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Dom John Chapman, O.S.B., in his excellent article on "Catholic Mysticism" in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. ix., writes: "It is not to be denied that this psycho-physical side demands scientific investigation. It seems certain that St John of the Cross is justified in his view that the body is somehow 'spiritualised' by contemplation.
The human energy no longer freezes itself in fish-ponds, and starves itself in cells; but near the north pole, in central Africa, on Alpine "couloirs," and especially in what are nowadays called "psycho-physical laboratories," it maybe found as invincible as ever, and ready for every fresh demand.
A more minute inspection of psycho-physical processes, were it practicable, would doubtless disclose undreamed of complexities and harmonies in them; the mathematical and dynamic relations of stimulus and sensation might perhaps be formulated with precision.
The psycho-physical organism which was born at a certain date and which will die on another date is compacted of idiosyncrasies, inherited and acquired, which seem to be inseparable from its history as born of certain parents and living under certain conditions.
A really dominant instinct is a veritable source of psycho-physical energy, unifying and maintaining in vigour all the activities directed to its fulfilment. A young man in love is stimulated not only to emotional ardour, but also to hard work in the interests of the future home.
Yet in every human being there lies latent the inner sight and the inner hearing, which can be increasingly developed by psycho-physical culture; by such habits of life as make the physical body more flexible, more subtle, and which thus raise to a far higher rate its degree of vibration, and enable the organs of sight and hearing to be far less "muffled" than they are in those who live more in the mere life of the senses.
So that our ordinary human experience, on its material as well as on its mental side, would appear to be only an extract from the larger psycho-physical world? Vast, indeed, and difficult is the inquirer's prospect here, and the most significant data for his purpose will probably be just these dingy little mediumistic facts which the Huxleyan minds of our time find so unworthy of their attention.
In what follows we shall see how the study of both the outer acoustic phenomena and our own psycho-physical make-up in the region of the acoustic sense, leads to an understanding of the nature of Inspiration and of how it can be trained. Hence the world-spectator, as soon as he began to investigate acoustic phenomena scientifically, found himself in a unique position.
Awareness of this fact led Rudolf Steiner to pursue his spiritual-scientific investigations and to communicate the results in such a way that they can be a 'school of reading' for those who study them.2 In point of fact we have already made use in this sense of one of the results of Rudolf Steiner's researches, for at the very beginning of this book his picture of the threefold psycho-physical organism of man was taken as the basis of our own investigations.
Their pressure and influence may be felt in the conscious life in fantastic imaginations, in fears, phobias, and obsessions in morbid dreams in morbid emotional and moral reactions throughout the entire psycho-physical life. It is these automatic, self-acting complexes which originate many of the disorders of the mind.
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