Scientific Religion ( 1888) Laurence Oliphant

NOTE: This post features Custom EPUB, PDF and IMAGES for DOWNLOAD. ALL PARTS OF THIS BOOK ARE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN SCIENTIFIC RELIGION OR HIGHER POSSIBILITIES OF LIFE AND PRACTICE THROUGH THE OPERATION OF NATURAL FORCES BY LAURENCE OLIPHANT WITH AN APPENDIX BY A CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND SECOND EDITION MDCCCLXXXVIII — 1888 — Preface to the Modern Reader To truly enter the world of Laurence Oliphant’s Scientific Religion , one must first confront his sternest warning: the danger of a “divided mind.” Oliphant posits that the modern seeker is often trapped in a state of “distracted attention,” where we attempt to understand the universe by breaking it into pieces—treating the spiritual and the physical as if they were unrelated continents. This is the struggle with dualism, which he illustrates through the tension between the “supersensible” (the spirit) and the “sensible” (the material). He warns that if we treat these as separate facts, we are forced to invent artificial “occult qualities” to link them together, which only leads to a fabricated and hollow understanding of reality. To resolve this conflict, Oliphant directs our focus toward a “point of unity,” a concept embodied by the alchemical Anima Mundi. Like the central figure in the Aurora Consurgens standing between the solar and lunar trees, truth does not reside in one pole or the other, but “thoroughly between both”. Oliphant cautions that we often fall into “perverse self-love” or “spiritual voluptuousness”—the trap of enjoying beautiful mystical ideas without doing the hard work of disciplined thinking. He insists that truth is “genetic”; it is not a static result found in a table of data, but a living process that “makes itself through its own power” once we provide the “whole, full attention” required to witness its generation. Furthermore, Oliphant sets a rigorous standard for how the “concept” or the human intellect must function in this process. He explains that for the “One principle of pure light” to manifest, the seeker’s mental framework must be both “posited and then annihilated”. This means we must build a clear, rational understanding of the world (represented by the crown of the Anima Mundi) only to eventually surrender that intellect to a direct experience of the “ unbegreifliche Sein ” or Incomprehensible Being. He warns that those who cling to their ego or to “mere empiricism” will find only a “cold, powerless love” for definitions, never reaching the vital, transformative power of the “Scientific Religion” he proposes. Ultimately, Oliphant’s work serves as an instruction manual for the “Great Work” of the soul. He demands that the reader become an active participant who “freely constructs” the premises of their own insight rather than remaining a passive observer. By moving from the “distraction” of seeing two separate trees to the “insight” of the shared root, the seeker discovers that the division between subject and object is merely an illusion. In his view, the only path to genuine knowledge is through this absolute concentration, where the self vanishes into a “One eternally self-same knowledge”. A Word on the Cover The cover image is based on an alchemical illustration which presents an allegory of the human being poised between opposing yet complementary forces. The crowned central figure represents awakened consciousness or the higher self—sovereign, balanced, and capable of mediating between realms. The intertwined red and white forms suggest dual currents—often read as active and receptive, vital and spiritual, or material and immaterial energies—held in dynamic equilibrium rather than conflict. The composition reflects the theme of Scientific Religion : that spiritual development operates through lawful, natural forces. The image proposes that human evolution—moral, intellectual, and spiritual—emerges through the conscious harmonization of these underlying principles. — EDITOR, 2026 PREFACE. In the last volume which I published, called ‘Episodes in a Life of Adventure,’ I said in the concluding chapter that the reason why I could not continue the records of my life beyond the year 1865, was because my attention, which had previously to that date been for some years directed to what is called “spiritualism,” now became absorbed in a new and higher phase of investigation, which compelled me to abandon the pursuits and ambitions of the life I was leading, and retire from the world in order to surround myself by the most favourable conditions I could find under which to “prosecute my researches into the more hidden laws which govern human action and control events;” and I went on to say, that “although from time to time I have been suddenly forced from retirement into some of the most stirring scenes which have agitated Europe, the reasons which compelled me to participate in them were closely connected with the investigation in which I was engaged, the nature of which is so absorbing, and its results so encouraging, that it would not be possible for me now to abandon it, or to relinquish the hope which it has inspired, that a new moral future is dawning upon the human race—one, certainly, of which it stands much in need.” I did not then anticipate the possibility of my being so soon called upon to publish my grounds for expressing this hope; but during a withdrawal of five months last summer, into the solitudes of Mount Carmel, I have felt myself irresistibly impelled to write the following pages, and they furnish the only answer I can give to my numerous critics who are kind enough to regret that I should have left the paths of diplomatic and political adventure “to wander amidst the phantoms and mirages of the occult science.” Only those who have tried both are in a position to judge where the phantoms and mirages really are. As, however, access to books of reference, with which to support the conclusions at which I had arrived, was limited in so remote a spot, it was necessary for me to come to England, and my researches have more than fulfilled my expectations. It has been impossible for me to do justice to the subject without intruding my own personality to an extent which would have been in the highest degree repellent to me, were it not that the results reached, seem to me of such general paramount importance as to supersede all other considerations, and that the experimental process by which they have been obtained, is a necessary prelude and explanation of them. Excepting, however, where personal allusions are unavoidable, I have dispensed with them; while I earnestly trust that, in some minds at all events, the convictions which are here embodied as the result of long and arduous struggle and effort, may meet with a response. LAURENCE OLIPHANT. April 1888. POSTSCRIPT TO THE PREFACE. I FEEL impelled at the last moment to say one word with regard to the conditions under which this book was written. I had hesitated to do so until it was actually in the hands of the binder; but the problems of psychology are forcing themselves so strongly upon public attention, that I do not think that any experience which may throw light upon them should be withheld. I became conscious on my arrival at Haifa last spring that a book, the plan of which I could not determine, was taking form in my mind, and pressing for external expression, and at once sat down to write it. I found the attempt to be vain; the ideas refused to arrange themselves, and I was strongly impressed that they could not do so, unless I went to a summer—house I have built in a remote part of Mount Carmel, and made the room from which the spirit of my wife had passed into the unseen, a little more than a year before, my private study, religiously preserving it from intrusion. I had no sooner taken my pen in hand under these circumstances, than the thoughts which find expression in the following pages were projected into my mind with the greatest rapidity, and irrespective of any mental study or prearrangement on my part, often overpowering my own preconceptions, and still more often presenting the subject treated of in an entirely new light to myself. On two or three occasions they ceased suddenly. I then found it was useless to try and formulate them by any effort of my brain, and at once abandoned the attempt to write for the day. The longest interval of this kind was three days. On the fourth I was again able to write with facility, and though always conscious of the effort of composition, it was never so severe as to cause me to pause for more than one or two minutes. At the same time there was nothing, so far as I could judge, abnormal in my mental or physical condition. I was unaffected by trifling interruptions, and the ideas as they presented themselves seemed to be my own mingled with others projected from an unseen source, or new ideas struggling with and overpowering old ones with force that I could not resist. This must be my apology for a tone of authority which I should otherwise have been reluctant to impart to this book.