — in which the Self is felt to be the object perceived (" I am the hounded slave"), or at least in which the sùbject and object are Mt to be parts of the same Being, of the same including Self of aU.^

Carpenter illustrâtes the différence between thèse two orders of consciousness by the figure of a tree,

in which two leaves observe each oth^ extemally for a long enough time, mutually exclusive, and without any suspicion that they hâve a life in common. Then tibie " self-consciousness " of one of the leaves, deepening inwardly (down the twig or branch), at last reaches tibie point whence the " self " of the other leaf branches off — and becomes aware of its unity with the other. Instantly its extemal observation of its fellow-leaf is transformed ; it sees a thousand meanings in it which it never saw before. Its fellow-leaf is almost as much an expression of self as itself is ; for both now belong to a larger self — that of the spray or branch from which they dépend.*

The évidence for this expérience, which is hère called the third stage of consciousness, is ample enough. Classical examples hâve been coUected

^ A. C, p. 60. * Ibid., p. 6a.

EVIDENCE OFCOSmC CONSCIOtISNESS M

in such a book as Dr. Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness. Carpenter himself, as we hâve seen, was the subject of it. Perhaps it is not so rare as is usually imagined, but the ordinary man coming under the influence of its passing touch lails to realize what it is, and gives it another name. In f orm and method it is similar to the first stage, but iniinitely richer in content because of the second stage on which it supervenes. It is the perfect knowledge, and the only true existence.

Ail things, and the whole nnivene of spaoe and time, really exist and are in this third state. . . . Thù is the State of absolute Being in which ail things are, and irom which the things which we ordinarily see and know proceed by disintegration or ignorance. It is the state from which they lapse or faU by disintegratioii into ordinary consdoasness or tfaonght.^

Carpenter's indebtedness to Plato and his affinities with Bergson are obvions hère. Indeed, important portions of the latter's Creative Evolution might ahnost be elaborations of the f ollowing éloquent and profound words in which Carpenter discusses the Pathway to Reality and finds that the intellect cannot bring us to the goal.

Ail the universe exists, and is in this third state of consdousness ; but we in the strange condition of illusion which bdongs to the second stage — exiles from the Eden-garden, persuaded of the separateness of our individual selves, and unable to enter into true know-

1 A. C„ p. 68. Cf. the last sentence with Bergson's simile of the Fountain.

80 LIMITATIONS OF INTElLECT

ledge — are content to gnaw ofE tiny partides, which wd call thoughts. from the great Reality. Assimilating and digesting thèse as best we can, we are persuaded that some day, putting ail the results together, we shall arrive at the Reality. But the quest by this method is obviously bopéless. Infinities of infinity stretch before us, and vistas of brain-gnawing misery. Arrive doubtless we shall, but it will be by another route. ^

Intellectual knowledge advances as it were in ever-widening circles in a superficies, and reaches towards a goal at the imagined end of a horizontal Une ; the true knowledge will corne rather by an inward descent along a vertical Une, not gîving new facts so much as a new point of view, and, therefore, a new perspective and significance to facts already known.

But we cannot stop hère. We must inquire as to what is impUed in this expérience, this third degree of consciousness.

Briefly, it is that the '* final and real Self is one and unîversal."

There is a real universal Self — a one absolute Ego and knower, underlying ail existences, the essence and life of the whole universe, and true sdf of every créature.*

For if A, attaining to the true and perfect knowledge, realizes his essential identity with ail objects ; if B, also the same ; then A and B must be essentiaUy identical with each other. In that state of existence and knowledge each looks

^ A. C, p. 69. « /6fi., p. 79.

THE REAL SELF tS UNlVEltSAL 81

out upon and embraces the Whole from a particular point or centre. The areas, so to speak, are identical, but the focus-point is différent. Each is the Whole, but in a peculiar aspect. The ultimate fact of a man's personaEty is a universai Being. Each and every personal '* me " is an individualized aspect of a super-personal Ego ; and each develops diff erently according to its own law and order of exfoliation ^ under the influence of expérience, which serves to elidt the inner latent powers and qualities.

This development takes time, but there is plenty of time. The ultimate ^t lies buried deep down and far removed from the consciousness of the normal man, but it is there for aU that. The thing waits. It may tarry, but it will not delay ; that is to say, it is coming on ail the time, but there are hindrances.

To take an example. God — ^if we may give our traditional reUgious name to the Universal Self — in reality is our Home, our great Companion, our enfolding Lover, the deepest Self within the self, the larger Self which embraces ail our narrower selves ; He is the all-flooding Light within which we are rays ; He is the créative Pire, within which we are as fiâmes and sparks ; language is ail too feeble to describe the closeness and intimacy with which He enfolds and enthuses us ; penetrative as light, pervasive as air ; in subtler contact with us than is the ether to the inflow and through-

^ Vide pp. 129 and û. in Civilization : its Cause and Curs,

«à THË ÏIEALIÏY ÔP GOD

flow of which the solickst material offers no bar or hindrance ; more intimate in His embrace of our spirits than that wherewith the océan gathers the drops of water within it, or the eartb-crust enfolds indistinguishably the moimtain roots ; Life of our life, Breath of our breath. Soûl of our soûl ; all-shadowing, àll-indwelling ; the " fulness that fiUeth ail things."

Something at which thèse words but feebly hint is what God is to us in reality, but the consciousness of separateness has placed Him far away, fashioned Him as a mighty Individual in opposition to us, to be feared, to be hidden from in the bushes of the garden, to be wrestled with in prayer and tumed if may be. Much Christian theology is based upon this superficial illusive consciousness ; it is " of the devil " ; it créâtes a gulf between us and God which never existed and does not exist ; and in the train of this fundamental illusion cornes the whole crop of errors, false doctrines, compétitive théologies, which hâve caused untold trouble and despair in the hearts of men.

Through this stage we are destined to pass, and the deliverance will corne with a new expérience rather than with a new theology. Not a few hâve received the harbingers of this libération ; sometimes there are " flashes struck from midnights" and "stars which noondays kindle,'* there are rare *' moments when the spirit's true endowments stand out plainly from its false