Chapter XXIII (part 5)

Only a personal experience of it, or a prolonged study of men who have passed into the new life, will enable us to realize what this actually is. The writer expects his work to be useful in two ways: first, in broadening the general view of human life by comprehending in our mental vision this important phase of it, then by enabling us to realize, in some measure, the true status of certain men who, down to the present, are either exalted to the ranks of gods or are adjudged insane. The writer takes the view that our descendants will sooner or later reach, as a race, the condition of cosmic consciousness, just as long ago, our ancestors passed from simple to self-consciousness. He believes that this step in evolution is even now being made, since it is clear to him both that men with the faculty in question are becoming more and more common and also that as a race we are approaching nearer and nearer to that stage of the self-conscious mind from which the transition to the cosmic conscious is effected. He knows that intelligent contact with cosmic conscious minds assists self-conscious individuals in the ascent to the higher plane. II The immediate future of our race [the writer thinks] is indescribably hopeful. There are at the present moment impending over us three revolutions, the least of which would dwarf the ordinary historic upheaval called by that name into absolute insignificance. 1 They are: (1) the material, economic and social revolution which will depend upon and result from the establishment of aerial navigation. (2) The economic and social revolution which will abolish individual ownership and rid the earth at once of two immense evils—riches and poverty. And (3) The psychical revolution of which there is here question. Either of the first two would (and will) radically change the conditions of, and greatly uplift, human life; but the third will do more for humanity p. 313 than both of the former, were their importance multiplied by hundreds or even thousands. The three operating (as they will) together will literally create a new heaven and a new earth. Old things will be done away and all will become new. Before aerial navigation national boundaries, tariffs and perhaps distinctions of language will fade out. Great cities will no longer have reason for being and will melt away. The men who now dwell in cities will inhabit in summer the mountains and the seashores; building often in airy and beautiful spots, now almost or quite inaccessible, commanding the most extensive and magnificent views. In the winter they will probably dwell in communities of moderate size. As herding together, as now, in great cities, so the isolation of the worker of the soil will become a thing of the past. Space will be practically annihilated, there will be no crowding together and no enforced solitude. Before socialism crushing toil, cruel anxiety, insulting and demoralizing riches, poverty and its ills will become subjects for historical novels. 1 ______ In contact with the flux of cosmic consciousness all religions known and named today will be melted down. The human soul will be revolutionized. Religion will absolutely dominate the race. It will not depend on traditions. It will not be believed and disbelieved. It will be part of life, not belonging to certain hours, times, occasions. It will not be in sacred books, nor in the mouths of priests. It will not dwell in churches and meetings and forms and days. Its life will not be in prayers, hymns nor discourses. It will not depend on special revelations, on the words of gods who came down to teach, nor on any bible or bibles. It will have no mission to save men from their sins or to secure their entrance to heaven. It will not teach a future immortality nor future glories, for immortality and all glory will exist in the here and now. The evidence of immortality will live in every heart as sight in every eye.