London Lectures of 1907 | Page 2

wonder why I lay stress on
this. You will see it at once if I remind you that unless we keep this
definition in mind--accurate, legitimate as it is--we shall be making a
division between the manifestation of the consciousness on the physical
and on the astral and mental planes, between its manifestation in the
physical and those in the astral and mental bodies; and if we do that the
whole of our thought will be on mistaken lines. You need practically to
be pressed back to what you know of consciousness on the physical
plane, before you can thoroughly follow its manifestations on the astral
and on the mental. If you try to separate off manifestations which are
the same in kind though differing in degree, according to the fineness
of the matter which is employed, if you try to separate them off, you
will always regard what you call psychism--that is, astral and mental
manifestations in the subtler bodies--in an artificial and unwise manner.
If, on the other hand, you realise that consciousness is one, that its
manifestation on any plane is conditioned by the matter of the plane,
that it is one in essence, only varying in degree according to the
lessening or the increase of the resistance of the matter of the planes,
then you will not be inclined to take up exaggerated views with regard
to what people are so fond of calling psychism. You will not denounce
it in the foolish way of many people, because in denouncing it you will

know that you denounce all intellectual manifestations, an absurdity of
which very few people are likely to be guilty; if you take your
intellectual manifestations in the physical world as admirable things, to
be always encouraged, strengthened, developed, then you will be
compelled, by parity of reasoning, to understand that the manifestations
of the same consciousness in finer matter, astral or mental, are equally
worthy, and no more worthy, of development, of consideration. You
will not find yourself in the absurdly illogical position of declaring it a
good thing to train the physical plane consciousness, while it is
dangerous to cultivate the astral and mental plane consciousness. You
will understand that all psychism is of the same kind, that on each plane
the development of psychism has its own laws; but that it is absurd to
admire the working of consciousness on the lower plane, and shrink
from it as something dangerous, almost diabolical, when it appears on a
plane higher than the physical.
It is this rational and common-sense view which I want to impress upon
you to-night, to get you out of the region of mystery, marvel, wonder,
and fear, which to so many people surround what is called psychism; to
make you understand that you are unfolding consciousness, showing
out your powers on one plane after another according to the
organisation and the fineness of the bodies in which your consciousness
is working; and that if you will only keep your common sense and
reason, if you will only not allow yourself to be terrified by what at
present is unusual, you may then walk along the psychic pathway in the
astral or mental world, as resolutely, and with as great an absence of
hysteria, as you walk along the psychic pathway in the physical world.
That is the general idea; and, of course, this is the meaning in which,
after all, the word is often used down here. When you say "psychology"
you do not mean only the workings of consciousness in astral and
mental bodies; you mean the whole consciousness of the man, the
workings of the mind, wherever the mind is active; the whole of that
you include under "psychology." Why, then, when you change its form,
should you narrow it down, as though that which is mind on one plane
is not also mind on all planes on which the mind is able to function?
Now let us consider for a moment the workings of the mind on the

physical plane: they are familiar. There is, however, one important
point about them. In the materialistic science of the last century you
had very widely spread, amongst scientific men, the view that thought
was only the result of certain kinds of vibration in certain kinds of
matter. I need not dwell on that. But you are aware that both in England,
and more especially in France and Germany, most elaborate
disquisitions were written to prove that thought was only the product of
nervous matter. You rarely, I think never, now find a well-trained
scientist prepared to commit himself to that position. Those who
survive as representatives of that same school may do so, but they are
literally survivals. The mass of psychologists of to-day admit that the
manifestations of