Slike stranica
PDF
ePub

SPIRIT CONSCIOUSNESS OR CONSCIOUSNESS

OF SPIRIT-The Christ

This is the period when man becomes conscious of the Substance of the Universe. The effect of this illumination is to enable one to see through matter in the form of time or mass. When we have reached this point, we see nothing as real except this substance as Principle and its activities. This is the new Heaven and new Earth beheld by St. John instead of the bodily vision of a material heaven and earth.

Spirit consciousness consists of the apperception of Substance in its pure nature. It is the period when men tell of seeing God and speak and write of talking with Him. When men behold this Substance, they become indifferent to the world of bodily vision. They talk of things strange to mankind, and when they attempt to described in symbols what they have seen the symbol blinds their hearers to the Substance. They have been generally regarded as pious men, but in the generally accepted sense of the word this is not sustained by history. This state of mind is usually accompanied by an emotional repression which has been regarded as evidence of spirituality. Experience has taught me to believe this to be a mistaken idea of the influence of Spirit. I am convinced it is nothing more than a form of fear we experience in the presence of dignity and authority. When I first saw Spirit clearly the regeneration was remarkable and was accompanied by this sense of awe. However, instead of yielding to this fear, I determined to overcome it. This was not an easy thing to do in spite of mental independence and freedom from superstition. Besides, those with whom I was associated in studying and demon

strating this power regarded this awe as a sign of holiness. It took courage to do this, since I had nothing to guide me in history, philosophy or science.

The details of the influence of Spirit-consciousness on specific cases we will take up later, while we still will here consider the religious or spiritually minded in the generally understood meaning of the word. Those to whom this Light comes with an intense vision turn away from the world of human effort in a manner difficult to understand unless we have been so fortunate as to experience and survive it. The whole monastic history with its attendant schools of celibacy is the result of this effect on the human mind. This Spirit-consciousness not only produces in the mind an abhorrence of the processes of natural generation, but under its influence secondary qualities which impel those motives are destroyed. Under its influence, what is described in the Scriptures as "hungering after righteousness" is so great that men and women break in the most cruel manner the most sacred human ties. Human organizations are regarded as of no consequence and the effect of this accounts for the morbid and moribund condition which always follows in the wake of a great spiritual revival.

Those who get this sense imperfectly, and are generally classified as religious people, express just in proportion to their sense of it the same indifference to all intelligent application of it in human ways and means whereby we must live. This is the result of believing they have become vaguely conscious of the power that should govern the world and that human effort is unnecessary. They pray for "His kingdom to come in earth as it is in Heaven" and at the same time oppose every effort of

the inspired thought to do intelligently what they are praying for. Here is born the warfare of science and religion. They refuse to study cause and effect and thereby learn the nature and relation of things, and necessarily run off to the most monstrous superstition. They glory in apocalyptical visions and strive to connect every incident of their existence with the influence of Spirit. There is no order or system in anything with them everything is an accidental tangent of truth, or else it is an answer to their prayer. Reason and accuracy are given a secondary place, and as a result they become illogical and injudicial. When seen in its true relation to the Absolute and to the relative existence of man, this mind becomes a most interesting field of research. Why the highest Good should have the effect of producing evil, awakens in those who are conscious of it a seriousness that can only be described as profound.

Here, too, we get a glimpse of something that has always been the theory of religions and especially in the Orient, i. e., the cycle. Yet in this plan we have worked out it has revealed itself without our being conscious of it. We started in with the unconscious utilizaton of Spirit by matter in its lowest form and traced its development to a conscious realization, which immediately had the effect of destroying that which unconsciously utilized it. This then must be the cycle through which all expressions through matter must pass until the consciousness becomes Spirit and the sense of matter is annihilated.

CHAPTER XVII

THE INFLUENCE OF THE FELT-OUT MIND ON HUMAN LIFE AND THOUGHT

The felt-out mind has two appetites, one of preservation and the other of procreation. The demands of these appetites are the basis of organized thought. The club of our primitive ancestor with which he threatened and drove his fellows away from the food he had foraged and the female he had pre-empted, has expanded into armies and navies, civil and religious codes, criminal and religious courts. They are but divisions of efforts to protect the booty or conserved energy of man. The exercise of these functions, growing out of the law of selfpreservation, results in competition and war.

From the terrible experiences, bitter hatreds, fears and contradictions growing out of this struggle, man develops a comparative sense, which in time evolves the thought-out mind. When the thought-out mind has developed to the conversational degree men compare these evils and agree among themselves that they are wrong, harmful and unnecessary. Yet the demands of their appetites go on and they find themselves involved in one strife after another. In the feudal period this strife is constantly breaking out into petty wars. During nationalism under monarchical periods, co-existent with a high degree of intelligence, these forces are more easily controlled through power vested in a few men. However, as society modifies its form and one institution grows out of another, between the decline of one and the

rise of another this struggle breaks out anew. A change from the monarchical to the republican form of control will be attended by a violent economic upheaval.

During these periods the thought-out mind talks about what ought to be done, organizes societies for the purpose of propagation and dissemination only to be swept off their feet by the fierce struggles of the felt-out mind. At these periods men claiming to be endowed with power from supernatural sources preach duty and obedience, talk about right and wrong and invoke the aid of an invisible power. During these periods there come naturally into existence those who depend entirely on organized human effort in the form of armies and navies with their attendant intelligent features. At the same time as a result of these struggles there are men who vaguely discern the operations of this law of self-preservation and recognize its power over the thought-out mind. These men explain its nature and method of operation and, furthermore, they discover the possibility of evils growing out of this mind influenced by human ambition and love of power. These evils they attempt to expose and also to correct by legislation; this is the origin of political economy.

This trinity of human efforts naturally develops modified forms growing out of the different degrees of thought-out intelligence. This division of effort goes on until they lose all sense of their origin and relation to the fundamental necessities and become wandering phantoms of human emotion. The analysis of these different phases of thought we have here outlined will come up for consideration as the activities of the thought-out mind become extended. The first applied effort growing out

[ocr errors]
« PrethodnaNastavi »