A little reflection will show the reasonableness of this
statement and prove our contention that all we see here is really crystallized thought. Our
houses, our machinery, our chairs and tables, all that has been made by the hand of man is
the embodiment of a thought. As the juices in the soft body of the snail gradually
crystallize into the hard and flinty shell which it carries upon its back and which hides
it, so everything used in our civilization is a concretion of invisible, intangible
mind-stuff. The thought of James Watt in time congealed into a steam engine and
revolutionized the world. Edison's thought was condensed into an electric generator which
has turned night to day, and had it not been for the thought of Morse and Marconi, the
telegraph would not have annihilated[pg 098]distance as it does today. An earthquake may wreck a city and demolish the
lighting plant and telegraph station, but the thoughts of Watt, Edison and Morse remain, and
upon the basis of their indestructible ideas new machinery may be constructed and operations
resumed. Thus thoughts are more permanent than things.
The sensitive ear of the musician detects a certain musical note
in every city which is different from that of another city. He hears in each little brook a
new melody, and to him the sound of wind in the treetops of different forests give a varying
sound. In the Desire World we noted the existence of forms similar to the shapes of things
here, also that seemingly sound
proceeds from form, but in the Region of concrete Thought it is different, for
while each form occupies and obscures a certain space here, form is nonexistent when viewed
from the standpoint of the Region of concrete Thought. Where the form was, a transparent,
vacuous space is observable.From
that empty void comes a sound which is the “keynote” that creates and maintains the form whence it appears to come, as the almost
invisible core of a gas-flame is the source of the light we perceive. [pg 099]
Sound from a vacuum cannot be heard in the Physical World, but
the harmony which proceeds from the vacuous cavity of a celestialarchetype is “the voice of the silence,” and it becomes audible when all earthly
sounds have ceased. Elijah heard it not while the storm was raging; nor was it in evidence
during the turbulence of the earthquake, nor in the crackling and roaring fire, but when the
destructive and inharmonious sounds of this world had melted into silence, “the still small voice” issued its commands to save Elijah's
life.
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