We are all, as we familiarly say, p. 12 conscious of our own existence. Under this statement we habitually include, in more or less confusion, several distinct elements.
First, the existence of our material bodies as objects of sensory perception, like any other material objects, such as chairs, tables, or other peoples’ bodies, the only essential limitation being that no sensory organ can perceive itself. The eye sees the hand, but the eye does not see itself. To suppose it could would be a contradiction in terms, for normal sensation implies disturbance of a normal equilibrium by an external stimulus.
Second, of certain sensations, pleasurable or painful, originating not outside but inside the body itself.
Third, of certain disturbances apparently p. 13 not of material origin, that we classify as passions or emotions.
Fourth, of what we call aptitudes and their opposites.
Fifth, of desires or inclinations and their opposites.
Lastly, of something of a wholly different character, consciously closer to the centre than anything else, and differing from the other forms in being the only form of consciousness to which we are not passive. This we call will. We say, I feel sensation, pain, or emotion; but we never say, I feel my will. It is always subjective and active.
These are the main facts, simply stated, in the commonest terms of daily life. Let us look at them at a different angle. I once asked Dr. Holmes, toward the end of his life, the question, p. 14 "What is a man?" He answered, without hesitation, "A series of states of consciousness."
The word "series" introduces the element of time, the relation of which to states of consciousness is empirical and not essential. Broadly speaking, certain states of consciousness associated directly or indirectly with matter occur in sequence in every-day human experience, but the same states may occur simultaneously under exceptional circumstances. It is well known that in the sudden presence of imminent and apparently certain death, the accumulated states of consciousness of a lifetime sometimes revive simultaneously in a single flash. The events of the whole past are seen down to the most minute and remote details, like a landscape p. 15 under a flash of lightning. Dr. Holmes himself had had this experience on one occasion, just before losing consciousness altogether while drowning, and the memory of the occurrence persisted after resuscitation. But if, in answering my question, he had left out the one word "series," Dr. Holmes’s definition would have been identical with that of Buddhism, which is this,—"A man consists of states of consciousness."
Now, from this point of view, the whole question of the Immortality of Man is bound up with the question of the persistence of these states. This persistence depends on their character and origin. Some may persist longer than others. The states of consciousness that we recognize in every action p. 16 of daily life are obviously divisible into two classes, namely, those that originate from without and those that originate from within. The first are conditioned by space and time, the latter are not.
Let us take a homely illustration, the simpler the better. Each of you, let us say, had breakfast this morning. While you were eating it you were conscious of it, how it looked and tasted, and these states of consciousness were imposed on your minds from the outside by the action of matter on matter,—the matter of the breakfast on the matter of your nerves of sight and taste. This action is as constant as any other purely mechanical action, and if your sensory and nervous machinery is in normal running order, the resulting p. 17 states of consciousness are as constant as the cause that produces them. All these forms of consciousness, I repeat, were imposed on your minds from without in the form of distinct sensations, as we call them, sensations existing at that particular time and place.
Again, you are conscious of being in this hall to-night. As before, this consciousness is imposed on your minds from without in the form of distinct sensations existing at this particular time and place. You see the hall and the audience exactly as you saw your breakfast-room and your breakfast.
Now, think, for a moment, of your breakfasts. Where and when is that thought? Is it here and now, or there and then? Plainly it is here and now, because you are here, now, and it is p. 18 your thought. Equally plainly it is there and then, or it would not be the thought of this morning's breakfast. It is therefore both. Now a state of consciousness conditioned by two mutually exclusive opposites is unconditioned by either. In other words, your thought is unconditioned by space and time.
By what, then, is it conditioned? The answer is as important as it is obvious. It is conditioned by your will,—the act of volition that calls the thought of the breakfast into being, and not by the direct sensory impressions, whose forms and sum it reproduces. Herein lies the fundamental difference between the consciousness of the breakfast as you eat it, and the consciousness of it that you, being in p. 19 another place, create by an act of will twelve hours afterward.
This second state of consciousness is conditioned only by the will, and we can make it what we choose. If our mental machinery is in good working order, we can recall the breakfast exactly as it was. This we call memory. Or, if we like, we can increase or diminish or alter it in any particular. For coffee and rolls, we may substitute ortolans and peacocks’ tongues, and so on. There is no limit to it. This we call imagination; and what I want to emphasize is that memory and imagination are identical in being states of consciousness produced by the will, and differ only in the closeness of their correspondence with antecedent states.'
Here, then, at the outset are two p. 20 opposite ways in which states of consciousness may be produced. First, from without, by matter acting on matter, either through contact, direct or indirect, or by means of vibrations, such as those of sound and light. This we may call, for convenience, the sensory origin of consciousness, since it involves direct relation through the senses with the great machinery of external nature,—machinery which goes at its own rate and in its own way, and acts as a stimulus to consciousness on the one hand and a pendulum or balance wheel to it on the other. Second, from within, by the action of the will.
Is there a third way? Obviously there is. Suppose we disconnect the pendulum of material nature from one p. 21 end of the machine and the guiding motive power of the will from the other, the wheels will keep on turning for a time by their own momentum, and states of consciousness will ensue which are apparently spontaneous. The most familiar instance of this is in common dreams. Such states of consciousness, having neither guide on the one hand nor check on the other, are usually dislocated and confused, but in this respect there is, of course, a vast range of difference. A dream may be, and commonly is, incoherent to the point of grotesqueness. It may be anything from that up to a logical continuous sequence, as distinct and vivid as a waking reality. In a well-known and often cited case, such a sequence continued night after night in the form p. 22 of a separate dream-life, with its own events and incidents, until the dreamer found himself literally unable to tell which of the two alternate lives he was leading was the real one. Each had its orderly succession of days and nights, and going to sleep in one meant waking up in the other. Each was real while it lasted, the other being the dream until he came back to it, when the conditions were again reversed. It is well to bear this case in mind as a good illustration of an important, though elementary, fact, namely, that every complete state of consciousness is real to itself, and unreal to other states.
We have, then, broadly speaking, three separate and definite ways in which states of consciousness may originate,—one external, and two internal; p. 23 namely, through the senses, by the will, and spontaneously. The first, in a normal organism,—and we are not considering here any pathological conditions whatever,—is as regular and invariable as the order of external nature, on which it is based. The second conforms to external nature or deviates from it, as we choose. When it conforms, we call it memory. When it deviates, we call it imagination. The third is generally irregular, and depends on the momentum or impetus of the thinking machinery itself.
I have spoken so far of external and internal stimuli as exciting consciousness, and most of you have accepted these terms without giving them a second thought. Internal and external, p. 24 subjective and objective, ego and non-ego, self and the rest of the universe,—these categories are not only familiar, but from our western point of view fundamental, and represent the first great obvious distinction which at once underlies and dominates most, if not all, of our religious, philosophical, and scientific thought. Consciously or unconsciously, we habitually think of ourselves and the universe in those terms.
Let us examine them a little more closely. Internal and external—external to what?
Certainly, not external to consciousness, in the Buddhist view, for they are consciousness, and nothing else. To say that they are external to it is a contradiction in terms. They exist only in p. 25 consciousness. If they are external to it, they cease to exist.
External to the body, then? This is more like it. The body is a material object; and whatever else it may be in its relation to the phenomena of its own organic life, it is itself matter in its relation to other matter.
What, then, do we mean by matter as we ordinarily understand the word? For practical purposes we commonly mean aggregations of centres of vibration whose rate lies between the lowest infra-red and the highest ultra-violet which are the normal working limits of our senses.
What are the simplest and most obvious characteristics of such matter, essential conditions of its existence by virtue of which it is matter? There are of course two, time and space. This is a commonplace. Yet it is of fundamental importance in this connection. For if, as I have tried to show you, certain states of consciousness, namely, the mechanical or sensory forms, have their origin in the action of matter on matter, then those states of consciousness will necessarily be subject in form to the two conditions of which I have just spoken.
This point is fundamental and vital. It is the turning-point on which the whole question of immortality hinges. Matter is conditioned by space and time. Direct sensory consciousness, being based on matter, is necessarily equally so conditioned. But states of consciousness not based on matter are not.