And now I am going to speak to you upon materialism; I am not going to deal now with a definite religious question, with definite religious teachings, with mighty doctrines in Philosophy, in Spiritual knowledge, which later on I shall hope to unfold before you. There is one thing that is eating the heart out of India, and that is modern materialism. There is one thing which is poisoning the mind of India, and that is the kind of science which is the teacher of materialism and works against Spirituality in the mind. How should I be able to tell you of the moral regeneration of India unless first I can strike at that which is piercing her heart and sucking out her very lifeblood. So--as I have been trained in the science of the West, trained in the knowledge of the physical Universe which is so much used to make men believe that nothing but the physical remains--I take for my first subject this undermining of materialism by science, and I attack it with the weapons that were once used to build it up.
Now it is fair to ask in the beginning why it is that religion and science should appear to be in opposition. Why is it that science should seem to play into the hands of materialism? Why is it that as science has advanced, Religion has found itself pressed backward and backward so that men begin to make excuses for spiritual truths and talk apologetically of religion? Why is it that men advocating spiritual truth are afraid of being called superstitious? Let us see whether there is no explanation why science at the outset should help materialism and the reason also why, as science has advanced, it begins to undermine the same materialism and to destroy that which it has helped to establish? You may remember Bacon, a great philosopher of the 17th Century, speaking on this very point used the following phrase:--that a little learning inclineth men to atheism, but deeper knowledge brings them back to religion. It is a true statement. Look for a moment at religion and science, and you will see why that should be the fact, and why one should be against the other. A man who is a spiritual man--a religious teacher--regards the universe from the standpoint of the Spirit from which everything is seen as coming from the One. When he stands, as it were, in the centre, and he looks from the centre to the circumference, he stands at the point whence the force proceeds, and he judges of the force from that point of radiation and he sees it as one in its multitudinous workings, and knows the force is One; he sees it in its many divergencies, and he recognises it as one and the same thing throughout. Standing in the centre, in the Spirit, and looking outwards to the universe, he judges everything from the standpoint of the Divine Unity and sees every separate phenomenon, not as separate from the One but as the external expression of the one and the only Life. But science looks at the thing from the surface. It goes to the circumference of the universe and it sees a multiplicity of phenomena. It studies these separated things and studies them one by one. It takes up a manifestation and judges it; it judges it apart; it looks at the many, not at the One; it looks at the diversity, not at the Unity, and sees everything from outside and not from within: it sees the external difference and the superficial portion while it sees not the One from which every thing proceeds. You may imagine, to take a figure, that you stand where there is a white light--say an electric light sending out rays from a single point; imagine three tubes going out from this centre and rays of light travelling down each and passing through a glass of a different colour set in each tube; if you look from the point where the electric light is you would see the white light striking outward as a light which was one; but if you went to the far end of the tubes you would there see that the light was of three different colours, as red and blue and yellow, appearing as if the light was of three kinds not one, because in their separation unity would be entirely lost. See how that works in the Universe. You have your three great gunas or attributes through which, as it were, the light comes as through three different glasses, and the one Divine Spirit comes down into manifestation; and it is not only the three gunas that you have but these intermingling one with another, and breaking in a thousand different channels. Then how great must be the differences at the circumference! But how it would lessen the difficulty if men could only see the processes, and know how those results were brought about; if they went further, and if travelling onward they found the divergences greatly diminish, see then how thus going forward, they may come, as it were, near to the one, and reconciliation between Religion and Science may arise. Religion shows everything from the point of the Spirit and proclaims the unity. Scientists show everything from the point of view of diversity and proclaim that, as if in opposition, to the world. But Plato says of the man who can discern the one in the many, that that man he regards as a God; the work of the true spiritual teacher is to show the one under the multiplicity, to make man see the fact of unity underneath diversity, and as science goes forward she also may be used once more to help us, because in passing out of the physical into the super-physical and mental, she is going nearer to Unity.
And now let me turn to my science and give you the proofs of this. First let me refer you, though I need not dwell upon the point, to the remarkable position taken by Huxley in his latest writings, which were new when I was with you last year, but which remain unchanged, uncontradicted, as the latest proclamation of the great teacher of Agnosticism as the latest proclamation of its exponent in European Science. Two great points he made, or rather three. First--and I only mention these briefly, because I dealt with them last year--first he pointed out that the evolution of virtue in man was directly in conflict with the evolution of the physical world: that when man evolved compassion, and tenderness and gentleness and self-sacrifice, when he learnt to use his strength for service instead of self-assertion--he was flying right in the face of the laws by which progress had been made in the physical Universe. He was following the law of self-sacrifice as against the law of self-assertion. Why is it that man can thus set himself against the cosmos? It is because he is approaching the spiritual region; it is because he has begun to develop the essential nature of the divinity itself: for the life of God is in giving and not in taking: the life of God is in pouring out and not in grasping; and as man feels the life of the Spirit in him against the life of the animal, he grows Divinely strong. And when you find men of science admitting that the evolution of virtue is by the law of self-sacrifice, you may perhaps begin to admit the possibilities of what is said in some of the sacred scriptures, that Creation always begins with Sacrifice. You may remember that--I am quoting to you, leaving out only the first great word--"the dawn is the head of the sacrificial horse, of the horse which arose out of the water, the water which the commentary says represents Paramatma." All creation is Sacrifice. The source or dawn is the sacrifice, and everywhere the soul that would develop must live a life of sacrifice, because as the Upanishad says to you, a sacrifice of the Godhead was made in order that the world might exist. Sacrifice is the first condition in order that the Universe may be, and that man might be evolved to be one with Himself.
The second point made by Huxley seems taken from the sacred books of India; man can set himself against the cosmos because in man there is an intelligence which is the same as the Intelligence which pervades the Universe. That is the lesson of the Shastras. The intelligence of man is one with the Intelligence which pervades the whole. Man can set himself against the external world, for "Thou art Brahman," and when that is realised by man all else becomes subject to his will. And the third belief that Huxley has thought fit to declare is that the working of consciousness in the higher cannot be understood by the lower. There is nothing against the analogy of nature in supposing that there are grades of intelligence rising above men. There may be other intelligences higher and higher and higher, reaching further and further far above the noblest intelligence of man. And there is nothing, he says, to make it impossible that there should be in the universe, above these grades--a Single Intelligence. But what is that? Nothing but what has been proclaimed in the Scriptures, Isvar, the Lord, the Logos, the Word of which all things were made. So that you may see how, on these lines, science in the mouth of one of its greatest teachers is undermining materialism.
Now let me go a little further. Let us see, not from the mouth of the teacher, but from the facts themselves, how changes are going on. Physical facts are being discovered which show that underneath the material mind must be at work. Underlying the physical, intelligence must be active; .underlying a particle of what was once called dead matter, a metal, a crystal or a stone, there is a moving life--there is a ruling intelligence. First let me say--and the force of the argument may excuse repetition of it--that if you take a crystal, you find it grow along geometrical lines, with absolute definiteness of angles, as though a compass were used to trace it, and these lines make geometrical figures. So that Plato's phrase "God geometrises" is seen to be true even in the animal kingdom. Then again when from the mineral you go to the vegetable where life is more active, where there seems to be less regularity, where there seems at first less of order, you will find in reality that even in its multiplicity there is order, that in the vegetable as well there is the same immutable law. If you take the branch of a tree, you may study the way the leaves are set, and you will find every leaf in a definite place, both as regards the leaves lower down and higher up. So that the leaves of the tree are developed on a geometrical plan. More than that. Since I last stood here to speak to you, a series of investigations has been made into the way that metals behave under exercise. Every engineer and other employer of machinery has noticed that when metal is used, where there are bars and wheels and other parts making up the machine, that with the use of the machine, what is called "fatigue" occurs. The metal gets tired. But what does this mean? It has been observed that, after a certain amount of exercise, the machine will not work well. It works like a tired horse or a tired man; it stumbles and cannot carry on the work. What shall be done? Let it rest. It does not want improvement, as every part is perfect; it does not want repair--there is nothing in it which is broken; it only needs to rest; and if it is allowed to rest it recovers from its fatigue, without a single thing being done to it, and it goes on to work as well as ever, showing that rest has given back its energies and that, just as a tired animal reposes, so also the "dead" metal may repose. This shows that even in a metal there is life--for a dead thing cannot get tired, a dead thing cannot lose its energies, a dead thing cannot be restored by rest. These are all signs of a living body; where there is fatigue and recovery of energies by rest, there is life existing, however hidden it may be under the form which conceals it from our eyes. And now for a moment turn to Chemistry. I took first that point of the metals because it is a point which on thinking over you will find exceedingly plain and intelligible. But turn now to Chemistry. One great argument which materialists used to take from Chemistry was this: that as advances were made in what was called organic Chemistry, or the Chemistry of living things, it was shown that the separation made between organic and inorganic Chemistry was artificial. As a matter of fact, they said there was no fundamental difference and both organic and inorganic Chemistry were on the same lines; therefore they thought that the introduction of life as a thing separate and apart from chemical agencies must be given up. That argument was very much strengthened by chemists in the laboratory making certain things which before had been found only as products of vegetables and animals and which had been regarded therefore as the outcome of living energy. These things were said to be things which could only be produced by living organisations. During the present century, however, a large number of these bodies have been made by chemists, and they have succeeded here in breaking down the barriers between the organic and the inorganic; and the result was that at once it was said, "you see life is only, after all, the result of chemical energy, and not an outcome from the supreme source, but only something in connection with the chemical energy; you were under a mistake in supposing those things were always found as products of living things, and therefore there is not needed to explain them a source of life from which all living things proceeded. See how the chemist has proved you out of court; see how he has made that which you said could only come from life." Thus apparently was one of the arguments knocked down which seemed to prove the life of the world as coming from the life which was Eternal and Supreme. But Chemistry, in the course of these very investigations, going along the lines called organic, has given us an argument stronger than the one attacked. It places within our reach arguments far stronger, far more potent than the one which it destroyed; for it shows that in the organic the atom is not only, as I told you last year, formed by the action of electrical currents out of primary matter, but it shows further that the atom here progresses; that the atom in the animal kingdom is not at all the same as the atom of the vegetable in its combining power. It shows that the change is not a change of material attributes, but a change of inner life, of internal differentiations--the atom changes within itself, as all living things do; for one of the great signs of life used to be said to be this power of adaptation from within. Take an atom in the mineral kingdom such as carbon. All its combinations are simple, all its combinations are one by one. This fourfold atom can join with others in definite and simple combinations, but when it passes forward, having gone through the mineral kingdom, then by an inner evolution, it changes its combining power and unites with itself to form a number of compounds, forming closed rings, so as to make complicated combinations never found in the mineral kingdom. Taking the old story of evolution as laid down thousands of years ago, not in the modern but in the ancient forms, we learn that this atom is part of the Universal life, that it is not dead matter but a living thing, that atoms are minute lives which go to build up external forms. We are able now to bring arguments from Chemistry to show that there is atomic evolution in the universe, that the progress of life which we see around us is no dream of the ancient Rishis but a reality. The scientists look only at the form and not at the inner life; but as you study the atom, you realise that this increased power of combination means evolving life within it. Not only is that seen, but it is also now admitted that life cannot be regarded as an outcome of chemical agency. It is admitted that life shows certain specific energies which differentiate it from electrical and chemical affinities, and you may get the ,phenomena of living things among the energies which science is unable to trace to their source. Once it was thought that life might be explained as the outcome of chemical and electrical agencies, but now it is admitted to be something more. Science now admits that although they are correlated with the life, they are not the life itself, and although they accompany the phenomena they cannot be regarded as their sources. So that from the chemistry which was the greatest hope of the materialist, we may now obtain arguments for its undermining.
Pass from that to electricity and see how here, in the latest discoveries, are arguments that may help our works. It is not only that science has proved that whenever thought is present, electricity is also present, interesting as that is, as showing the close relationship between them; but we are also told that there may be a development of an organ in the brain of man which will take cognizance of electric vibration directly and not indirectly. Let me show you what I mean. You see the light here because the light makes vibrations, and these vibrations strike on the organ we call the eye. The eye is so put together in its minute parts, that these vibrate in response to the vibrations of the ether; so that whenever these vibrations are present, certain particles in the eye vibrate in response and give to us the sensation which we call light. Now these vibrations are within narrow limits; there are vibrations in the ether wider and narrower in wave-length than those which we call light, and to these our eyes do not answer. Therefore if they alone are present, we are in darkness; we cannot see. So again suppose we had developed the organ which is necessary to respond to the electric vibration, while we had not the organ of sight. Then this room would be dark to us, though filled with the vibrations we now call light. Then the consciousness could not perceive the light. But if we had developed instead of the eye another class of organs which answered to the electric vibrations, and suppose a large electric machine were fixed at one end of the hall, and a strong electric current sent through the hall, we should be able to perceive because the organ in us would vibrate in answer to the electric current, and the current would reach our consciousness through this organ. The consciousness is helpless without an organ that receives from without, and only the body can receive and transfer vibrations to the inner intelligence. That has been very clearly pointed out, and to take a striking illustration used by Professor Crookes: suppose we had no eyes to see the light, and suppose we had an inner organ which answered to electricity. This air would be opaque and we could not see through it, while a silver wire going through the air would be transparent, would be like a tube going through a solid mass. Though you would be able to perceive along the silver wire, because silver is a good conductor of electricity,you would perceive the air as a solid round the silver which would look like a hole. Do you see how rational the illusory theory can become when you learn a little more science? Do you see how matter is no longer the thing which it was, a solid material, but by a change in the organ of consciousness, what is solid today may be permeable to-morrow? And thus the idea is largely right that regards matter as an illusion; for what we call matter is only a generalisation of the impressions received by consciousness by way of the senses. It is the translation in consciousness of the unknown something which works upon us. In fact, what we call matter is but a reflection in the consciousness of an aspect of the Supreme Unknowable Unity, just as the Spirit is the reflection of the other aspect of the same Unknowable Unity. Thus science is bringing us back to this part of the ancient teachings, and if a materialist comes to you and says that matter cannot pass from matter, just throw into his mind for him to think over, some of these later facts.
Pass I from that to another closely allied point--that of thought-transference. Thought-transference is now being acknowledged, though for a long time science was very doubtful as to its acceptance, and if you spoke to a man about it he most likely regarded you as a crank, or even called you a fraud, for it was easier to call you a fraud than to admit that he was ignorant. There are men for whom it is impossible to say "I do not know," but anybody can say "you are a fraud." The ignorant who are not able to understand, people who are most self-opinionated nearly always call out "fraud," when confronted with the unintelligible. Look now at thought-transference. Thought is a form-producing force; when Brahma thought, worlds appeared. In the ancient books it was always taken to be granted that action is an effect of the mind. But it has been asked contemptuously of the writers of these books, what did they know about modern science? What did they know compared to our advancement? For we are supposed to know everything nearly in this 19th century! Yet, after all, the old writers have become justified by the facts. The old teachers have been justified by the later investigations. And some of the best of the younger scientists in England--the old ones are too prejudiced--are ready to take up facts, and they themselves have now performed the experiments that prove that thought-transference is possible. You have a man like Professor Lodge saying that his own experiments have convinced him and that he finds that thought can pass from mind to mind without what is called any material method. Not only he but the Psychical Research Society, which is an exceedingly "respectable" body from the public standpoint, have conducted a number of most careful investigations on thought-transference. The results of these were published in a book some three months ago by W. Podmore, a member of the Society. You will find in this book a record of most careful experiments on the transference of thought from one to another, and the evidence is now so strong that it is impossible to put it out of court.
Oliver Lodge speaking two years ago, said he was sure of thought-transference, but it was alleged that matter might be moved by the action of the will without material contact, and of that he was not yet convinced. But within the last few months Mr. Lodge has himself carried on a number of experiments which have convinced him, he says, beyond the possibility of doubt, that an article may be moved from one place to another without physical contact at all; that bodies can be moved or suspended in the air without the means of physical support, and that he himself has taken part in experiments which have been carefully arranged by himself and other scientific men and they have proved that it is possible and it may be done over and over again. The experiments carried on included therein the taking of small articles and without physical contact passing them from one part of a room to another. The conditions under which these things were done were very rigid. They were carried on in a small island where there were no persons living except the lighthouse-keeper and his family. It was a very little island, a mere rock. Mr. Lodge and two or three others got the owner's consent to make their experiments there. They brought with them what is called a medium who belonged to the South of Europe, who could not talk the language of the inhabitants of the island, so that she could not communicate even with the family on the island, she being an absolute stranger never having been there before. They took her into a room with themselves only, with locked door, and there they performed the experiments in which these phenomena were produced. They kept the reporter outside in the balcony so, that he could not be within sight of what was occurring. The reporter was put outside with a closed shutter between him and the people in the room. He was to write down what he heard, but he was not able to see what happened. Mr. Lodge said he was himself absolutely convinced; he said he could not as yet explain it, but he thought it possible there might be a kind of expansion of vital energies by which a person, under certain conditions, could affect a body outside his physical reach. Just as one body can touch another by the exercise of physical energies, so can it draw others towards it. But he is not yet prepared to say how that energy is exercised. That this was, he knows; how it was, he has not yet satisfied himself. But if he were to read some of the ancient books, he could easily find out. He might find that a man does not consist only of what is called the food-sheath or our physical body, but that men have other sheaths in which consciousness may work, without the limitations which are attached to the physical body. When it is working within there, it can also exercise its power, just as much as it can in the physical body, and may lift an object from one place to another by working with a law of nature in which other forces are concerned. The sheath used is what the Theosophists speak of as the "astral" body which can be utilised for the production of these phenomena, and though it was said to be a fraud when Madame Blavatsky brought an article from one side of a room to another, yet nearly four years after her death you have Mr. Lodge going into the subject, and asserting after a scientifically rigid repetition of the facts that the thing could be done, thus justifying a statement as possible which had been hastily dismissed as a fraud.
I might speak of many other cases of these latest investigations, and show you how they are undermining the materialistic idea. I may turn to Hypnotism, and remind you that last year I remarked that it was becoming a public danger--the power of influencing another, the power recognised by science, which one man had of imposing his thoughts on another. I saw that before long nations would be face to face with crimes which they would not know how to deal with. I said to you that unless the exercise of these powers were very carefully guarded, so that men who were unworthy should not be allowed to grasp these hidden powers of nature, there would be great danger to society in making safe particular classes of crime. Since last year that prophecy of mine has proved itself true, and in certain cases both in France and the United States of America crimes were found to have been worked by the hypnotiser, and the courts have not been able to deal with them, and verdicts of acquittal have been given on the ground that the criminals were not responsible for their actions, that being thrown into the hypnotised state, they could not justly be called to account by the law for the crime which they had committed. So that you have this result justifying the ancient practice of the East in withholding dangerous knowledge of occult forces, and showing that society in the West is face to face with the peril of men who commit crimes but who cannot be held responsible for them, because committing them under the influence of those who suggest them.
What is to be the outcome of these arguments? What is to be the outcome of these later investigations in Chemistry, electricity, thought-transference, Hypnotism, the moving of bodies and the like? To what are these new lines of investigation tending? They tend to show you that the old doctrine is true, that everything is the outcome of mind, that the Supreme Mind is, as it were, behind every phenomenon, that matter is regulated in conformity with the dictates of mind, that it is the truth that thought-forces take for in particular manifestations, and so the Universe is only an expression of the Divine Will. And inasmuch as the mind generates thoughts, and inasmuch as the Supreme and human minds are one in their essence, therefore the mind of man, in its higher manifestations shares in the powers of Supreme mind, and can control matter, can move matter, can model matter, shape matter, and make itself visible in the envelope of thought, and so communicate with other minds without any attempt to speak or hear at all. So that you begin to understand that the saying of the Purana as to creation is not a dream, but that it is from the Supreme Will that forms emanate and build the Universe. And you may understand that this power of the Supreme is more manifest in the power of the mind than in the powers of the body, and that true activity is shown not in running about from place to place, held in the bonds of physical facts, but in quiet thinking, in the use of the imagination and the will. Therefore the Yogi sitting apart, with body absolutely still, with eyes closed, and mouth not communicating with other men, if he be a Yogi indeed, a Yogi in heart not only in dress, he has an inner life, a spiritual life, he may do more than the man of action by his thoughts, by his meditations, by the forces which are going out from him. On these more than on the work of politicians may turn the life of the nation.
Nor is this work only for the Yogi. Every one of you is sending out thoughts that, passing into the astral atmosphere, will take form, and thence affect the lives of men and in their totality the nation's future. If only every one of you would give one brief quarter of an hour's thought each morning to the future of India, and send out earnest wishes for her welfare, hopes for her revival, aspirations for her spiritual greatness, believe me you would make a force that would raise the nation and would mould her future. Your thoughts would gather together, modelling, as it were, an ideal India that should take shape in the external world; your prayers would gather together and ascend to the Feet of Mahadeva, whence would flow forth a regenerating energy that would manifest itself in teachers, in leaders, in guides of the people, who could move the hearts of men and unite them into one mighty Unity. Such is your power over the future, such the service you may render India; for in thought is the power of the Supreme, and it is man's because "Thou art Brahman."