It would appear more reasonable that Carrel was inspired to instruct students in the real facts of Life and Living as discovered by him, but not taught in medical institutions.
Carrel’s sudden death in his 72nd year of “a heart attack,” as reported in the press of November 6th, 1944, was the end of a great man and a great doctor. He was greater than his profession. His demise undoubtedly made the medical trust happy; but his book will live to plague the medical institutions, and to proclaim to the world the terrible truth that the system known as medical science is actually a blighting and controlled system of medical ignorance.
Carrel and Lakhovsky were both medical doctors; but the American Medical Association opposed them because their work exposed medical ignorance.
Lakhovsky came to New York some years ago, and the A.M.A. gave him a cold shoulder. It was reported that he entered a hospital for treatment of a minor ailment, and was never seen again.
LESSON NO. 30—MYSTERIES OF LIFE
“To the questions whence, whither, and to what purpose are we here, science gives us today an answer as empty as it did two thousand years ago.”—Professor Harnack, University of Berlin.
Science is doing this and science is doing that. The facts show that science is running in circles and chasing phantoms.
Ouspensky, a leading scientist, wrote a book of nearly 500 pages, titled “A New Model of the Universe.” He exploded practically every theory of modern science, and then capped the climax by declaring: “In reality, of course, no one knows anything” (P. 408).
This scientist showed that we live in a world of illusion. That things are usually the reverse of what we think they are. Our senses deceive us. The sun seems to rise and set. The earth seems to stand still. Iron seems to be solid. Drugs seem to “cure” pain. They deaden the aching nerve while the cause of the pain remains.
Scientists make matters worse by limiting their investigation to things material. They refuse to believe in an invisible world, and grope in self-imposed darkness. They are materialists of the first order, and their theories of materialism are constantly exploding. Yet they refuse to believe in a spiritual world because they have condemned it as a fancy of ancient superstition.
The result is that the word Science is losing the respect of students. It is coming to be more loosely used by schemers and more lightly regarded by scholars. The whole theory of materialism has been exploded, and scientists are busy trying to conceal the wreckage from public view.
Science is defined in the dictionary as “Accumulated and accepted knowledge that has been systematized and formulated with reference to the discovery of general truths and the operation of general laws.”
That definition does not describe modern science.
Modern science is not constituted of the “discovery of general truths and the operation of general laws,” but of man-made formulations and rules, theories and hypotheses, opinions and speculations.
The word Science does not mean the presentation of something new. It means the fund of knowledge and understanding of truth and laws that describe Cosmic Processes in their operations and productions.
Science is positive knowledge based on truth and law. Yet little in the Universe is absolutely known.
Man is ruled by his five physical senses. He can see and hear only within a very restricted range. He must depend for knowledge upon these deficient faculties, which are more limited now than ever before, as modern man is seriously degenerated both mentally and physically; and his technical instruments can never perceive Absolute Reality.
MODERN SCIENCE IS YOUNG
Modern science is in its infancy. It is just emerging from the gloom of the Dark Ages, when men were burned for possessing more knowledge than theology allowed. Some say it is six centuries old. Three centuries come closer to the mark.
It was born under exceedingly adverse circumstances. Its coming was bitterly opposed by theology because its findings were feared. The pioneers of modern science who dared to disclose discoveries that exploded theological dogmas, were quickly liquidated. They were tortured, assassinated, burned.
Thinking men refused to swallow the theological dogmas of creation, supernaturalism, saviors, vicarious atonements, physical resurrections, purgatory, judgment day, future punishment. Such dogmas were contrary to common sense, reason, logic, and the known laws of the Universe and these men were inspired to show that they are obviously false.
Theology represents the gospel Jesus as a supernatural being. That offends reason and creates heretics. It antagonized the thinkers who declared, “There is no supernatural.” And the fight was on.
It is the use of the word “supernatural,” and the preposterous propositions involved, which drive the rational mind to the other extreme. It is this that goads the scientific skeptic into characterizing as mere superstition, the loftiest perceptions of the Soul. The Agnostic is the product of theological dogma.
So modern science was driven into the position of being a movement to oppose the dogmas of theology. It obviously became atheistic and rejected the theory of a Cosmic Principle of Being, Cosmic Intelligence, Cosmic Law and Order. Its major premise came to be:
1. Life is the sum of body functions
2. All is physical matter and mechanical energy
3. The world is composed of blind and unknown forces.
In opposing theology by assuming that everything has a physical basis, physical science has turned, twisted and distorted every fact of psychical phenomena and every fact of physical Nature. It has reduced man to a mere physical entity, and attempted to find physical causes of the “blind and unknown forces,” which include what physical science classifies as the higher phenomena of life.
So long as it seeks only to relate physical causes with physical effects, physical science is admirable. When it attempts to relate psychical phenomena with physical causes, it ignominiously fails.
The inevitable logic of such assumption is to relate intelligence to the digestive organs, to depict Life as the expression of a series of chemical changes, and to define Love as the efflorescence of physical lust. Against such assumptions common intuition, common experience and common sense rebel.
The best intelligence of today accepts generally the physical facts of Nature as collated and classified by physical science. This same intelligence declines to accept the theories of physical science as to the causes of psychical phenomena.
These hypothetical dogmas, based upon only half the facts of Nature, confused even so great a mind as Huxley’s. Having accepted the physical facts of Darwinism, he logically felt bound to accept Darwin’s theories as to the causes of those facts.
As a result, Huxley repudiated Nature and denounced it as a monster without a single principle that conserved justice, or love, or altruism. He forced his reason to accept what his intuition denied, viz., that all we have been, are or may become, are merely automatic results of physical feeding, breeding and battle.
No wonder this great scientist declared Life an unsolvable riddle, intelligence a delusion, love essentially lust, and morality without the sanction of Nature. No wonder he declared, “I wash my hands of Nature.”
Upon just such extraordinary hypotheses as these, physical science attempts to account for and to explain Man. These are the theories which, no less than theological dogma, stultify intelligence, outrage conscience, and violate universal experience.
The best intelligence of today declares that such theories, such assumptions, and such dogmas explain neither the psychical facts of Nature nor all of the physical facts. As a result, honest, unbiased, inquiring minds everywhere are seeking more satisfactory interpretations of the higher phenomena. Such investigators are moving forward regardless alike of dogmatic theology and scientific skepticism.
LIFE
“What is Life? That is another question and the answer is one of the profound mysteries. Science has explored Life down to a single cell of living matter, but what makes the cell alive is not known�
��—Book of Popular Science.
Disregarding all law and certain facts, modern science attempts to create man, define life and death, and solve the riddle of the Universe.
Modern science holds that man is the product of evolution, Life is the function of the body, and Death ends it all.
Bichat said:
“Life is the sum of the functions by which death is resisted.”
Richerand observed:
“Life consists in the aggregate of those phenomena which manifest themselves in succession for a limited time in organized beings.”
Herbert Spencer devoted the entire third part of his Elements of Psychology to a consideration of the question, and by slow and steady strides comes to the conclusion that:
“The broadest and most complete definition of Life will be the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.”
Then came the last word from William Osler, considered the greatest doctor America has produced. He wrote:
“The studies of the physiologist and physiological chemist abundantly indicate that all vital activities are ultimately the expression of molecular rearrangements and combinations. Life is, therefore, the expression of a series of chemical changes” (Modern Medicine, P. 39, 1907).
Professor De Bois-Reymond, University of Berlin, was not satisfied with these scientific definitions of Life. He stated in his book, De Sieben Waltraelthsagen, that there are Seven Inigmas which modern science has not been able to solve, viz.:
1. Origin of Life and its qualities
2. Origin of motion
3. Origin of consciousness and sensation
4. Origin of rational thought and speech
5. Origin of free-will
6. Nature of force and matter
7. Designed order of Nature.
Materialist and evolutionist that he was, Reymond avowed that there are unbridgeable gaps in the theory of Evolution which destroy it. He was constrained to declare that Universal Evolution is not a science but a creed proclaimed by a “group of willful men.”
Recent discoveries of electrons and cosmic rays have increased the confusion of the physical sciences, and caused. Ouspensky to write:
“In reality, no one knows anything” (P. 408).
SCIENCE CHANGES WITH THE WIND
That which is called Science today is a very different thing from what it was yesterday, or what it will be tomorrow.
A few facts have been verified and recorded, and a few laws have been approximately formulated. But all this is subject to revision or even reversion tomorrow.
Give to so-called modern science the most liberal meaning claimed for it, and still it has no existence outside of man’s imagination. In no sense does it stand for Cosmic Laws and Cosmic Processes. At best it is a reflection of these in the beclouded mind of man.
Cosmic Processes deal with realities and are governed by unchanging laws. Man deals with phantoms and is ruled by fancies.
True Science, in the basic sense, is knowledge of the manifestation of that Infinite Intelligence and Invisible Power which activate the Universe and regulate its course.
ATHEISTS AND EVOLUTIONISTS
The world meets another stumbling-block in the fact that modern science is ruled by atheists and evolutionists who declare that all is physical matter and mechanical energy, and that the Universe is composed of blind and unknown forces devoid of an intelligent principle.
Carrel stated that, in various ways, modern science knows there is a spiritual world, but is forbidden to enter it under that definition (P-41).
Truth lies beyond the reach of those who thus are limited in their search and in the description of what they discover.
THE PHYSICAL
Scientists are hidebound in the orthodox. The one point above all others on which they are most narrow-minded, is on the insistence that a physical theory of the Universe must be developed by logical reasoning.
But logical reasoning, mathematics and similar methods will not explain what the mind of man cannot grasp. Unknown to man are the laws of the Invisible World. If modern science must develop a physical theory only, it will never progress farther than it has to date.
There are only four known major things that compose the Universe, viz., space, matter, power and pattern.
Oxygen is said to be an electrical form of force.
Oxygen is a gas, and gases may be liquefied by pressure, proving that some power holds apart what constitutes them. They liquefy and solidify at low temperature, or when heat is extracted from them.
Cold is the absence of heat. Heat consumes space by expansion and allows for contraction when it is extracted from the molecules of substance.
In cases where a heavy gas is extracted from a lighter one, as in the case of water between 0 and 4 degrees centigrade, the lighter gas will expand from it, but will contract thereafter.
No true solid is devoid of crystalline structure. The crystalline character of solids seems to show that lines of force exist which arrange the corpuscles so they appear that way.
The mathematical precision of formulas of chemistry which have to straddle and vary to fit into the atomic theory, are more easily accounted for when we realize that the inherent property of matter and force and their affinities and peculiarities, can be accounted for and are proportional to each other at all times for like conditions and amounts.
THE COSMIC CIRCLE
We have explained more fully in our great course titled IMMORTALISM, that all elements travel in circuits.
Electricity travels in circuits. In our own body we have particles which at some time were in those of our most illustrious antecedents from centuries past, and even some of the stars and planets.
All forces and substances have their own circuit, which holds them in their orderly course and shape. When the required amount of force is applied, an object may be moved from its course and even disintegrated.
Under the Law of Polarity, the Process of Transformation (Creation) operates in a Great Oscillating Circuit, from God, the positive pole, to Man, the negative pole, and back from Man to God to complete the circuit. The stream is continuous, flowing both ways, as symbolized by Jakob’s Ladder, from God to Man and back again (Gen. 28:12).
The transformation from Birth to Death has its counterpart in the change from Death to Birth.
As Life manifests on the physical plane, the change is termed birth; and as it passes on to the spiritual realm, the change is termed death. That change is not feared by those who understand (1 Cor. 15:51). If the truth were not hidden from the masses, it would be the end of modern theology.
Things spiritual we see and understand with our Mind, not with our physical eye. Confusion rises from the fact that man is taught to expect material evidence where matter, as such, does not exist.
Can the eye of the dead see? It is Spiritual Man (Mind) that sees, not the physical eye. The eye is the instrument used by Spiritual Man in the function of vision.
There is change, but no death. The theory of death is based on appearance, illusion, and was invented to give despots power over the masses.
The change from being (invisible) to becoming (visible) is termed birth, and that from becoming (visible) to being (invisible) is termed death. In reality, man is never born and never dies.
In the Cosmic Circle of Life the “Principle of continuity extends from the physical world to the spiritual,” wrote Drummond—and for that he became famous. He shocked the darkened world by voicing a factual truth taught by the Masters a hundred thousand years ago, and suppressed by Constantine in the 4th century A.D.
As bad climate, bad environment and bad habits devitalize the body and decrease its vibrations until it is unable to function efficiently on the life level, its polarity weakens, cosmic radiation is disrupted, and the body slowly sinks from the Great Life Circuit.
Then appears the state of decrepitude termed Old Age, followed in time by somatic decay, termed death, and, under the law governing disintegrat
ed matter, the body substance dissolves and returns to the Cosmic Reservoir (Eccl. 12:7).
In its animated state, the body is subject to the Law of Life. It vibrates on the Life level under the power of the Animating Force of the Cosmos, with constant changes occurring in its substance under the double law of synthesis and analysis.
The body is composed of universal elements which are constantly changing. They enter into and pass through the body, abiding in it for a time without losing their identity with the Universe to which they belong and of which they are part.
THE PHYSICAL PLANE
The Ancient Masters asserted that the four cosmic elements of air, fire, water and earth are the builders, sustainers and regenerators of the body. These appear as four phases of the Cosmic Ray as follows:
1. Thermic
2. Atmospheric
3. Fluvistic
4. Terrestrial
These Four Rays are charged with all the elements of the living organism, and many more. The four elements of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon constitute 97.10 percent of the elements of the organism.
Four is the symbol of New Jerusalem. The Pythagoreans called Four “the great miracle; a God after another manner, a manifold; the Foundation of Nature.”
The fourth letter is Daleth (D); and Daleth is called the “womb,” for it is the feminine First Cause, as Aleph or No. 1 is the masculine First Cause.
Four is the number of the physical plane; of stability; of the foundation stone upon which is reared Man’s spiritual structure. It comprehends all powers, both productive and produced numbers.
Two multiplied into itself produces four; and retorted into itself makes the first cube. The cube is the fertile number, the ground of multitude and variety. Thus from one fountain flow the two Principle of temporal things, the Pyramid and Cube, Form and Matter.
Man’s Higher Consciousness Page 31
