The Sword of Song

SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 116 now bring all his powers with tremendous force to bear upon any one object he may have in view, and this ability so to use the energies of his being to put forth a constant and tremendous effort of the will, marks the attainment of the Sixth Stage, Sammávayamo, usually translated Right Effort, but perhaps Right Will-Power would come nearer to the meaning, or Right Energy , for effort has been m ade even to attain to Sammaditthi.1 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 Sam mávayamo 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, s ince the h uman mind has had its present constitution, have been translated into language, classified, sought after, alway s above language, but n ot 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 special 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 the mind as we are in advance of our fathers in the s ciences of the physical world.1 Note carefully this practical s ense of m y intention. I care nothing for the academic meanings of the steps in the Path; what they meant to the Arahats of old is indifferent to me. “Let the dead pas t 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 hy steria and intoxication; but from method and research. Shut the temple ; open the laboratory! XI. THE TWILIGHT OF THE GERMANS.2 It is a com monplace of scientific m en that metaphysics is mostly moonshine; that it is largely an argument in a circle cannot easily be disputed; that the advance s ince 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 across the following passage in T yndall’s “Scientific Materialism” which I had not previously read: “ Two-thirds of the rays em itted by the sun fail to ar ouse the sense of vision. The rays exist, but the visual or gan requisite for their translation into light does not exist. And so, from this r egion of dar kness and m ystery which now surrounds us, r ays m ay now be darting, which require but the developm ent of the pr oper intellectual organs to translate them into knowledge as far sur passing our s as our s 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.