points
set either this way or that, and so can pass on to whichever line he
pleases, but when he _has_ passed on to one of them he is compelled to
run on along the line which he has selected until he reaches another
set of points, where again an opportunity of choice is offered to him.

Now, in looking down from the mental plane, these points of new
departure would be clearly visible, and all the results of each choice
would lie open before us, certain to be worked out even to the
smallest detail. The only point which would remain uncertain would be
the all-important one as to which choice the man would make. We
should, in fact, have not one but several futures mapped out before
our eyes, without necessarily being able to determine which of them
would materialize itself into accomplished fact. In most instances we
should see so strong a probability that we should not hesitate to come
to a decision, but the case which I have described is certainly
theoretically possible. Still, even this much knowledge would enable
us to do with safety a good deal of prediction; and it is not
difficult for us to imagine that a far higher power than ours might
always be able to foresee which way every choice would go, and
consequently to prophesy with absolute certainty.

On the buddhic plane, however, no such elaborate process of conscious
calculation is necessary, for, as I said before, in some manner which
down here is totally inexplicable, the past, the present, and the
future, are there all existing simultaneously. One can only accept
this fact, for its cause lies in the faculty of the plane, and the
way in which this higher faculty works is naturally quite
incomprehensible to the physical brain. Yet now and then one may meet
with a hint that seems to bring us a trifle nearer to a dim
possibility of comprehension. One such hint was given by Dr. Oliver
Lodge in his address to the British Association at Cardiff. He said:

"A luminous and helpful idea is that time is but a relative mode of
regarding things; we progress through phenomena at a certain definite
pace, and this subjective advance we interpret in an objective manner,
as if events moved necessarily in this order and at this precise rate.
But that may be only one mode of regarding them. The events may be in
some sense in existence always, both past and future, and it may be we
who are arriving at them, not they which are happening. The analogy of a
traveller in a railway tr