SelfDefinition.Org
Gates of the Mind
The Proven Psychic Discoveries of
Joseph Sadony
Chapter II
So Herman died just when I felt that I needed him most. Now I was the only boy; I had no brother; and I was indeed alone in the world. For my father was working all day at the large paper mill; my mother was kept busy; the girls had their own interests. I was sent to a Catholic school, but outside of school had to shift for myself.
And now I made some discoveries; first, that Herman was not "dead."
How did I know? I could not see him, nor could I hear his voice. But I very definitely "felt" his presence. And then, of course, I could imagine him by remembering him and in my imagination I could carry on a conversation with him.
Was this really Herman or only my imagination? Well, in the first place, what is the difference between the first sense impression, and the recalling of that sense impression as a memory?
When the reflection of light from Herman that affected my optic nerves affected instead the silver emulsion of a photographic film, we look at the result and say, "That's Herman."
I recall the image of Herman in my memory and say to myself, "It's Herman."
Certainly I know that it is only my memory, and only in my imagination. But then I think, "Well, anyway, Herman is still alive in my mind."
It was that way when Herman was still alive; when I was off somewhere and he was home. I could remember him then too. But now this was different, because there was a "feeling." And somehow Herman, or the thought of Herman, seemed to be able to put a life into my memory and make me imagine things I never imagined before, all through that feeling.
The first time I felt it was a few days after Herman was buried. The feeling came first, and then I thought of Herman.
I imagined him saying, "Well, Joey, I'm still here in your memory, anyway."
I thought, "Now you won't have to stay home all the time, Herman. You can play with me"
And then in my imagination, my memory of Herman said, "Then don't remember me this way, Joey! I'm not crippled any more."
It was then that I realized I was remembering Herman just as he had been when I saw him last. So I changed everything except his face and his eyes and my memory of his voice. Limb by limb I took my memory of Herman and made it over in my imagination, until it could run around as I did.
And then I was so thrilled by the difference that tears came to my eyes. The feeling became so strong that it burst out of my mouth, and I said, "Thanks!"
Then something struck me funny, and I said, "Herman, was that me thanking you, or you thanking me?"
Suddenly a joyous feeling filled me, and I laughed with it.
I ran out to play and imagined Herman running out with me. I began to show him all the things he hadn't been able to see or do when he was crippled.
It did not occur to me to regard it as anything other than pure imagination on my part. I did not think Herman's "spirit" was running around with me. I had always carried on conversations in my mind; and now for a while, instead of talking with myself, I talked with a reconstructed memory of Herman in my imagination. The fact that my imaginary and reconstructed brother occasionally said things in my imagination that I did not knowingly put into his mouth was a fact that passed unnoticed by me at the time. I took it for granted as something quite to be expected.
For example, I would go to the woods, and I would imagine Herman saying, "Well, Joey, we haven't seen any Indians yet."
And this would remind me that my chief anticipation on leaving Montabaur for the New World was the prospect of Indians. There was first a long coach ride. It was right, and I was the only one of all the passengers who stayed awake. I imagined Indians stopping the horses and saying that they would kill me if I made a sound or woke the rest up.
I thought, "But you were asleep, Herman."
And my imagination of Herman answered, "Not when you were scalped, Joey. That woke me up."
And then I laughed, because I had forgotten that incident; but now I remembered that right while I was in the thick of my imaginary Indians during the coach ride, someone in the coach dropped something that hit me on the head. So vivid were my imaginings that for a moment I thought I had been scalped, and woke Herman up with my war-whoop.
* * * * *
School made me nervous, sitting so still. One day I began to beat a rhythm with my hands and feet. The teacher told me to stop, and asked me what I was doing it for. I couldn't answer her.
She said, "Well, if you can do a thing, you can explain why you were doing it. Now tell me!"
All I could say was, "I don't know."
So she struck me over the knuckles with a ruler, and said, "Well, don't do it again, or this ruler will know a better place to hit you."
I sat there stunned and humiliated, with tears blinding my eyes. It was not just the pain on the knuckles. It was worse than that. I had not been long in the school, and I had looked up with admiration at the teacher. I had wanted her to like me, and now she had struck me.
Needing some comfort, I imagined Herman, and said in my mind, "Was that right, Herman? Was it right for her to hit me that way?"
I imagined Herman saying, "Why didn't you tell her, Joey? Tell her why you were doing that. Go after school and tell her."
"But I don't know why."
"Yes you do."
And then it came to me. On the way to America we could not afford a first class passage, so we were near the engine of the ship during the entire trip. For seventeen days the rhythmic beat of the engine pounded its way into my system, so that whenever I became nervous or restless my feet or fingers unconsciously tapped out the rhythm of the monotonous chugging of the ship's engine.
Then I imagined Herman saying, "Do you remember how you tied a tin can to a string and let it down over the side of the ship, Joey?"
Then I thought, "Yes, I would draw it up full of water sometimes. But one day the water in the can was warm. And then it was cold again. I wonder why that was?"
The answer came, "Ask her. Ask the teacher when you explain about beating your hands and feet."
And so I did. She was interested, and talked about it with someone else. Then she told me that when the water I drew up was warm, we were crossing the Gulf Stream . She said she was sorry she had struck my knuckles with the ruler, and would not have done so if I had explained to her; but I wouldn't answer her, and that's why she struck me.
* * * * *
As time passed I took more and more to wandering through the woods, studying all living things in my own way, speaking to them and making believe that they answered me.
I thought, "Everything could speak if we could only interpret it."
By this even as a child, I did not believe that animals and trees could speak the English or any other language of spoken words, or that they had human qualities. (That would have been anthropomorphic!) But I did believe that everything in nature had a "meaning," like a word in the language of Nature; and that this language that we see through our eyes, hear through our ears, smell through our nose, touch with our fingers, and taste with our tongues, was also the language that was in my head when I closed my eyes and ears, and "imagined" things.
This was a language "without words," and this, I thought, was the one language of all the world, the language of thought itself, in which all knowledge could be expressed. I was forced to this language for my own understanding, moving from a country where one language was spoken to a country where another language was spoken.
So I looked at a tree and understood it. I heard a sound and knew what made it without looking to see. I smelled odors in the woods, and knew what they came from. And then I found that if I touched something with my fingers, I could tell whether anyone else had touched it before me.
How did I know? It was a "feeling." And then I found that if I let that feeling make me "imagine" things without thinking, I could describe who had touched, it, and other things connected with it in the past. As time passed, someone told me, "What, that's psychometry . You were able to psychometrize things."
I answered, "But that's silly. It isn't anything but what I feel with my fingers. And then I try to imagine what the feeling means."
And then they would say, "But you described the whole scene exactly, where this object came from. You must see it in order to do that."
But I didn't see it. I saw nothing but my own imagination; nothing but bits and fragments of my own past memories. But what put them together correctly to express the meaning of a "feeling"?
What puts the letters of the alphabet together to form words? What puts words together to form sentences of understanding?
No one could answer me. Nor could I. All I knew was that if I stroked a thing with my fingers until I felt that it was a part of me, like my foot, I could "feel" it, just like my foot.
There is only one way my foot can talk to me, and that is by a feeling. It may be pleasant or unpleasant, hot or cold; comfortable, tired or painful. My own memory tells me why, and what it means. I can't see my foot; it's in my shoe. I can't see my foot even if it's bare. All I can see is the dead skin outside. That's all I can see of anything. All we ever see is the dead skin of things. We never see what anything really is. We can only "feel" it.
If people were going to insist on calling that "seeing," very well then. I could "see" better with the ends of my fingers and with my eyes closed. Also I could "hear" better that way.
To prove it, and to amuse my friends, I would hold my hand high, fingertips in the direction of a distant railway engine five miles away that none of my friends could hear or see. I would say, "It's whistling, only you can't hear it now." Then, "It's coming closer, closer - now it's going to whistle: one, two, three - " and whooo came the shriek of the engine just after my third count.
"But how did you know?"
"I saw the engineer reach up to pull the whistle."
"But how did you see it? We couldn't even see the train yet."
"With my fingers."
"But you can't see with your fingers!"
"Of course not. But that's what you insist on calling it."
"But you must see it in your mind, then. It's second sight. It's clairvoyance."
"Those are just words. And what they mean to you isn't true. I don't see that train and that engineer at all. I'm just imagining it. What I see in my mind is a train I remember looking at one time from close up. The engineer in my mind is one who waved at me one time. That may be him, but I don't think so, and I don't know. It's the engineer in my memory and not the engineer in the train that starts reaching for the handle to pull the whistle. When he starts reaching, I start counting. That's all there is to it."
"But what makes the engineer in your imagination start reaching at the right time?"
"I don't know."
"Well, I don't understand it at all. You're a strange one, and no fooling."
I didn't like this. I would say, "You could do it too, but you don't try."
One time I said, "I'll show you. Let me put your coat over your head. Hold up your hand. A cloud is going to pass over the sun. You tell me the minute it does. Then after a few minutes tell me when the sun breaks through again."
When this was done successfully, I asked, "How did you know?"
"Because I could feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. When it was cool I knew the cloud had covered the sun. When it was warm again I knew the cloud had passed."
"Well what's strange about that? It was a feeling in your hand and you knew what it meant."
"But that's different."
"No, it isn't different. Not in the way you mean. Of course it's different, but it's the same thing."
"What a way to talk! It's the same thing only different! That's about as clear as mud, Joey."
So I stopped trying to explain things for a while. I didn't know enough about them myself.
* * * * *
In school, things didn't go so well. Not that it was hard for me, or that I got poor marks. But they didn't teach the things I wanted to know about, and they didn't talk the language I understood best.
What I wanted I couldn't express or explain at that time. My soul cried out dumbly what others before me and after me found words to say: "Give me the things, not words about things. Give me the thoughts, not words about thoughts."
So I could not bring myself to study then; and in a whole lifetime of research I have never been able to study since; to study things and nature, yes; but not words and books.
Thirty years later I dreamed a dream of being a schoolboy again, kneeling on a dusty corner asleep, while the other pupils worked their heads off studying the essential oils. When recess came, I went out and had a fine time, but the rest were too tired.
This was symbolic of my whole life. I have seen more lives blasted and stunted by brain-cramming than by utter ignorance. Hence I have always preached against tiring out the colt in practice before the hour set for the race.
Man's worst enemy is his memory, he has misused it. It was never meant to be a trunk into which to pack a lot of words and opinions. It was meant to record experience as a sample-case, an alphabet of nature's language, like stringing a harp or piano, one string of each tone. Then any melody in the world of music can be played on it. And even from a distance the vibration of another tone will produce a vibration in my instrument, if I possess a string of like pitch to respond to it. I do not need to see, hear, smell, taste or touch it. The string in my piano is going to vibrate if someone strikes the same string on another piano at a distance.
But the string of my piano is not going to vibrate if I use the piano as a trunk and pack it full of words. The words are going to bang around on the strings so I cannot hear anything else.
As long as I didn't learn from books; as long as I kept my memory from recording anything but direct experience, experiment and observation; and as long as I could seal off a part of my brain for a vocabulary, but refrain from using it in my thinking, then my thinking was not confined to my head. I could think with my whole body, with every nerve and organ: then I would know the truth, for they would not lie to me as men did, and as books did, using words.
I wanted the truth to select its own words, and not for men to try to shape ideas of truth in my brain with their words. This would not be true, and it was impossible ever for it to be true; for that is not what truth is.
Every argument that I ever heard was caused by someone trying to shape the truth by words, instead of allowing the words to be shaped by truth.
Fervently and deeply I wanted the truth, and I could see that none of the teachers knew the truth; none of the books told the truth. It was nothing but words, and words about words. Brick by brick, word by word, I saw the wall being built around us children to seal us for life into one room of our brain, with only two windows, our eyes, safely guarded with prison bars of words stronger than steel that also kept out most of the light; with every other gate of the mind carefully sealed by a word, so that no feeling could be arrived at, save through a word first, like putting gloves on our hands, shoes on our feet, spectacles on our eyes, muffs on our ears, and a woolen padding on every nerve end so we would be cut off from the quivering, life-giving pulsations of direct contact with the truth.
* * * * *
So I revolted; tore down the wall of words; threw off my shoes, both physically and mentally, and walked barefoot even where the stones were sharp and painful.
I went on alone in rain and thunderstorms, praying to God to let me feel the truth that no one could tell me in words. I promised that if He could make me "feel" the right things to do, I would always obey those feelings, instead of what other people told me to do when one person said one thing, and another said another.
When I got out alone like this, a strange feeling would sometimes come over me. When it did, then as far as I could see, everything, instead of being outside my head, seemed to be inside my head.
Looking out over a marsh where the frogs were croaking, I would hear them as if they were inside my head. They seemed to be a part of me, and I would amuse myself by pointing in a certain direction, saying, "One, two, three - now!" - and a big bullfrog would croak from where I pointed.
So far as the evidence of personal experience is concerned, it does not answer the question whether the seeming ability to "cause" a frog to croak at will was a real one, or whether I predicted the croak.
This is merely illustrative. The problem comes up repeatedly in my records, as this type of phenomena is now an established fact with a sufficient number of reliable witnesses, so that the solution to this problem is one of the most fundamental considerations in the fields of science, philosophy, and religion. To what extent does the mind "make" things happen, and to what extent does the mind foresee what is going to happen? Does the mind create thought, or is it acted upon by thought?
Has man deceived himself by extending his conception of biological time beyond the sphere of its function in nature? Does cause precede or follow effect? Have we perhaps gotten the cart before the horse in thinking that the cause comes first because of our manner of recording biological time in a reflective function of memory, where things are naturally reversed as in a mirror or any other phenomenon of reflection? How is it, for example, that in dreams the sound that caused a dream wakes you up, and that the dream precedes the sound that has "caused" it?
* * * * *
Then again, here is an acorn. Overhead I see the oak tree from which it fell. I know that if I plant it, it will grow into another oak tree; and if I gather all the acorns from that, I can prove that within my hand at this moment I hold the means to produce a whole forest of oak trees.
The past is "outside," over my head; the acorn has left it forever. Yet in the same moment I imagine the future forest of oak trees; and I know that at this very minute, though the chemical constituents of that oak tree of the future are in the air I breathe, and in the soil beneath my feet, I know that the true cause of that future forest lies in the palm of my hand, inside the seed (in the future of that growth), and not in the tree overhead, (its past), from which it has departed forever.
The cause of a thing is in action or a function, and not a position or sequence in space or in biological time. The old oak tree produced the acorn in my hand, but now the active cause of the future oak tree is in that acorn as its own future, which becomes manifest by selective absorption in growth. The old oak tree is cut off from any possible function as a cause of growth in the new tree. The power of creation is the future biologically. The past is the memory of the body, the future is the memory of the seed. My dream precedes the sound that causes it, just as my backward is forward in the mirror, for a dream is a reflex of memory.
And likewise when by shock of emergency or will of intent and earnest desire we suspend our logic and reason, and revolt from our walls of words, then only our raw nerves are exposed to nature; we think with our spine, our hands, our feet, our skin. What is outside of us is now part of us, inside. We are a waking dream; we are conscious on the other side of the fence; our actions precede what causes them.
I say, "One, two, three - " and the train whistles. I say, "One, two, three - " and a frog croaks. And one time, before eleven witnesses who are all still living as I write this (this was later in life), I said, in the midst of a storm. "Look at that tree, if you want to see something. Suppose I told you that I could make the lightning strike that tree; would you believe me? Of course not. But watch it. One, two, three - ".
And no one was more astonished than I when a bolt of lightning split the tree before our eyes; for I was in a "waking dream" at the time, having abandoned myself to the spirit and enjoyment of the storm. The lightning bolt broke my state of contemplation, or whatever you may choose to call it; hence I was astonished at the fulfillment of what I had been only half conscious of saying.
* * * * *
This may sound incredible, but I assure you that it is a fact of experience before witnesses, and only one of several thousand cases embodying the same principle. None of my witnesses is of a type to grant me power to cause a particular tree to be split by lightning at the third count of my finger. There are, therefore, only a few other possible conclusions:
1. That as in a dream, my speech preceded the sound or event that caused it; in which case, our conception of and relation to "time" needs deeper investigation and perhaps drastic revision.
2. That neither my speech nor the event was the cause of the other, both being the effect of a common cause; viz. the power that caused the event also called my attention to it, and through me the attention of others before it happened.
Either 1 or 2 with variations could be embodied in a theory of prophecy or prevision. We could state another possibility:
3. That the cause of my speech was not the power that caused the event, but rather a power in myself, or acting upon myself, which could foresee the event without any causal connection whatever.
Still further, 2 might be clarified by limiting the "power" to a purely material nature. For example, we say that "instinct" causes muskrats to "hole in" just before a storm; but reflex conditioned by a change or degree of atmospheric pressure associated with a consequence would account for it.
Moreover, I have turned one of my laboratories into a large electrical condenser, with an electronic ohmmeter connected between a metallic roof and the ground. The radiation resistance of this portion of space started building up one rainy day; and as the needle mounted higher and higher, till it could record no more, at one hundred million ohms, I knew without any "mental phenomena" that lightning was going to strike in the vicinity. It struck within two minutes after the capacity of the meter had been reached. Who is to say that the human nervous organization is not as sensitive as one built by man's hands?
Still, that would not account for picking the right tree. Nor did the meter tell me what my nerves now did after the crash, when I asked, "Did anyone get the horses in before it started to rain?"
My assistant said, "I don't know. Why? Shall I go and find out?"
I said, "The bolt was so close it made me feel as if I were a horse. I imagined a horse leaping into the air and falling down dead."
My assistant went back to the barn and found that the horses were not in, as the rain had come on so suddenly. One of the other men was standing in the barn looking out at the downpour that followed the crash.
He said, "Yes, I know the horses should have been brought in, but I was just starting back to the pasture for them when it started. I'm just waiting for it to let up a little"
So both went back to look for the horses, and found two of them dead. One of them had leaped a six-foot fence and was several feet away without any tracks leading there.
In this case and others like it, I have had delicate instruments in my laboratory, in a temperature-controlled room, which correlated in their functions with outdoor temperature and weather changes, but slightly in advance of the outdoor effects. It became evident that the instruments were being acted upon at once by forces that a little later, sometimes five to twenty minutes, brought about the outdoor changes; thus enabling us to predict them by a small margin. Changes in atmospheric and electrical conditions, for example, preceded local meteorological effects, as also atmospheric tidal effects on temperature changes.
Thus it seems reasonable to believe that the human nervous system might be able to detect conditions on the same basis. But this will not account for all the phenomena observed. The imminence of a lightning bolt might be felt, but what explains pointing to the tree it will strike, and timing the flash to the second? What explains the fact that when a real horse leaped into the air and dropped dead, a memory of a horse in my imagination did likewise?
And if what causes a frog to croak can act more quickly upon my nervous system when "attuned" to it, giving me time to count three before the frog reacts, how does this work with the engineer tooting his whistle, or a man doing what I say he is going to do without his knowledge of the fact, so that the power of direct suggestion is eliminated? Did I make him do it; did I foresee that he was going to do it; or were we both acted upon by some unknown third factor that caused me to predict the act, and the other man to fulfill it?
All that is established experimentally (and this I have done thousands of times in the course of my research) is a relation of sequence with respect to the biological time of me and my witnesses. (1) I state what is going to happen. (2) It happens. Is 1 the cause of 2? Is 2 the cause of 1? Are both 1 and 2 the effect of a common cause? Is the relation entirely fortuitous, i.e., just a matter of "chance" or "coincidence"? Or is there some other explanation?
For example, is it possible that our conception of causality is in error, and that prevision does not imply predestination; that prophecy and "free will" are perfectly compatible if not identical, in the sense that free will requires dimension in biological time?
If free will on the part of Deity or man requires the setting in motion of processes that require or constitute time, the determination and the fulfillment of free will will be separated by a time interval that may vary from an instant in which you ask your neighbor at the table to pass the butter, up to a lifetime that may be cut short if it is your "free will" to end it, or to violate the laws of health in slow suicide of neglect.
In any case the aim of the bullet can be altered up to the moment the trigger is pulled; but once pulled, the bullet is on its way to a target that was not predestined until the release of nature's forces beyond man's control.
Since in every case free will does involve a time interval, however short or long, between its determination and its fulfillment, it is perfectly possible that prophecy is based on immediate knowledge or foreknowledge of the execution of free will in a determination that thus permits the manifestation of prophecy in perfect harmony with free will. Yet this has been considered in philosophic and theological difficulty of insurmountable nature, whereas it is in nature and human experience no difficulty at all.
The only difference between scientific and intuitive prediction is that in science the execution of an act of free will is known by observation or intention, and that in the case of intuition it is "sensed" or "felt" in a way no more "occult" or mysterious than the function of an insect's antennae, but in man by the coordinated activity and sensitivity of his entire nervous organization. And whereas science is based on reflective analysis and comparison of sensory perceptions and memories of past sensory perceptions, intuition is based on the automatic and synthetic coordination of man's entire physiological organization, wherein by selective stimulation of reflex arcs (called "memory") a series of "feelings" is transformed into an activity of imagination that constitutes understanding and provides a basis for responsive activity of the motor or sympathetic nervous system.
If thoughts may be changed, environments may be changed. If environments may be changed, destiny may be changed, for there is a constant adaptation to environments. So "destiny" may be altered by one who knows the laws by which he can do so intelligently. This knowledge constitutes "free will" and involves "moral responsibility." Not everyone acquires or exercises it, hence the present condition of the world today.
Most of us do what we do today because of the momentum of yesterday, or by reaction to stimuli, without exercising the ability to resist or suppress that reaction. Thus we are governed by past and present (i.e., memory and sensory reaction), which perpetuates vicious circles, retards progress, and prolongs undesirable conditions; whereas the exercise of "free will" consists of and entirely depends upon a consideration of and preparation for "tomorrow."
The present moment is too late to exercise this prerogative with any expectation of altering the present moment. We can alter our future in cooperation with nature's laws, by considering between two possible courses of action, and choosing not merely the course of action leading to the "most desirable" result, but the criterion by which we shall evaluate that "desirability."
The mistake many make is in considering the "will" and "desire" as simple things. They are not simple but complex. It is possible to change the will by "willing to will," and to change a desire by "desiring to desire" (i.e., by changing one's criterion).
Man has two sources of desire and will that are founded in two distinct physiological systems of conditioned reflexes. One of these he shares in common with all animals; the other is distinctly the endowment and distinguishing characteristics of man. Neither of these two systems is "free" insofar as the reflexes have already been formed and conditioned. The freedom that is denied to animals and enjoyed by man is the power and the necessity by reflection to create and modify the growth and development of further reflex arcs (i.e., to make or modify tendencies, habits or hopes).
If we call this reflective and representative ability "intellect," then this is the seat and source and modus operandi of individuality and free will. For the intellect may lend its aid as a modifier to either one of man's two sources of will; or man's two sources of will may engage in conflict for the possession of the intellect. The one is the will of experience, habit, instinct; the other of the selective development of latent possibilities in the seed. One is the voice of the past; the other of the future. Free will is the gift of prophecy; and the gift of prophecy is free will.
The moment you lose hope and faith, your destiny is established regardless of your will, like a bullet shot from a rifle that cannot be turned from its course. As long as your optimistic hand holds opportunity, you govern "fate"; but if you drop it through doubt, carelessness or pessimism, you are in the hand of fate's "destiny," not your own will.
Thus religion, as the guarantor of hope and the guardian of faith, is our only organized insurance of freedom and free will. A wholly dogmatic and authoritarian religion, however, is a religion in name only, a speculative system of beliefs, not an operative and phenomenal function of faith.
* * * * *
Free will is the power. What man believes to be his "will" is but a dam for the capture and use of this power. All is right until he uses his willpower the wrong way.
This is the power of the individual, of governing the polarity of his desires by commanding the animal propensities or the spiritual sentiments. Thus he determines which shall predominate, according to whether he allows himself to respond to instinct (past), or to be influenced by intuition or inspiration (future).
Man's only escape from this fundamental conflict of choice has been a disastrous one for him (i.e., to reject both instinct and intuition), thus confining himself to the independent operations of the intellect (i.e., to a world of reflective and verbal representations).
Within this sphere of purely intellectual activity, the truth is entirely irrelevant with respect to the physiological and psychological consequences of the reflective and representative activities of the brain and nervous system. For the multifarious combinations of memory sensations create states of mind and motivate action without regard to their "truth" or "falsity" with respect to any criteria whatever.
Until we embody the physiological laws of thought in a logic capable of correlating language with life, more philosophic speculation is barren and without any probability of correspondence with truth.
Our only practical physiological means of insuring the correspondence of our imaginative activity with external conditions is by the use of special sensory organs in the acquisition of experience, the exercise of immediate observation, and the invention of apparatus in experiments. This is science.
Our only practical means of insuring the correspondence of our imaginative activity with external or internal conditions beyond the capacity and ability of our sensory organs to acquire experience, to exercise immediate observation, or to invent and apply activity of the entire nervous system as "antennae" in the acquisition of knowledge by "feelings," which are to be understood only by the selective stimulation of memory elements in the activity of imagination from which all independent operations of the intellect have been rigidly excluded.
This is the domain of religion, not as a system of speculative belief, but as an operative function of intuition and faith that involves and includes the inspiration of all the so-called spiritual gifts, including prophecy and all types of mental phenomena to which have been falsely attributed occult or psychic connotations.
The exercise of the latter to the exclusion of the former produces but half-men and half-truths: i.e., mystics and mysticism. The exercise only of the former produces but half-men and half-truths: i.e., skeptics and skepticism.
The materialism of science and the spiritualism of religion are each in themselves incapable of embracing the whole man or the whole truth. It is only the two together, functioning in one man, not in separate men, that produces the capacity of mankind to a universal consciousness, coordination and understanding.