Democratic Ideals (Brown)/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
THE RADIANT CENTER
The following lecture is reproduced here, although it is not Mrs. Colby's best or most popular lecture, but because it is unique in its subject and manner of treatment. It answers in a plain and intelligible manner the question often asked, "What Is New Thought?" and it suggests ideas which are inspiring and are new to many. Like most of her lectures it was not prepared for the press, but consisted of notes and references to be used in speaking. Many poetic quotations which, being recited by the speaker, doubtless rendered the lecture more impressive were not written out, but only indicated. These are necessarily omitted. Mrs. Fanny Hale Gardner, a friend of the editor, has prepared the manuscript for the press. There are undoubtedly places where passages may seem abrupt and unfinished. This was inevitable since the notes were incomplete, and much was left to be supplied extemporaneously by the speaker.
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THE RADIANT CENTER
An Address Given in San Francisco, August 30, 1915
A sure and unimpeachable basis for the New Thought point of view must be sought in the very nature of things. It must be axiomatic so that its opposite is inconceivable, when the proposition is stated. Such is the conception of unity in which science and philosophy at last find their common meeting ground. To find any point of contact between individual manifestations we must go back to the Center from which all have come. As Bergson says, "the unity lies in the initial impulse behind and not in the direction along which objects are moving." Thinking back as far as our minds can go we come to Unity. We can think back as far as the One Source from which all have come. Since there is this diversity of manifestation we must look back to the Source to understand the essential essence of the manifested. We must look to the Universal to understand the Individual. There is an everlasting difference between the deductive and the inductive thought, both necessary modes of reasoning to enable all kinds of minds to arrive at some degree of truth. Some minds find it only possible to reason from what we know. But as a great Danish psychologist recently said
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at a congress in Copenhagen, "the most important things for us to know are the unknowable, and the search for reality leads us inevitably to mysticism/ Edison says, "Science is mostly imagination." He relates it absolutely to New Thought teaching when he says, "It is by conceiving what might be before one has seen the way to realize it practically that scientists have been buoyed up through the period of experiment." We therefore have good authority in philosophy and in science for venturing to predicate of the Infinite all that our finite minds can possibly conceive of the highest and best, knowing that while it certainly transcends that conception it cannot contradict it. Our highest conception of God is therefore a base from which to measure the finite.
The point that is most strongly and constantly emphasized by New Thought people is that one must find the Divine in himself and rely upon that. I have myself defined New Thought as the philosophy which recognizes man's inherent divinity. Some make statements so strong along this line that all help, inspiration, salvation from any force external to themselves are virtually excluded. Emphasizing the unity of life and that all is God, they put it, "God and I are one and I am the one." I have heard this stated from the New Thought platform in so many
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words. Therefore I want to emphasize the other side of this great truth as being the fundamental proposition and that which gives truth and value to the human side of it.
To me there is a world of difference between saying "God and I are one and I am the one," and saying "God and I are one and God is the one." With the former statement we are trying to get a realization of the universal from the limitations of the individual. We are trying to get a conception of the great orb of the sun from the little ray of light that peeps through our own closed shutters. True, that ray of light is of the same nature as the splendor of the noon day and bears on its face the story of its origin and of the qualities of its source, but to know the warmth and radiance of the sun we must open wide our blinds and let the glory in. With the affirmation that God is the one we boldly take our stand on the Divine plane and illumine our own personality with the effulgence from the Radiant Center of the Absolute.
We can only say we are omniscient and omnipotent by absolutely losing sight of self and seeing God as the One, the All. We are of the divine essence with infinite potentialities, but we are not the Infinite any more than the ray of sunlight is the sun itself or the drop of water is the ocean. The drop of water that falls in rain has the push of sea
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and sky and cloud behind it and is of the same nature as the sea from which it came and to which it will at last return, but one would get little idea of the ocean from studying the drop. We come from the Infinite and we are on our journey back to it; we have its push behind us to impel us to perform the smallest service with the realization that it is related to the infinite dignity, power and peace of our Source, but the way to understand our nature, our purpose and our destiny is to center our thought on the allinclusive personality of which each created being is a manifestation.
We must have a surer basis of knowledge of Spirit than we can find in man short of his attaining Christhood, We cannot wholly rely on leaders and teachers, however much they may help and inspire. Human nature is so variable and limited that it must have as a standard of values that which is without variableness or shadow of turning. In all ages humanity has sought to find outside itself a perfection on which it may lean. With earlier theological interpretations this led to the belittlement of the human. With the new exaltation of the human we have to see to it that we do not get a belittled idea of the Divine, that we do not try to measure the Infinite with our own yard stick. Even with the new joy of working for spiritual development from the standpoint of evolving
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our potential divinity we must find our inspiration not in ourselves but in that Radiant Center which is at the very heart of Being.
It was a doctrine of Plato that the heavens are always in motion seeking the Soul of the World. We are always restless and unsatisfied until we find the Soul of the World and find our own soul in it. It is natural for the soul to aspire; ever to seek to break away from the paralysis of world environment; the limitations of the flesh and the devil of separateness; to unite itself consciously with the Source of its being. As the poet Mathilda Blind has said:
"As compressed within the bounded shell Boundless oceans cease to surge and swell, So haunting echoes of an infinite whole Moan and murmur through man's finite soul."
That there is this universal longing is sufficient demonstration that that exists which meets this need. Every age and every faith has had a name and many names for that which I am at this time calling the Radiant Center because the idea which that suggests seems to accord with the highest discoveries of science, the deepest thought of philosophy and the most imperative demand of the soul.
Sir Oliver Lodge, known as an eminent scientist and philosopher, says: "We are
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rising to the conviction that we are a part of nature and so a part of God—that the whole universe is traveling together toward some great end. We are no aliens in a strange universe, governed by an outside God. This strengthening vision, this sense of union with Divinity—this is what science will some day tell us is the inner meaning of the redemption of man."
Science has achieved such marvels that humanity fearlessly accepts her most stupendous claim. We exercise a credulity toward her claims that we have long forborne to show to the claims of religion. Trust in Science has supplanted trust in Revelation and now we are looking to Science to carry its demonstrations into the realm of the spiritual as she has already taken us to its borderland in her recent discoveries.
Radiant matter was discovered by Sir William Crookes in 1889 and he called it "Fourth State Matter." He must have meant by that fourth dimensional matter which is claimed as that condition of matter in which all super-sensible phenomena transpire. Radial energy travels, scientists tell us, 120,000 miles a second and acts with undiminished power, yet this is called a physical force. Surely, here we stand before the secret of Life at the point where Spirit and Matter are demonstrably the same, at the place where the hitherto materialist or
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agnostic accepts the philosophy that Spirit is all there is. Whichever way the scientist proceeds he comes to the same inscrutable force.
Atomic energy has been computed to amount to 16,381,000 tons in one cubic inch, oscillating billions of times a second. If you hit a man with a stone you may hurt him a little, but if you could let loose upon him the energy of a microscopic atom you would grind him to powder. What is the next finer force after atomic force and radial energy? Surely it must be that of thought which, if we knew how to use it would be more powerful than any so-called physical force however subtle.
All the great scientists of the day agree that, about and through everything, there is the play of Eternal Mind. Mrs. Boole, an eminent English writer on science, with the woman's intuition relates science to spiritual issues when she says, "The highest moral result of science unassisted by revelation is that there is around us a vital force of which we become recipient under certain moral conditions."
(Note that it is moral conditions which relate us to vital force. In the last analysis Religion and Life are one).
Force supplies a center of generation. There is no force known that does not act from a center outwards. Reasoning from
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analogy we conclude that this vital force which is all around us operates from its own center and this, since all activity generates heat and radiates light, I have called the "Radiant Center."
It matters not by what name we know it but it does matter that we know it as the Center from which we have come forth and to which we are still attached as a ray to its sun. By the Radiant Center I mean that from which all physical manifestation, all sense of beauty, all intellectual activity, and all spiritual aspirations have come forth. It is axiomatic that anything that comes forth from the Universal remains still attached to its center. You cannot take anything from the Infinite. You cannot separate anything from Omnipresence. You cannot know anything apart from Omniscience. We are created out of a general substance yet still abide in it, with this difference in man's relation to it, that while the rest of creation appropriates unconsciously and negatively the heat and light of the Spiritual Center, man has to supply the moral conditions which make him the recipient of it consciously and positively.
Playing upon the dull, opaque cells of our body with the pure white light of Spirit, we set free their wondrous power and we find they are pure spirit, also man takes these rays and makes them new centers of ra 95
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diance. Men have called this Radiant Center by every name that expressed their profound feeling that it is their Source, that in it they live and move and have their being.
"In Zeus begin we—let no mortal voice Leave Zeus unpraised. Zeus fills the haunts of men, The streets, the marts, Zeus fills the sea, the shore, The harbors; everywhere we live in Zeus, We are His offspring too."
Hermes Trismegistus taught the Egyptians that the first Truth was "One and Only":—
"In the Universe there is nothing which is not the God, for He is the Universe. There is nothing in the universal world which is not He. He is both the Entities and the NonEntities, for the Entities He hath manifested, but the Non-Entities He hath in Himself."
"Thou art what I may be, Thou art what I may do, Thou art what I may speak."
In the Vedic philosophy Brahm stands for Being in the sense of the Absolute, a Force manifested in nature as eternal, pure, intelligent, free, omniscient and omnipotent. The Sankhya philosophy calls Being, the Soul, which is the real person of a man, the universal Spirit from which the soul emanates. Rolle, a fourteenth century mystic, traced
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the journey of the "Fire of Love" from the Radiant Center along the upward path. First, the purgation—the struggle between the flesh and the spirit; second, illumination; third, contemplation of God through Love. Then after a year of this condition he experienced three other phases:—heat (the mind being kindled in Love); this lasted nine months when he heard the spiritual music, the invisible melody of heaven. The final stage of sweetness was the fruition of all that had gone before. He found the Radiant Center, the cosmic consciousness.
The holiest verse in the Vedas which every Brahman must repeat in his daily devotions expresses the radiance of the divine center:—"Let us adore the supremacy of that Divine Sun, the Godhead who illuminates all, from whom all proceed, to whom all must return; whom we invoke to direct us aright in our progress toward His Holy Seat." Another Aryan poet said, "Seeking for freedom I go for refuge to that God who is the light of his own thoughts."
If we would find the law of our own being we must go back to our Source. We cannot find the divine and the human unless we have first found the Divine. Partial and prejudiced as has been the view of God that man had by expressing Him in terms of human personality, it has yet been that which has led man along through all the ages into a con 97
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stantly widened conception of the Infinite Spirit. The history of the development of humanity has been the feeling of man towards God. True, it was the divine in him feeling after the Divine in the Universal, as Plotinus said, "The flight of the alone to the Alone." Man has been thought into manifestation. He has been incarnated in a body, but not wholly incarnated, for as the same writer said, "The Soul leaves something of itself above." Here is the secret of the Radiant Center, that it keeps a string, so-tospeak, on all that is manifested out of it.
Science and philosophy, therefore, show us the Radiant Center at the heart of the universe. The next thing is to find it in ourselves. We then make in ourselves a co-ordinate Radiant Center around which the divine energies can play. Then the Infinite pours itself into every need of the various human experiences, directing the intellect, opening up to it the fountain of wisdom, subordinating all the transient and imperfect to the great Life force which is from everlasting to everlasting.
When, then, man rises to the height of being consciously co-creator with God, the original Divine power is augmented in its capacity for manifestation by all man's manifestation of this power, and God and man are co-workers.
When a magnet magnetizes other bodies
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the magnetic power which the whole mass exerts is the original undiminished force of the magnet plus the magnetic power of each atom that has been magnetized by it. Thus, as we develop in spiritual power the Supreme Perfection adds power to its own to manifest higher perfection. This spiritual paradox is explained by the fact that the Absolute when manifested becomes relative and proceeds along the line of evolution.
Man was made in the image of God, the root idea of the word "image" being "shadow." It is interesting to note that a different word, which means an exact copy, is used in that passage (Hebrews 1, 3) which refers to Jesus as being "the express image of God." This is what man has to become. In the first chapter of Genesis God is represented as saying, "Let us make man in our image or shadow, but it is never said that He made man in his likeness. This is what the Divine in man himself has to achieve — to become, as Jesus did, the likeness or exact copy of God. Man is not a finished creation. "If he were," said Balzac, "God would cease to exist." He is working on himself, a coworker with God. He has now the vision of his final destiny and he lends himself to the Great Sculptor who sees the likeness in the image and with many a chisel stroke is bringing it out into the form divine.
The Bible says of man, "Thou hast put all
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things under his feet, but we see not yet all things put under him, but we see Jesus." This is the way God looks at man. He sees Jesus as the true type of man and Christhood as man's destiny.
In the Gnostic Gospel Jesus is quoted as saying, "Do ye not understand that ye are all angels, all archangels, God's and Lord's, all rulers, all the great invisibles—that ye are all, of yourselves and in yourselves in turn, from one mass and one matter and one substances?" When we shape our thoughts according to this conception we will not live a life of shreds and tatters but of divine unity. The forces of the seen will mingle with the forces of the unseen and complete the magnetic battery. We have to become the inhabitants of both realms living the divine life on the human plane, and the human life on the divine plane. This is only possible with the realization that Jesus had, that "the Father and I are One," and that One is God. He looked from his own perfection always toward the Father.
Placing one's self consciously in the currents of Divine energy we too may keep a Radiant Center under every limitation or experience. We are no longer "worms of the dust," crawling through life in a debased attitude, but we look erect at Life from the Divine viewpoint and we see that the Radiant Center in ourselves is, as Paul put it,
- . 100 "Christ in us, the hope of glory." "I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness."
Prof. William James said, "From our acts and our attitudes ceaseless inpouring currents come which help to determine from moment to moment what our inner state shall be." Man is, as the Greeks said, "The being with the upturned face." Let us, like the candidate for the Eagle grade in the Mithraic ritual who must be able to soar into the pure ether and gaze unflinchingly at the glory of the sun, invoke that perfection which lies hid in the substance of our imperfect development, and dare to look upon the destiny of humanity.
It is man's destiny so to master the physical forces that sickness and weakness shall be unknown, and Death, no longer an enemy, be the friendly doorkeeper to be summoned at will to let us into the larger life.
It is man's destiny, so to develop the material resources of creation that poverty shall disappear and with it the vast army of sins that have been begotten by it.
It is man's destiny to grow in wisdom until all the sources of knowledge are open to him and all the forces of nature obey his behest.
It is man's destiny to grow in spiritual consciousness until all sense of limitation and separateness is lost and he sees nothing but the Radiant Center. Then will appear the
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perfected individual and a perfected and glorified humanity.
This is the vision of the Holy Grail, and as it passes "Every Knight beholds his fellow's face as in a glory."
THE DOWNWARD SONG
One gray, sweet morning on the Murrow Downs, A heart-enthralling song came to my ear: It seemed to fall from some celestial sphere —
To one long wearied with the din of towns.
Oh, bird of splendid spirit, heavenly birth, At home thou art in regions of the sky, On wings of song rising to realms on high,
Yet loving still thy lowly place on earth.
Upward thou takest with thy matin song
The prayer and praise of life to heaven above; Yet ever drawn to earth by cords of love,
Thou singest, too, thy downward way along.
Methinks a sweeter note to thee is given, As back thou turnest to thy secret nest: Thou bringest to thy mate a carol blest,
Sharing with earth-bound bird the joy of heaven.
Like skylark I may rise to upper spheres,
No height too great for my exulting soul;
I sing a psalm of praise for heart made whole;
Forgotten all the wrongs and pain of years.
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I too return with sweeter, tend'rer song,
I cannot have a joy you may not share — Like Murrow's skylark on that morning fair,
My new-born melodies to love belong.
— CLARA BEWICK COLBY.
(One of Mrs. Colby's sweet poems, found among her manuscripts.)
DOCUMENTS OF PUBLIC INTEREST
From Files belonging to the late Clara B. Colby
1 Correspondence between Susan B. Anthony and Clara B. Colby.
2 First War-Correspondent's Pass Issued to a Woman.
3 File of "National Bulletin," published by the Woman's Tribune.
4 Letters to her grandparents, written by C. B. C. while in the university.
5 Steel plate portrait of Clara B. Colby.
6 Letters from Susan B. Anthony to Clara B. Colby.
7 Collected speeches of Mrs. Stanton.
8 Letters from Mrs. Stanton.
9 Correspondence with Representative Linderman over bill to rename Musselshell River.
10 Letters from Mrs. Belva Lockwood.
11 Letters from Rev. Olympia Brown.
12 Complimentary press notices.
13 Reports of National and International Suffrage Conventions, and of National Councils of Women.
14 Correspondence relative to Congress of Federal Suffrage Association.
15 "Engravings from Suffrage History," being a collection of engraved portraits of leaders in the Suffrage Movement.
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WRITINGS BY CLARA B. COLBY "Ibsen."
Copious notes for Lecture on Carlyle. "French Women of 18th Century America." "Concerning Farmers' Wives." "Stow-away Stories" (short story). "Review of our Work with Congress." (Paper given before the 30th Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association).
"Song of the Plains." (poem). Copious notes for Lecture on Ancient Egypt. Review of "Hinduism in Europe & America," by Elizabeth S. Reed— 1914. "Thomas & Jane Carlyle" (lecture). Paper on Suffrage (in German—probably delivered in Germany). "Carlyle."
"Harriet Beecher Stowe," (with photographs). Translation of Schiller's "Ideal and Real." "Old Louisiana."
"Bienville, the Father of Louisiana & Founder
of New Orleans."
"Irish Stories."
"Prayer."
"Oneness."
Notes from Frid's book, "The German Emperor and the Peace of the World." "The Cosmic Significance of Sacred Structures." Notes on "A Keystone of Empire," by Owen. Notes on Slavs, Hungarians, etc. "Rabindranath Tagore."
"New Thought, Its Origin, Extent & Value," (Delivered at Osborne House Tea Room, July 2nd, 1916).
"London, Past & Present." "Elizabeth Cady Stanton" (2050 words). "Personal Touch with Elizabeth Cady Stanton" (1363 words.)
"Statement of Mrs. C. B. Colby, Corresponding
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Secretary of the Federal Woman's Equality Association."
"Human Rights—the Foundation of Government" (Speech at Columbia Theater). "Mysticism."
Original Review of "Creative Process."
"Flowers and Soul Force."
"New Light on Ancient Egypt."
Several early short essays.
Review of "Love and Marriage."
"The Brain in the Hand."
"Our Lady of Prompt Succor."
"A Young Pilgrim from Old Tabard."
Review of "Delia Blanchflower."
Women of the Middle Ages."
Review of "In a Far Country," by Churchill.
"Using the Horizontal Heat Ray to Dry Food."
"A Meeting of Two 'Old Boys/ *
Papers on "Woman Suffrage in England" as
published in the Sunday Herald.
"Federal Suffrage for Women."
"Revolutionist Fiction."
"Mary Wollstonecraft."
On Whitman's "Strength of Non-resistance." "Healing."
Review of "Social Environment and Moral Progress."
"The Downward Song." Poem.
"A Memory Game."
"The Child in Hungary."
"Technical Education in Hungary*"
"Christmas Customs," 4,000 words.
"Our English Letter, 'Did You Evade the
Census?"
"Elizabeth, Empress—Queen of Austria-Hungary."
"The Largest Meat Market in the World." "Like Skylark I Sing." Poem. "John Hus and His Times." "Censorship in England." "A Day on the Farm." Poem.
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"Feminism."
"Divine Recognition of the Right of Consent to Government."
"Berthe, Countess Kinsky, Baroness von Sutt
ner."
"Lady Bug's Wedding; The Origin of the FireFly" (Translation from the German). "Christmas Customs." "The First Foot." "The Christmas Spirit." "The Yule Log." "Sunday Schools in London." "The Liquor Question, and Can It Be Settled?" "Compulsory Arbitration. "Shave's Gardens."
Review of "The Inside of the Cup" by Churchill. "The Cosmic Procession.""The Gnostics."
"The Circle and the Cross." A Review. "Dual Personality." Wm. Sharp. "The Mystery of Sleep." "Bergson."
"Florence Nightingale."
"The Strength of Non-Re si stance."
"Euripides and His Greek Women."
Notes on "Prometheus "Life of the Spirit," etc.
Notes on Lectures of Bjerregaard.
"Browning's Women."
"A Tale of a City, the Municipal Government
of Glasgow." (Published in fi Arena," April,
1905, with sketch of the author, C. B. C.)
"Fanny Burney & Dr. Johnson."
"The Life Radiant."
"Gods of Egypt."
"Unity."
"Margaret Fuller." "Women in the Building of America." Address at the Anthony Reunion. "Covent Garden." "Our Great Leaders." "The Radiant Center."
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"History of Edward Irving."
"The Glastonbury Thorn."
"Interview with General Fry."
Notes for lecture on Roman History.
"In Memoriam of Octave Pavy." (Poem).
"Sweet Nell of Old Drury." (Published in
Overland Monthly).
"In the Land of Cotton." (Published in InterOcean).
Article on the Philippine War. (Published in Harper's Bazaar).
Report on Woman's Suffrage in the United States.
(Sent to the Congress at Berlin, 1894). "Woman's Pavilion at the Centennial." "Books for Girls."
Speech at the hearing before the Committee on Woman Suffrage of the U. S. Senate, December 17th, 1904.
"The Esoteric Teachings of the Gnostics."
Review of "The Spirit of Christ," by Murray.
Review of "The Lost Word," by Van Dyke.
"The Easter-Tide."
Notes from Schoolcraft's Memoirs.
"What English Women are Fighting For."
(Published m The Spectator).
"Woman Suffrage in Wyoming no Joke."
Review of "Stories of the Wagner Operas," by
Guerber.
"About the National Railway Strike in Great Britain."
Review of "Children of the Soil," by Sienkiewicz.
"John Sobieski." A Review.
"Women of Poland."
"Fruits of the Spirit."
"The Dangerous Age." A Review.
"History and Spiritual Significance of Woman
Suffrage."
Notes for lectures on Whitman, with special reference to "Song of the Open Road." "Romances and Tragedies of Old Louisiana." "Old Louisiana."
"The Mississippi River."
"Sacajawea, the Shoshone Heroine of the Lewis and Clark Expedition."
"Emmeline Pethick Lawrence."
"No More War." (Special correspondence to the Journal).
"Lecture on Leyden."
"Visit to the Guildhalls."
"An American Woman's Success in England." "Three Plays with a Purpose."
"Lysistrata, or Woman's War Against War."