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Advanced Course in Yogi Philosophy and Oriental Occultism454
there can be no sensation unless there is something to “receive” it—and that
receiving-thing is Mind-substance in some degree, or form. This is the point
we wish you to remember. Simple Consciousness and Self-Consciousness
are higher forms of “awareness” than Sensation, but the difference is only
in degree, not in kind. The Sensation of the most undeveloped form of life
differs only in degree from the highest form of consciousness or mental
effort on the part of Man, or even beings much higher in the scale than Man
(for such beings exist—they are as much more advanced than man, as man is
than the beetle—but they were once men, and men will be like them some
day). Outside of the Absolute, all degrees of “knowing” are acts of the Mind,
and the forms are mere matters of degree. Mind is a universal principle,
just as is Matter or Energy, and it resembles them very closely regarding its
manifestations and combinations.
Let us return to the views of modern physical science. We will take Ernest
Haekel as representing the front rank of advanced science of to-day. His
works are regarded as extreme and radical, and he embodies in them the
advanced theories of the materialistic thought of the age. Haekel does not
recognize anything higher than “Substance,” and believes the Universe to
be self-existing, and without any preceding cause. His works show, however,
that modern science has gotten away from the old materialist idea of “dead”
matter, and “raw” matter, and that he, himself has reached the highest
materialistic conception known to the mind of Man. In fact, the school of
thought that he has founded, advancing along the lines laid down by him,
will soon be separated by only the thinnest partition from the school of
advanced “spiritual” thought. One is reminded of the creation of the great
tunnel through the Alps, in which the work was begun from each of the two
sides, the two sets of workers meeting exactly in the middle, and the two
halves of the tunnel being found to fit exactly to each other’s lines. Each set
of these mental workers will meet the other, and will find the Absolute in the
centre—although they may call it by different names.