Joy Philosophy
	A Mush Or A Man—Which? <  Previous Contents Next  >

Man in the natural and unregenerate state is an unprincipled being. He is moved by every shadow of feeling. These shadows being cast by people, things and events without, his mental and physical activities represent but a conglomerate of other people. He is a jelly-fish, receiving for the moment the impression of any finger which pokes him. Whether he wants to be or not, he is nothing but a “mush of concession” to every passing person or circumstance. He is constantly affected from without. He lives and changes his being according to what is thrust upon him by other things. He has no principle for individual living, except that of stinging the hand which touches him.

The fate of the unprincipled jelly-fish is ever the same. His own power of initiative is so primitive that he is propelled by every current of wind or wave. Everything stands aside for even the sucker, who knows where he is going. But the jelly-fish has no destination. His one object in life is to keep from being hurt, and to this end he floats with any current. He effaces himself as much as possible to keep from being seen and eaten. And I suspect he is often indignant and tries to sting because he has succeeded in his attempt not to be noticed. But when he happens to be noticed by too large a fish he is gobbled up in a jiffy. If he escapes being eaten he is cast on the beach to lament away his feeble life in a too-ardent day.

Poor little unprincipled jelly-fish! But occasionally a jellyfish gets tired of being a more or less unwilling mush with a red pepper sting. He grows a shell to protect him, and becomes a clam. He shuts himself up with his own opinion of the selfish world outside. He loses his red pepper sting, but if you get too close to him he nips your impertinent fingers and shuts the door in your face. He has his opinion of you and he wants to be let alone.

But after a time he gets tired of himself and his opinions— deadly tired. He begins to think even the jelly-fish stage of life is preferable to the clam’s. At least the former had a change once in a while, and he saw something of life. He wishes he were a child again—he means a jelly-fish.

But even a clam cannot grow backward. So he becomes a crawfish and goes sidewise. He evolves some ugly legs, shoulders his shell and his opinions and goes sliding forth to see the world again. Really, he is growing a glimmer of a principle to live by. He has builded him a shell which makes him impervious to most outside forces; he has grown tired of trying to enjoy himself; and he has actually made a start at doing something on his own account, uninfluenced by the without.

Good little crawfish! He is on a fair road to growing quite a backbone of his own. By and by, as exercise hardens his muscles and stiffens his backbone and limbers his little legs he will discard his ugly shell and walk out straight ahead, instead of crawfishing. He is growing a Principle to live by—the principle of self-expression. He is growing Wits as well as a backbone and well muscled legs, to take him out of harm’s way and to enable him to gratify his own individual desires.

A man in the jelly-fish stage is sensitive on the outside. And he is so absorbed in these outer sensations that he is conscious of nothing within himself. His soul-center is as unsensitive as his circumference is sensitive. He has shrunk into himself so persistently that he has deadened and dammed the power which is meant to flow outward from his soul-center. He is therefore utterly unconscious of the law or principle of his own being.

His solar plexus is a hard knot and he is so used to it that he does not know it. He has cringed and cowered and shrunk into himself until his solar center, his soul-center, is in danger of petrification. Life is a dull ache, and the harder the ache the tighter he shrinks inward.

Poor little man, he would better brace up and be a clam; or a crawfish; or better still, a man with a backbone that holds him up straight and leaves his solar center free to expand and fill him with vim and gumption to stand other men’s buffets and carve a path of his own out into the Free Country where he can do as he pleases. He would better consult his soul-center than his “feelings.” He would better grow sensitive on the inside and give his thin skin a rest.

The principle of all being is to EXPRESS, to press outward. The jelly-fish, the clam and the crawfish of the human race press inward instead of outward. If one of them by any chance does happen to unbend and make a move to express himself he is turned backward again by the first little show of an obstacle or the adverse opinion of some other clam or crawfish. There is no principle in him—he is worked from without. He is attracted by this thing and repelled by that, moved back and forth and in and out, galvanized or paralyzed, all from outside. And he throws out innumerable little antenna for sensing these outside influences. He is so absorbed in them that he has no consciousness left for the soul-center within himself, where his principle of being is trying to manifest. His soul’s influence is the last influence he looks for or responds to. Such a being is unhappy, unhealthy, unsuccessful; and he grows more so until he gets desperate and quits. Then he begins to withdraw consciousness from the outside and wake up on the inside. He begins to consult himself and do as he desires. Hitherto he has been so absorbed in outside things that he was unaware he had any desires on his own account. Now he begins to explore himself. He expands and grows sensitive on the inside. When he senses a little desire there he pushes out and acts upon it—even if he does run against a snag or two, or a dozen. He has got hold of one end of the principle of his own being and is acting upon it. Henceforth, his way is straight ahead, instead of crawfishy or clammy.

Now a strange thing begins to manifest. In the old days the man was always getting into somebody’s way and getting hurt. He spent his time tacking and backing and scudding to keep from being hurt. But now that he has turned himself right side out and started ahead, he discovers everybody else hurrying to get out of his way, and even to help him along. Things seem to loom as obstacles, but lo, as he keeps straight ahead they melt away and he goes onward.

In every man’s soul is a course mapped out, a chart and compass for his guidance. If he consults his own chart and follows it he finds there are no collisions. His course is a true orbit, where all intruding matter is dissipated before it reaches him. His atmosphere burns it up, and renders it harmless. It is the crawfish who in his attempt to keep out of one orbit slides into another and meets the comet’s fate— disintegration and absorption.

This is a wonderful universe—a one-verse. There is an orbit for every being and a being for every orbit. Every orbit is written on a heart, a soul, and may be found only by consulting that soul.

Look up at the stars—just a conglomerate of bright spots. Surely if they moved a little there would be collisions. But look closer. They do move, at infinite pace, and there are no catastrophes. There is an order among them so perfect that it takes long study to appreciate it.

Now look at people—a conglomeration of wriggling worms of the dust. But look more closely, dear. It will repay you, for human orbits are no less true than starry ones. The closer you get to human hearts the better you will understand their orbits. The closer you get to your own heart the nearer you will approach the hearts of others.

The more faithfully you follow the orbit written on your heart the surer you are to escape disaster.

Grow sensitive on the soul-side and know that your course is sure.

In Harper’s for November there is an interesting and significant article by Carl Snyder, upon “The Newest Conceptions of Life.” He says: “Physiology’s present answer to the old riddle is, very simply: Life is a series of fermentations.”

He also says there is a destructive ferment, and, likewise, a constructive ferment, conditions alone governing, “When starch, or dextrine, is submitted to fermentation by the malt enzyme, it is hydrolized—that is to say, split—by taking up water into one of the simpler sugars, glucose. But if the resulting product is not removed, the action soon comes to a standstill. Add more starch, it will begin again; but add to the quantity of sugar, and the reverse process is begun; the glucose is converted into starch. The enzyme, then, is able to rebuild the molecule it has pulled apart.

“For every vital function, a ferment.”

“Naturally, the very first question is, what are these ferments, these enzymes? That is the biochemical problem of the hour. Their activity seems bound up rather with the peculiarities of their atomic structure, of their chemical architecture, so to speak, than with any mystery of ingredients. They are compounded of the simple elements of water, air and carbon. It is how these are put together that is so puzzling.”

Then he goes on to say: “But this close pressing of the most intimate secrets of life has another implication of far more interest to men and women of today. It is, in brief, that perhaps all the processes of life are reversible—growth even; that under given conditions the oak might become an acorn, the grown man a child, the adult organism, led back through the successive stages of its development to the primitive germ from whence it sprang.” And he gives a real illustration of the process of growing young again: “A plant-like little affair, Campanularia, living and developing normally in the water, undergoes an amazing transformation simply upon being brought into contact with some solid substance.” Then he describes the process by which it returns again to its original state.

The italics in these quotations are my own.

*****

Life is a series of ferments which may be reversed. When we stir up a sponge for bread we put in a little yeast and a little flour for it to work upon. All night long the yeast particles are busy separating the solid wheat particles and filling them with yeast-life. In the morning the entire mass is beautifully “light.”

Everywhere in creation life and light are synonymous terms. Even the “lightness” of bread sponge is its aliveness.

Now, what do you do with a light sponge? You use it to leaven a loaf. You stir it down, and stir in more flour, and knead and knead it until there is a big, solid loaf— within which is the germ of life. Again the yeast-life works, until the whole mass is “light” again—until all that wheat flour you worked in has been separated and made light or alive. Perhaps you repeat the process several times, before you finally kill your bread by baking it.

If you let your dough rise too long, you know what happens—it gets “too light”; the yeasty principle has nothing more to work upon; the loaf is now all yeast; it begins to get sour, and then bitter; it grows porous, gaseous; its surface becomes wrinkled and its once round, smooth cheek falls in; it shrivels; and in due time, if let alone, it will dry up and blow away.

Good, live dough is not the result of a fermentation, but of a series of fermentations, each arrested at the proper moment, and more flour added.

Human life is like unto it. The human being who works and works on one line becomes sour and wrinkled. In order to make good human beings they should be allowed to work on one line until they are full of lightness, of the joy of life. Then there should be kneading down and a new beginning.

*****

Now, this is all in your mind. Fermentation is a mental process. The “ferments or enzymes” are the life or mind principles drawn, not from air or water or carbon, but through them. They are “spirit,” love, life. The “wheat flour” consists in the facts which are worked into your mind, and upon which your soul-stuff works, digesting, assimilating it. The same identical process takes place in a loaf of bread that takes place in your mind. All is life. ALL IS MIND.

A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump, but the moment the whole lump is “light” there must be another working down.

If we do not know enough to work down our own minds Mother Nature does it for us. As soon as we get comfortably past the light point; as soon as we begin to settle and wrinkle and die; as soon as life grows monotonous; there is a jolting and a working over. We “lose” our property and our ease. We are detached from the sides of our environment and friends. We are buffeted and soundly thumped, and we find ourselves set down in new conditions to begin all over again. Good old Mother Nature has set us to rise again.

If we are really wise and willing we go at the task with a will and quickly rise. Having risen once we ought to know we can do it again, and do it more quickly than before. You know that is the way with our dough—every time we knead it down it comes up more easily.

Unless we are careless and put it in a cold place, it is a cold day when the bread won’t rise. But it would be a cold day, indeed, when a human being couldn’t rise. No matter how much he has been detached from, nor how much he has been worked down, he can rise if he will.

That is the only difference between the loaf of bread and the man. The loaf of bread has to be raised in spite of itself—it has to be kept at just the right temperature from the outside. But a man has in himself the power to make his own temperature. He can work himself up to the rising point.

He can shut the door of his heart against the immanent Love and Will of the universe—shut in and stay down in the dark. He can open the door of his heart to Love, the “enzyme” of all life, which creates its own warmth.

The only reason a man does not open his heart to Love and Will, and begin straightway to rise again, is because he does not yet understand that the buffetings of “fate” are no more “against” him than are the kneadings of the housewife against the success of her bread.

Life must be a series of beginnings and workings-up. Eternal life must be an eternal series of workings-down and risings up. A single day’s life must be a series of “fermentations.”

Notice a child. See how readily he enters into every change. He is worked down and even sat on, many times a day, and yet he rises quickly and with joy. He never passes that just-right point of lightness where his cheek is round and his flesh moist—where he can be readily detached from his surroundings. He never shrivels and falls in and cakes to the pan, like his elders. He forgets, quickly, the working-down, and enters heart and soul into the business of rising NOW. He is so absorbed in his work, the work of growing light, that he heeds little the workings-down which are but for a moment.

Out of sight is out of mind. He forgets what others do to him. He LIVES Now—he rises.