n _relativity_, and it is hardly
thinkable that we could, under our present conditions, have any
cognisance of the positive without its negative; we shall in fact see
later on that it is by examining the Physical, the negative or shadow,
that we can best gain a knowledge of the Spiritual, the positive or
real.

The first step to a clear understanding of this, is to recognise that
it is not we who are looking out upon Nature but that it is the
Reality which is ever trying to enter and come into touch with us
through our senses, and is persistently trying to waken within us a
knowledge of the sublimest truths. It is difficult to realise this, as
from infancy we have been accustomed to confine our attention wholly
to the objective, believing that to be the reality.

Let us try and grasp this fact. If we analyse our sense of sight, we
find that the only impression made on our bodies by external objects
is the image formed upon the retina; we have no cognisance of the
separate electro-magnetic rills forming that image, which, reflected
from all parts of an object, fall upon the eye at different angles,
constituting form, and with different frequencies giving colour to
that image; that image is only formed when we turn our eyes in the
right direction to allow those rills to enter; and, whereas those
rills are incessantly beating on the outside of our sense organ when
the eyelid is closed, they can make no impression unless we allow them
to enter by raising that shutter. It is not then any volition from
within that goes out to seize upon and grasp the truths from Nature,
but the phenomena are as it were forcing their way into our
consciousness. This is more difficult to realise when the object is
near to us, as we are apt to confound it with our sense of touch,
which requires us to stretch out our hand to the object, but it is
clearer when we take an object far away. In our telescopes we catch
the rills of light which started from a star a thousand years ago and
the image is still formed on the retina _now_ although those rills are
in fact a thousand years old and, invisible to our unaided eye, have
been falling upon mankind from the beginning of life on this globe,
trying to get an entrance to consciousness. It was, however, only
when, by evolution of thought, the knowledge of optics had produced
the telescope that it became possible not only for that star to make
itself known to us but to declare to us its distance, its si