The Delights of Etheria
The Unfolding Universe. By J. Arthur Findlay. (Rider. 7s. 6d.)
THAT there is another life, that death is the door through which
we enter it, that the human spirit is immortal, that immortal spirits can communicate with those which animate bOdies and live upon the earth—these for most of us are assumptions.
Some of us think them probable, others desirable. Whether they are probable, is a matter of evidence ; whether they are desirable, a matter of taste. For my part I share the repug-
nance expressed by Adam in Rack to Methuselah for the pros- pect of immortality. What a vista of illimitable boredom ! And if I am told that, being purely spiritual, I shall be exempt from what I now call boredom, I insist that a being so changed is no longer recognizably me. Spiritutdists, however, do not , share these qualms. Convinced that immortality is a fact, they arc convinced also that it is .a desirable one. They not only know that the spirit survives ; they rejoice to know it.
Set forth by Mr. Findlay-, their claims are sufficiently start- lag. Religion, we are told, has hitherto been based upoil
; but Spiritualism is based upon knowledge. This ,knowledge. is in its turn based 'Upon evidence : " The result of my discoveries, whieh-I have-based upon unassailable evi- dence, I have given to the world " and has been substantiated = by hard and vigorous thinking : " Throughout my book IhaVe allays stressed the demand that people should cease to accept i what they are told and think for themselves," since " know- ledge will come when people can think logically, rationally and :clearly." Nothing, it is claimed, can be more important than the knowledge so reached, the announcement of spiritualist truth being ranked l'itunong the great discoveries which havf ,changed the outlook of the human race, such as the Copernican revolution and the discovery of evolution. Consequently we" (spiritualists) "have a great responsibility, as on us much of the future happiness and well-being of our race 'depends." Nor can we doubt the attractiveness of the truths so discovered. Mr. Findlay's own success testifies it. The present work is the third of a trilogy. This comprises On the Edge of the Etheric, which has run through thirty-five edition,: in three years, has been *translated into fifteen languages and printed in Braille, and The Rock of Truth, of which eleven editions were sold in the first year of publication. I do not -doubt that the present book • will be equally popultir. For how comforting are its assertions. • First, it contains an assurance of perfection. Mind being the only reality, the object of life is to think " better and greater thoughts." Now this precisely is what we cannot help doing. " We think better thoughts because we must, not otherwise." And although huthanity in the mass may experi- ence " temporary stagnation and setbacks," it will be carried along on this " ever widening stream of developing thought . . . till we come to the sea of full understanding, when all will be understood." Nothing can prevent this consummation, but we can hasten it. Yet even our efforts to hasten it are fluter- mined. " If we do so, here again it, is because we must, as the urge is in us to do so." Complete understiinding, then, is not only ours for the asking. We cannot help but ask it. If com- plete understanding seems a little arid as a goal, Mr. Findlay has other gifts to offer. We shall not only be completely knowledgeable, we shall also be completelY, happy : after death we shall begin a life of happiness, " in which we shall know what life really is . . . when it comes it will obliterate from our memory all our past suffering and disappointments." To complete knowledge and coinplete happiness is added " harmony with the Divine . Mind " and the becoming " in tune With the infinite." Nor does Mr. Findlay hesitate to be specific. He tells us, for example, how those of us who suffer from bodily deformities will be eured—" thus the hunchback, the deformed, the lame and the halt will be trained in Etheria to straighten their misshapen-bodies and limbs by concentrated thought."
It is not difficult-to see why Mr. Findlay's books are popular.
• Few, indeed, are the wishes which they do not fulfil. • But though wishes father -thoughts, they do not breed evidence. Where, then, one asks, is the evidence ? It is,- of course, given elsewhere, to be precise, in On the Edge of the Etheric. The present book, addressed only to those who accept this evidence, is concerned to develop its implications. The limitation is a considerable disadvantage to those who do not accept it or who find it doubtful, since it reduces the method of the present book to that of sheer assertion, by which the writer appears to supply the place of knowledge by converting his conjectures into dogmas.
Regarded as a series of assertions, the book is not markedly successful. It is much too long ; it is ill arranged, the same matter reappearing in the most unexpected places ; it is repetitive and it is platitudinous. There are altogether too many remarks of the type ignorance is lack of knowledge, lack of mental images born from experience." When assertion takes on the semblance of argument, the result is not impres- sive. Here is a sample : " Mind," we are told, " is the .only reality . . . existence means thinking." Five lines later on, we are told that " consciousness consists of thought stimulated by surrounding substance." What, then, one wants to knoW, is this " surrounding substance " ? Apparently it is "physical and etherie substance." Is this mind ? - It is not, since it is opposed to mind, and Mr. Findlay is concerned to tell us how we may win free of it and dominate it. Does it then exist Clearly it does not, since only mind exists. - How, then, can it act as a stimulus . . . It is all very difficult.
C. E. M. Jonas.
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