“DAYLIGHT VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE.”

Dunstan Times, Issue 3129, 7 August 1922, Page 2

“DAYLIGHT VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE.”

“You and I,” saiil the- Rev. YV. Heathcote in a recent lecture on the great phycTiolegist, Fechner, “regard tiie earth as a great dead tiling upon whose surface living things crawlplants, animals, and humans. We regard the earth as a great piece of mud with some hard stones in it- senseless, soulless, mindless mud. That, says Fechner. is the ‘night view’ of the universe, lit only lor men who are themselves not awake, but. last asleep. The earth, according to Fechner, is just as much alive as we are. She has consciousness in the same way as we have, hut immensely greater, and not only the earth, but the planets ami the stars and the _ sun and the whole universe are conscious and alive. “In the fifties and sixties ol the last century Fechner’s theories were regarded as fantastic, but since then several well-known thinkers have become his disciples, supporting and developing his theories. They are now accepted more widely, and William James thought that Fechner would oneday lie universally recognised as a prophet. “According to Fechner’s ‘daylight view.’ we are not as lights and lanterns moving about in a world ot darkness, we alone having consciousness m a dark, unconscious world. The wholeearth is alight with consciousness, and we only add our quota to the general light which surrounds ns. Our life and consciousness of the earth is a part ol the life and consciousness of the solar system and that in turn of the starry universe, and if the starry universe is not the whole, then tho life and consciousness of the starry universe would be a part of the consciousness of whatever is the whole. “Fechner argued that all minds wc know of are connected with bodies: wc do not knew such a tiling: and cannot think of such a thing as a mind existing without a body. Even the spirits are said to have etboric bodies. ‘God is a spirit’ does not mean that He lias no body ; but that body is not the body of a man or of any created thing, lint is the entire material universe of untold ,sums- and solar systems. Just as 1 man has a- body suitable for him and his purposes, so God musthave a body suitable for Him and His pm poses. This body would be the sidereal system of whatever else the universe may contain. The vaster orders of mind go with the vaster order of bodies. “Just as we are able to unify our separate sensations and make them part of the consciousness of ourself, so the earth unifies the conscioiusnesis of men and animals and plant® ami knows with all their knowings, and the suu does the same: with the c onset ensues--of her planets- and so cm till the all is reached. “The veins of our body are inhabited by vast numbers of living, conscious organisms, almost as minute a« wc to the earth. These minute- organism® arcvery much alive, very active and conscious. but presumably it Inns never entered' their beads to think that the great body in which they move is alive and con scion® as they ate. The more philosophical!’ among them may realise that we move, just as we Inmans after much trouble realised that the earth moved round the sun. Our bodies must appear to them very much what the earth does to us. Much of our planet is made up of oceans and water—wc too arc largely water. Our flesh and muscTc-s must appear to them much as the soft earth and mud to us; the downy hairs as grass: and moss; the bor.es like rocks; and the hair on our heads like forests; and further, if any philosophical microbe were to call a meeting of his fellows- at the juncture of some of our veins and suggest to them that it was just possible that the body they lived in was as conscious and more conscious than they were, then probably such a- one would be laughed to scorn. “Just as our brains correlate through fibres the various reactions ol the senses which send along their various reports to the brain as a receiving house, so does- the- earth- receive all the information of plants and animals and humans and correalates them by telepathy. Seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, form part of our general consciousiu ss. but the result is not- merely a sum total «f sights and sounds bad smells, but out of it. we create something further and so weave .schemes and all kinds of purposes. So Hie earth combines all our minds ami weaves schemes and purposes undreamt of by' us. She N a wise old elephant. She knows all wo know. and mucin more; but none knows all she knows. Knowledge (lows from us fc her. but not back again from her to us except perhaps in the case of poets and exceptionally gifted natures. “Our individual lives arc lo the earth what our organs are to ns. When we lose an organ, say an eye. then we ci a so l to sec. and through that organ we can gain no further information, but we do not lose the result of its previous activities, We store that away m our memory, conscious and subconscious. So at death we cease to veld to our mother earth any further information on tins plane, but all that wc hive seen during our lifetime, and all the conceptions formed are mu lost, but live on and grow in the consciousness of the earth. And when the time comes for this planet lo die. then all her knowledge gathered through millions of years will survive- in the solar system, and when the sun and Hi: solar system aic no more, then Ilia s denial system will take up its knowledge and so on till the whole is reached, and thus nothing can be lost ultimately. Every sight, conception, and id a in a- million worlds is yielded un into the conscionsin ss of flic eternal.” Miss Lillian Gish, the American film star, has innocently become- flic source of great trouble to Lady Y’oxall in London. For some weeks a young man had l-ccn calling at Hie residence of Sir .1 as. Yoxall in Richmond and asking for Miss Gish. He insisted- that she was staying there and explained that be was violently in love with her. Lady Yoxall told: the man repcateHly that Miss Gish was not there, and that she did not know her, but the visitor not only persisted in calling, but sent many letters. Finally Lady Y’oxall reported the matter to the police, who arrested the man. He was sent to an institution to be examined as to his -sanity. Finally Lady Y’oxall received a telephone message asking her to conic to police headquarters immediately. She departed, and shortly afterward the maid who was left in charge got a similar message, and she likewise departed. Al police headouar-U-i-s thev were told that they had not been called. When they returned they found that the house had been ransacked, and that jewellery and other valuable articles bad been stolen.