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Solar Biology, by Hiram E. Butler, [1887], at sacred-texts.com
This system is the philosophy of life, in its relations to the physical, or earthly existence, as governed by the solar fluid of the solar system.
First, we consider man in his animal relation to the physical world; second, in his mental relation to the physical world and the solar system; third, in his spiritual nature, and its relation to this world and to the universe.
Between man's physical and his spiritual nature there is a perfect line of gradation, from the grosser physical to the higher spiritual, so that the mental and spiritual are wholly dependent upon the physical for their conscious relations to this world, as a house is dependent upon its foundations.
We consider the physical body as a chemical laboratory. The food we take into the stomach passes through various stages of transmutation in the process of digestion: first becoming chyle, then blood, when it is thrown into the generative functions and becomes seed; then the seed, through the action of the same functions, is changed to lymph—a transparent, colorless
fluid. The word lymph is derived from nymph (spirit), and this fluid is therefore quite properly called spirit-water, or water of life.
After passing through these stages it then begins to affect the mental conditions, and as it is carried by the lymphatic system through all parts of the body, it causes a pleasurable sensation in all the organs.
The more the seed and fluids are retained in the body without waste, the greater fulness of life, health, and power is experienced by the person. If it were possible to discharge all this fluid, the body would soon die from blood-poisoning.
An abundance of this lymph gives a feeling of rest, happiness, and satisfaction under all circumstances, also physical strength and love of activity. This fluid aids in forming the bright red corpuscles of the blood, and also assists the lungs in their work of purification. A portion of this regenerated blood passes into the spleen, where the pure white corpuscles are formed; from thence the most refined elements are taken up through the nerve system into the brain, and there changed into the subtle element of thought-potency, giving power to mental action.
There are three ways of spending the life forces first, through the physical and muscular energies; second, through the mental energies; third, through the sex function.
To whatever extent there is expenditure in either of these three channels, there will be so much less force in reserve for the others.
Persons have mental energy or lack mental as well as physical power in proportion as they are chaste or
licentious in their habits, and in delineating character, the most important thing to be noticed is their habit sexually; for if persons are inclined to be indulgent, and waste their life forces and elements, so will they lack mental and physical power, and in proportion as they conserve these potencies and life fluids, will they have mental and physical ability. Many times, however, persons of unrestrained habits draw their physical power from others; but, while they may thus be possessed of physical strength, they will lack mental clearness, accuracy, and the disposition to intellectual pursuits.
There is no such thing as a lazy person in the usual sense of the word; life is activity itself, and, according to the quantity of life, will be the degree of the disposition to act. If the life is concentrated in the sexual function, and used up or wasted there, then the activity will be nearly all in that direction, and there will be lack of power in other channels, in proportion as it is overactive there. Young persons are often thought to be lazy, when the activity is centred in that function. Children addicted to self-abuse, being abnormally active in that respect, are indolent in other directions, and this waste of vital force produces an excessive desire to sleep. Sleep is the condition most conducive to recuperation and generation of new life in the body.
In early morning there is the greatest danger, with children, of acquiring the habit of self-abuse; therefore parents should have their children form the habit of rising as soon as they waken in the morning. The waste of this force in childhood is one of the main causes of the dwarfed condition of the many persons who are physically and mentally undeveloped.
It will be observed that those persons who when young were required by their parents to rise early and attend to some physical labor, are the ones who make the highest attainments in life. We also find that men whose brains are kept so active as to suppress all sexual inclinations have abundance of life force in brain and body, thus becoming physically and mentally strong. This will also perfect the intuitive nature, which is. spiritual, and relates us to the earthly and solar mind, so that we are enabled to know things that are to come.
This intuitive faculty is the master and guide of the intellect, while the latter is the servant, the mechanic, the mathematician.
Men and women who live chaste lives are successful in whatever pursuits they undertake, unless previously bound by circumstances, because, as we stated, this is the method by which the intuitive function is perfected.
It is with man, as with the little spider, whose chemical nature attracts the mental elements of the solar fluid; and, by means of this element, he is enabled to build that fine mechanical structure, the web. The mental power is not in him, but acts through him; so man, when he has charged the body with this element of life, attracts the mental principle of the solar fluid, unites it with his intelligence, and is thus enabled to know many things, but cannot always explain how he knows them,—this is intuition.
It is the same wonderful principle which informs the birds when the cold storms of winter are approaching, and instructs them to go south for self-preservation. Birds and beasts live in complete harmony with nature. They do not waste their sexual forces, and therefore display
the wonderful sagacity noticed in the animate world below us.
Man alone abuses this function, and to the extent that he does so, is he deprived of that Divine guidance possessed by the whole animal world. The author has made it his business to examine with care the mental and physical condition of men and women who have had great success in life, and has found it an invariable rule that all such persons have been guided wholly by their intuitions, their reasoning faculties having been subordinate to this higher teacher.
There are some persons who make great attainments and who have fine intuitions, while living a licentious life, but the secret of their fine intuitions lies in the fact that their parents were chaste, thereby endowing them with a superior physical organism and mental intuitive faculties, and also that these same persons maintained chaste habits during childhood; yet their powers are far inferior to what they might be, did they observe the law of chastity.
The business world is controlled by two principles: first, love between man and man; second, psychic, or will power, man over man.
The intuitive powers when properly developed enable man to feel and understand what is in others; thus, when two men meet on a business plane they are apt to feel each other's conditions, and are thereby either attracted or repelled, or even moved to love or hate. Let us illustrate. A man calls on another, desiring some financial favor. As soon as they meet they feel that they can put confidence in each other, simply because their honesty of purpose is intuitively recognized.
[paragraph continues] Sometimes men are entrusted with large sums of money by strangers, through this principle of confidence or love, as they intuitively feel the ability and honesty of the party thus entrusted.
Young men just starting in life who make the principles of industry, honesty, and equity their guide, though they may have no capital whatever, will find little difficulty in obtaining credit and help in any business direction; for capitalists, being intuitive, readily discover in a young man the disposition to do justly by others, and to be honest and upright under all circumstances, and willingly trust them to any desired extent: whereas, if the young man has any disposition to take advantage of others, or get all he can without rendering an equivalent, it is immediately perceived, and confidence in him is lost or withheld.
The real motives and feelings of a person's heart are perceived by those who have developed the intuitive faculties through a chaste life; and they always love those of like morality and chastity; and as far as these conditions exist among business men, love is the controlling principle.
The second ruling principle in business—the psychic power—is the force that has been conserved to the use of the brain, and concentrated, and sent out by the will, with a combative, subduing, or controlling intent.
A man with a strong mind, having this psychological power well developed, is enabled to control those having less mental power, so that he actually projects into the other's mind his own feelings, thoughts, and desires, to the suspension of the other person's power to control themselves by their own will.
This second stage of business life is one of combat, man against man, and the weapons used are the psychic or will powers. The one who has the most of this power will conquer and cause his fellow-man to do that which he wills him to do. Thus men are often caused to do things in business, and even in social and domestic life, that their most ordinary reason would tell them was erroneous or injurious; yet, under the powerful will of others, they do it without thought.
Thus the world is ruled by these two principles, love and psychic force, and those persons who have this sublimated life essence are enabled to rule their fellows by the solar inspirations, or drawing in of the solar mind force, and sending it out, clothed with their own conserved life and controlling mental energy. See Isaiah lv. 8-16, and Hebrews xi. 3.
A perfectly celibate or chaste life enables a person to create thought forms and send them out by his will to persons near or far so as to bring about desired results in controlling mental faculties, or even physical conditions; thus a person conserving all the energies generated by the sexual function in his own body will soon be able to know, from his intuitions, how to heal diseased conditions in his fellows, by projecting his own life or soul essence into the part affected, to remove the difficulty, or to set in order the derangement.
To accomplish this, one must subject the appetites, feelings, and emotions entirely to the reason and the intuitions. St. Paul gave some good advice on this subject, as follows (Romans xii. 1, 2): "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present
your bodies a living sacrifice; holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world (or age), but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God." Again (Romans viii. 6): "For, to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."
It is necessary to conquer all abnormal excitement caused by stimulants or narcotics in order to establish an equilibrium between the supply and exhaust, and to bring about an harmonious condition between the person and God (or the Cause world); and as soon as persons begin to really conquer these conditions, they will find, on closing their eyes to go to sleep, that consciousness will continue on during their slumbering hours in whatever sphere their sympathies had been engaged while awake; and unless this harmony between themselves and the Cause world is secured, restlessness and unpleasant dreams will annoy them during sleeping hours.
Many persons undertaking to conquer their passional nature, so as to retain all the sexual fluids in their own bodies, will find, at first, great difficulty in doing so. . . Some have pronounced the task impossible, but it is not. All who will, can do so by constant persistency of purpose; having a fixed determination that they will not, under any circumstances, allow themselves to lose the vital fluid; charging the mind on going to sleep, as if expecting an enemy; and thus continuing night and day. With some it may take years, but others can. conquer in a short time; and when they begin to accomplish this, it should affect the appetite; for at least.
seven-eighths of all the food consumed by man is wasted through the sexual channels; therefore, when that waste is shut off, a less amount of food is necessary to support the body, in proportion to the previous expenditure in that direction. We have known many persons who, after conquering this passion, only found it necessary to eat one meal a day, and that of pure vegetables, abstaining entirely from animal food; but hard labor would increase the demand for food.
Persons living this life must study carefully to adjust the supply to the demand; in a word, must establish an equilibrium. This balance attained will produce a feeling of satisfaction, rest, and harmony, such as is. necessary to produce the best intellectual and spiritual results and to harmonize the soul with God, or the cause world. Without this union there will be darkness. and confusion, which is the primary cause of all mental, moral, and physical disease.
Involution is that law of thought formation operating through the movements of the planets of our solar system, whose activities descend into earth conditions and find their expression in the forms of all life,—animal, vegetable, and mineral; thus we come to know the nature of the incarnate thought by its form and quality; we determine the character of persons, we judge of the physical characteristics by means of the hair, the eyes, the finger-nails, the skin, and the organic structure of the body and brain.
If we find the body coarse, bones large, animal functions
of brain dominant, and reason low, we determine that the organic quality is coarse and on a low plane.
The general mental characteristics may also be determined by the finger-nails and the hair. If the nails are thick and strong, we know that the mental functions are rather coarse, and strong, and allied mainly to the physical; and, on the contrary, if the nails are thin and pliable, it indicates fine and sensitive nerve structure, with mental functions equally fine and active.
The hair when coarse implies general thought, materialistic tendencies, and rather coarse sensibilities; yet there are many belonging to the realm of fine art that have coarse hair. In this case, their sensibilities relate to the cognizance of physical nature. Very fine hair indicates very fine sensibilities and fine discriminative quality of mind and mental consciousness.
All these characteristics must be graded and their qualities decided by their relation to the two extremes. Straight hair indicates directness of character and habit and evenness of temper. Curly hair indicates changefulness, indirectness of character, uncertainty in thought and feeling, and frequently great excitability.
All thought formations interact one upon another, reproducing their kind, under the law of generation, which is a method of creation.
These thought principles are being evolved and refined until they come to a state of maturity; which, in the highest order of humanity, raises them above the law of carnal creation. Then the intuitive nature begins to govern and instruct such advanced souls, in the necessity of controlling and conquering natural
generation, and through this process the spiritual nature becomes allied to the cause world, and they are thus elevated above the necessity of being again involved in matter.
When any person is able to conquer the passional nature, he is lifted into and becomes conjoined to the immortal state, to which Jesus in his teachings so often referred. But this will only apply to the most mature persons on our planet; for, while water continues to course through the brooks and streams of earth, generation will continue, and in every stage or gradation of unfoldment, this law of generation will be the controlling power of all, except the few who are able to conquer its influence; as Jesus said, when questioned, "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it."
Man in his organic nature is a trinity: first, Spirit; second, Body; and third, Soul, which is the outgrowth of the body, through the agency of the spirit.
Spirit, which is the pure emanation from God, or the cause realm, gathers to itself material elements, thus forming a body through the medium of the life essences of the parents. This body is composed of thought crystallizations, active in the minds of the parents, at, and just previous to, conception; so that the incarnate thought of the parents at the time is expressed in the child's nature; so much so, that the zodiacal sign in which the earth was, and the polarity, or sign in which the moon was, at the date of birth, expresses the condition
of the mind of the most positive parent; while the planetary positions express the mental conditions of the most negative parent, whether father or mother. Sometimes we find these two conditions antagonistic to each other. If the child is a male, the external of its nature will embody the most positive mental condition at conception, and the interior the most negative. If the child is a female, the order is reversed.
The external comprises the thought arising through the medium of the five senses, while the interior nature comprises the loves, aspirations, and intuitions. Thus the soul life of the child consists of the thought formations arising from external and internal sources, the body being a chemical laboratory used by the spirit to transmute or generate thought or soul life; for all that makes us conscious individuals is the thought formations arising from the experience and mental conditions of the past. Either of these three entities, spirit, body, or soul, is capable of becoming the dominant actor, subjugating the others to it.
The exterior body of the child may be termed thought crystallization, and, being the crystallized thought of the parents, it frequently controls the nature and mental condition of the mother during the term of gestation; so much so, that in the particulars wherein the child would be like the father, the thoughts, feelings, and even the appetites, are often moulded like those of the father, or his ancestral lineage, of whose nature the child partakes.
In judging of character, we must first determine which of these three natures is the leading one. The spirit leads in taking cognizance of invisible causes;
the body, in the sphere of the physical senses, or material world. The mental formations, or soul, is characterized by the dominance of one or the other of these.
The spirit was anciently symbolized by Osiris, the Father, Isis, the Mother, or body, with the infant child, Horns, in the arms, born from the contact of spirit with matter. This infant child represents the mental formation or soul.
Man's interior nature is feminine. Woman's interior nature is masculine. The magnetic and electric emanations of men and women are inverse to each other, like the positive and negative poles of a magnet; therefore, when the trinity of being is in harmony between a man and a woman, they are drawn together, and inter-blend, forming a perfect unity of spirit, body, and soul, which was anciently symbolized by the double triangle, forming a six-pointed star (see Diagram No. 1).
But these conjunctions cannot be made promiscuously. Nature has a perfect mechanical order; a place for everything, and everything in its place; therefore one man and one woman belong together from the order of creation. Any deviation from this order creates inharmony, and inharmony is productive of adversity.
When the man and woman meet who really belong to each other, from this law of order, if they are living in harmony with the triune nature, they will certainly recognize each other, and love each other from that moment.
The present materialistic tendency of our age is constantly instructing children to follow their physical senses, and even their licentious, inclinations; and, by reason of this, men and women are not apt to recognize their true companions, but are drawn together purely from their sex-sensational nature; so they can only meet physically, there being no union either of spirit or soul.
In such cases, as soon as the fires of passion are cooled, there arises a repulsion between the two, resulting in a life of inharmony and misery, which does not end with them, but is transmitted to their offspring, and reflected upon all who come in social contact with them, and, as all mankind are members of one great body, it brings suffering upon the whole body of humanity.
Frequently, in delineating the character of persons, we find the antagonism which existed between parents embodied in the nature of the children. Many men and women are made worthless, and even vicious and criminal, through the antagonistic conditions existing in their own persons from parental causes. This can be easily determined by this system of Solar Biology, if we observe what points are inharmonious.
The question of how to find the true. conjugal mate is one of the greatest importance.
The first requisite is to bring unity of action between spirit, body, and soul; and the most important means in bringing this about is habitual chastity; but we
must also observe carefully the nature and functions of these three entities in ourselves.
If these three could be perfected, there would be no danger, provided men and women were left free to make their own choice; but the cases are very few where these natures are perfected: however, it more frequently occurs with women than with men, from the fact that girls are taught, from their childhood, to control their passional nature, through which control the intuitions are largely matured. But taking men and women in the present conditions of life, we shall be enabled to judge correctly from the following indications: When a young man and woman are in each other's society, they should watch their sensations carefully, and where they feel a strong magnetic attraction, sometimes amounting to a passion for each other which ceases soon after they are separated (unless, perhaps, it should continue to affect the sexual nature), they may rest assured that this arises wholly from mere physical attraction, or from the animal nature.
When two marry on that plane, it is certain to result in inharmony.
Second, if, while in such association, the two find great intellectual enjoyment, without any particular sacredness of the spiritual nature, the results of marriage would be varied, but are not usually good in such cases; for, while there is mental harmony, there may not be adaptability in the chemical combinations of their physical bodies, or unity in their spiritual natures; though sometimes they get along fairly by living as brother and sister; yet, in the main, the results are more evil than good.
These attractions sometimes result from being born in an adjoining sign or polarity, and sometimes from harmonious planetary combinations, which will be more fully explained hereafter.
The third, and perfect relation, will be observed in a feeling of harmony and peace, a deep, quiet rest, or enjoyment in sitting in silence in each other's company, with a feeling of the sacredness of each other's presence. Even when separated, the thought of each other produces similar results.
Frequently, where true soul union exists between the two, there will be a realization of actual presence, and the sacredness of that presence, though their bodies are miles apart. When this condition exists, they may rest assured that perfect harmony and interblending will result from their triune relations. Such marriages as these are few, very few indeed.
We find often, in giving delineations of character, men and women who have met these true soul companions, but from some cause have been led away from them, and married to others.
Such can never be separated in spirit, for the image of this companion will always be present in their memory and sacred to their thought. The door of the inner temple of their existence will be forever bolted against all others, and a deep soul sadness will characterize all their private life, though they try to avoid any expression of it.
Frequently the children of parents that are in this condition will be the very image of the absent one, so dear to memory. Though their companion may furnish the material germ, or the ground in which to
bring forth the child, yet this ideal one, though absent, will furnish the inner essences of the child's being. Thus is the seventh commandment being constantly broken by the majority of humanity: "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Frequently the interference of parents with the marriage of children will separate two that God had joined together; and man can only put asunder the bodies, for "What God doeth is forever."