CHAPTER XX

THE VARIATION OF SPECIES UNDER DOMESTICATION

One who has felt the Divine energy of Truth and realized thereby a surcease from the bitterness of the flesh can imagine some fortunate being, unhampered by organized society or conventional laws, falling heir to this inheritance. The imagination easily distinguishes the light in his eye from the highest expression of human ecstasy around him. With head erect in holy contemplation and light of foot like some disembodied being, he would wander from place to place endeavoring to communicate to other beings like himself the glory that is his.

But the world no longer welcomes a man coming to it wearing a sheepskin and eating locusts and wild honey. In fact, it does not stop at rejecting him but tells him to go to work and earn a suit of clothes and a meal ticket. Organized society must of necessity have tribute to defray the expenses of its existence. It demands that he either own land and pay taxes or else he must pay rent. This too in the face of the alternative of being sent to jail where he must pay for his food and lodging by energy expended in the interest of the organization. Such is the penalty exacted of us for knowing that we are naked.

It is easily discernible why the nomadic tribes would be most susceptible to the influence which comes to us through contemplation. Equally true is this of pastoral peoples whose simple wants are in keeping with their simple nature. Poverty, which is a relative term and exists only in the same ratio as wealth and as a result

of the fiat of organized society, is a small factor among primitive peoples. Their own nearness to nature and reliance on the natural fertility and fecundity of nature causes them to typify God's loving care and bounteous plenty by the self-sustaining sufficiency of nature.

But, the ever increasing demands of the thoughtout mind develop a proportional demand on nature. This results in two things: intensified cultivation and transportation. Increased area results in demands for transportation facilities and intensive cultivation, for the purpose of avoiding transportation, demands tools and methods. These demands on the inventive faculties necessarily develop these faculties. Here ecstatic joys give place to joys growing out of human sufficiency. Permanent location sets metes and bounds, which afford opportunities for cunning and inspire justice. The economic and ethical life begins to attract the attention and the supernal becomes more and more difficult of application.

At this period the thought-out mind begins to make application of its powers derived from its knowledge of the Divine and natural. Heretofore the blending of these two has sufficed, but the exactions of thought-out living demand constructive thought, correlated ideas and institutions. The Revealed or Spiritual, the Inspired or Ethical and the natural or temporal become the trinity which constitutes the main factors in civilized existence. The good will war with the evil in each and the mistaken ideas of good and evil will war with each other's source until reason reveals the true mental modus.

The departure from the merely natural by a race is attended by monstrous superstitions resulting from

attempts to explain phenomena. This period of a race strikingly resembles the same period in children whose attempts to explain natural phenomena have always been a source of amusement in the home and school. Sometimes this period is never outgrown even when surrounded by a more comprehensive element. An instance I recall of an old caretaker, an ex-slave on a farm in Virginia. I was then ten years old and he delighted in telling stories of invisible things that existed all around us. He had no conception of organized society, although in many ways he was a useful and intelligent man. One

of his stories, describing the origin of law and custom, I will relate. "In the beginning," he told me, "everybody had his opinion of how things ought to be and people couldn't agree about what was right. So they decided to have every man write a book about the way things ought to be. They appointed a day when they were to gather together and select the best book to run the world by. When the day came they had long tables on which the books were piled. While they were getting ready to examine the books it became very dark and an awful storm came. The wind blew so hard and the rain came down so thick and it was so dark the people could not see each other. When the storm was over there was only one book left that was not blown away and the world has been run by that book ever since." The consciousness of the existence of organized society, whose origin he could not understand, stimulated the imagination to make this explanation.

The imagination stimulated to a state of awareness always acts in this way. He whose imagination has been stimulated by Revelation, without previous knowl

edge of the evolution of the earth and civilization, has been responsible for the remarkable attempts to explain natural phenomena as instanced in the second story of creation in the Book of Genesis. It was this very phenomenon in the form of imaginative explanation, among those to whom Substance had been revealed, and with whom I associated, that awakened me to the appalling realization of the possibilities of a miracle-working evil. Naturally one will ask, "If the evil spirit works miracles, what is the distinctive character of God?" In studying these people and myself for the purpose of solving this riddle, I began to put into language susceptible of intelligent analysis the nature of that form of evil described in the Bible as: "Spiritual wickedness (wicked spirits) in high places (heavenly places)." When I learned that the only power was Spirit-Substance I was anxious to learn the source of the evil that makes bold and confident natures closely allied to celestial power. All around me was some form of evil daily practiced by those who possessed a knowledge of Substance and who in the name of the Holy Spirit were healing the sick. Furthermore, and what interested me most, was the presence of some agency among these same people that was causing more suffering than they were curing. The material was at hand and I had myself seen Substance. The opportunity was mine and the only question was one of physical strength and fortitude to meet and overcome the human hatred such a work would array against itself. My first efforts were in the nature of tentative explanations of the possibility of Spiritual Power being perverted unconsciously by the preponderance of evil in the thought-out mind. As has been the method of this

class of people in all times my explanations were not met with intelligent contradictions but instead by a form of slow persecution accompanied by the most subtle suggestions of dark and devious ways spoken of with bated breath.

After several years of careful investigation I was convinced as others have been when they have understood this deception, that Revelation unaccompanied by the tempering and enlightening influence of science and a socialized conscience, destroys the faculties of reasoning and intensifies the tyranny and cunning of the natural thought-out mind.

Such then is the source of the evils that have ever been the burden of religious powers. Throughout the Orient are millions of people who have been in a measure under this influence. In history as known to man at the present day we have records of these people who have lived on through the ages in a merely natural state with a consciousness of Substance. Invention, mechanics, engineering-the genius of the Occident-have never knocked at their door. Inspiration, the Light of the World, has been hidden behind the darkness of the merely natural and this darkness has consisted of the hope of phenomenal transformation into supernal ecstasy. Revelation teaches the nothingness of nature not only in words but by the effect of Substance on nature, in the form of power over those evils that beset life here in earth. Moreover, this is the power we need. Man cannot live a merely natural life after his awareness has created necessities which voluntary nature will not supply. This is especially true when awareness is the effect of Inspiration, or putting it in another light, the purification of