Part 6

The modern transcendentalist does not love life less, he loves it more! The world is alive with a new majesty; the passing multitude, the passing face, every human attribute of life calls forth from him a deeper interpretation; he walks out into the race mind, and with the power of a new word, and a new touch heals it from its infirmity. He does in truth give "absent treatments," and his word is accomplished; the old diseased flesh transmutes in answer to his command. He speaks to the barren walls of poverty and they stretch away into stately halls, for he knows that wherever man posits his consciousness, substance must gather round it; his new words of power and majesty fall like a benediction on the heart of the listening multitudes, and they turn round to face a new tomorrow with a new hope born of a larger understanding.

The transcendentalist walks often in our midst; sometimes he assumes the simplicity of a child to disguise the larger stretches of power within him, but he is out upon the pathway strong and beautiful, wholly replete with promises of perfection, doing the work of the human.

There is a royal road from appearance to reality, from objective to subjective, from the limited to the absolute.

Difference is merging into one great white way through which the new civilization is thronging, led by the intensified vision of the supra-minds.

Unity has carried man above all things of human law, and he has found that Mighty Force of which all is a part, and he is out into the land of "naked visions" and knows.

He dwells securely upon the height and has ceased the long fight with the objective half of himself; he is one with matter because he has transcended and absorbed it; he is centralized in the formless and spiritualized in the formed, and can say from the level of his own Christ consciousness:

"_I and my Father are one."

"All that my Father hath is mine_."

The Psychology of Insanity

With the ever present increase of insanity, it is not only interesting but important that the subject of insanity should be studied from all view-points, and anything which can be contributed that will help in controlling or curing it, should be accepted as good material.

It is an apparent fact that the multitude knows very little about the cause of insanity and less about the cure. Investigation has in the past been directed to the physical side of the disease, and many of the insane hospitals are examples of physical comfort and perfect physical attention, but they are also living examples of the fact that to house, feed and clothe the demented does not necessarily mean a cure, and a call for deeper understanding is imperative.

Civilization needs each individual as a unit in the great working force of life, and those who need to be taken care of by a State take away a legitimate support and add just that much more to the burden of the State.

A civilization which can increase the independence of the individual and lessen the responsibility of the State is one to be directly desired.

Insanity calls for a closer study than has ever been given and only through a deeper realization of its cause, can a cure be brought about and individuals rendered of value to themselves and the country.

Insanity is nothing more or less than disassociated states of mind and need not in reality be any more serious than errors of refraction of vision, faulty locomotion or lack of coordination. It comes because individuals know nothing of the psychology of themselves or their own minds and is the result of over-intensified mental and physical activity and loss of poise, physically, mentally and psychically. The insane are not capable of understanding themselves, and up to the present day there are very few who are able to understand them.

The nurses, matrons and physicians of a great asylum are powerless to assist them because of their own ignorance of the true laws of psychology. The cases which simple, natural, physical methods will assist, are cured, but thousands of others are allowed to drag along with the dreadful stigmata of "hopelessly insane."

Insanity is increasing because civilization is changing, and conditions are changing. As conditions change the minds of men change and today subjective states of mind in the individual are becoming intensified. Instinct, reason, emotion, intuition, revelation and prophecy are all struggling for expression; unrelated and misunderstood they become disease; related and understood they can be made to bring forth a new race with new extensive reaches of intelligence.

There are few people so stupid but that they can testify to the conflicting states of emotions within themselves and there are many people who are perfectly familiar with states of consciousness with which many other people are entirely unfamiliar.

Wherever we go we are continually confronted with what the world calls "freaky" or "eccentric" people, and these people are found in all degrees from the slightly odd folks to those filling the asylums, and strange as it may seem, no matter how queer they may appear to other people, they never seem so to themselves.

There are many families with members whom the rest call irrational, irresponsible or "black sheep." Again, there are many families who have one child who, from the time of its birth, has called for methods of management entirely different from those used for the other children. There are many little sensitive creatures who are afraid of the dark and who have queer ideas and odd ways, and there are delicate little people who have bodies so finely organized that they are nearly broke into pieces with the natural things which the other members never notice. They are born sensitives and remain sensitives to the end of their lives, and only as they can be taught the truth about themselves can they be rescued from some form of mental disturbances.

These people as they grow older, become what is termed "psychics"; they are over-intensified in some of their deeper states of mind. They are not alone the product of civilization, but the product of race evolution. Many of them pass on in semi-normal states of self-support, but they are a well known class, and they are more or less unsuccessful in supporting themselves along natural lines of labor, and if they inherit wealth they run into vagaries and often degenerate lines of living; they squander their all and die in charity.

The common business world is full of psychics and it is correspondingly full of failures for this is not a faculty that makes for success or power with material things.

Psychics who are only slightly disassociated are always a source of annoyance to their friends, and often looked upon as irresponsible, and have to be looked after by some one who has patience enough to be with them, and often they are passed along as having an artistic temperament.

As long as their peculiar development does not interfere with normal action they are unmolested by the public. It is only when deeper states of mind become so over-intensified that they lose their normal relationship to normal things of the world that they are put under control. They are called paranoics, melancholics, demented and insane. A correct mental training would teach them to re-associate their mind and to live a moderately normal life, at least. All drunkards and drug fiends are psychics; degenerates are also psychics. These conditions are simply the result of loss of polarity of normal mind centers, resulting in the conflict of states of consciousness within themselves.

There are also many psychics in the ignorant and undeveloped classes. The witch women and seers, and many of the colored races are psychic. In the past, these people were looked upon as witches and their words and works were known as "witchcraft."

There are many psychics who are also great geniuses. Lord Byron and the "Mad Painter" of Belgium were psychics. History is rife and galleries of art and temples of literature stand as testimonials to some of the constructive productions of their minds, but beside them run dark stories born of their psychic uncertainty.

Criminals of certain types are psychics with no power of physical control and they pass into subjective control and live and do the things that are given them to do from the psychical mind and are often ignorant of their own condition.

Those whom the medical profession call paranoics are simply psychics, over-developed in the subjective faculties--a prey to all the disembodied forces of the subjective plane, and also to every floating thought on the physical plane; they are obsessed by ideas from within and without and their actions bear witness to this statement. Some very meddlesome women, and those who are the terror of a quiet community, are nearly always those who are in the control of the slower psychic forces and unable to consciously direct their own normal states of mind.