Collected Works (Vol. II)

258 SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM now bring all his powers with tremendous force to bear upon any one object he may have in view, and this ability to so use the energies of his being to put forth a constant and tremendous effort of the will, marks the attainment of the Sixth Stage, Sammavayamo, usually translated Right Effort, but perhaps Right Will-power would come nearer to the meaning, or Right Energy, for effort has been made even to attain to Sammaditthi.! And this power being gained by its use he is enabled to concentrate all his thoughts and hold them always upon one object -- waking or sleeping, he remembers who he is and what his high aim in life—and this constant recollection ‘and keeping in mind of holy things, is the Seventh Stage, Sammasati. And by the power of this transcendent faculty, rising through the Eight High Trances to the very threshold of Nirvana, he at last, in the Trance called Nirodha Samapatti, attains, even in this life, to the Deathless Shore of Nirvana, by the power of Sammasamadhi, Right Concentration. Such a one has finished the Path—he has destroyed the cause of all his chain of lives, and has become Arahan, a Saint, a Buddha himself.” But none knows better than the venerable Bhikkhu himself, as indeed he makes clear with regard to the steps Sammavayamo and above, that these interpretations are but reflections of those upon a higher plane— the scientific plane. They are (I have little doubt) for those who have attained to them mnemonic keys to whole classes of pheno- mena of the- order anciently denominated magical, phenomena which, since the human mind has had its present constitution, have been translated into language, classified, sought after, always above language, but not beyond a sane and scientific classification, a rigid and satisfactory method, as I most firmly believe. It is to establish such a method ; to record in the language, not of the temple but of the laboratory, its results, 1 It is of course a specific kind of effort, not mere struggle. . that I make this appeal; that I seek to enlist genuine, not pseudo-scientific men in the Research; so that our children may be as far in advance of us in the study of the supernormal phenomena of mind as we are in advance of our fathers in the sciences of the physical world.? Note carefully this practical sense of my intention. I care nothing for the academic meanings of the steps inthe Path ; what they meant to the Arahats of old is indifferent to me. ‘‘ Let the dead past bury its dead!” What I require is an advance in the Know- ledge of the Great Problem, derived no longer from hearsay revelation, from exalted fanati- cism, from hysteria and intoxication; but from method and research. Shut the temple; open the laboratory ! XI. THE TWILIGHT OF THE GERMANS." It is a commonplace of scientific men that metaphysics is mostly moonshine ; that it is largely argument in a circle cannot easily be disputed; that the advance since Aristotle is principally verbal none may doubt ; that no parallel advance to that of science has been made in the last fifty years is certain. The reason is obvious. Philosophy has had two legitimate weapons —introspection and reason; and introspec- tion is not experiment. 1 A few weeks after writing these words I came upon the following passage in Tyndall's ‘*Scientitic Materialism,” .which- I had not previously read: ‘‘ Two-thirds of the rays emitted by the sun fail to arouse the sense of vision. The rays exist, but the visual organ requisite for their translation into light does not exist. And so, from this region of dark- ness and mystery which now surrounds us, rays may now be darting, which require but the development of the proper intellectual organs to translate them into knowledge as far surpassing ours aS ours surpasses that of the wallowing reptiles which once held possession of this planet.”"—A. C, 2 A Note showing the necessity and scope of the Work in question.