37/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE
Every man is conscious of a self in which his separate, personal experiences are so unified that he knows them to spring from a single source. Waking and sleeping, he preserves his identity from day to day and from year to year. But if we readily associate expressions separated in time with one self, it is equally true that we may assume a broader basis by extending our thought so that it shall associate expressions separated in space with one self.
Jesus’ thought of self embraced all mankind. He said: “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” “Abide in me, and I in you.” Paul declared that “we are all members of one body.” Jesus’ thought was deep and vital, as well as broad; intensive, as well as extensive. Herein, it surpassed the thought of all other great seers.
No thought is perfectly harmonious unless it is poised at the absolute center, so that it is in unison with the thought of the Supreme Being. Jesus could say unreservedly: “I and my Father are one,” for his thought was in perfect accord with the Divine consciousness. He revealed the eternity, the fulness, the wholeness of life. “I came that ye might have life, and that, having it, ye might have it more abundantly.”
One may be sympathetic, charitable, public spirited, and even philanthropic, without being conscious of the deeper meaning of life. Emotional intensity is superficial, not deep. Joy and sorrow meet in the profoundest depths of consciousness. The deepest sorrow does not call forth tears, nor the highest joy, exultation.
It is the finite in us that weeps and exults, while the Infinite remains unmoved not from stoical indifference, but because of that perfect poise which enables it to appreciate life in its complete significance, without stopping to dwell on each trivial incident. In this way we may stand outside our finite lives and view them comprehensively.
The phenomena of life sparks, as it were, issuing from real life so dazzle us that it is with the utmost difficulty that we become acquainted with our deeper Self, the self of more than personal significance.
No general appreciation of the eternity of life is possible until educational methods are adopted which are calculated to develop the expansive power latent in every individual. The life and teaching of Jesus must remain an enigma to students of human nature and practical economists, until this attribute of life is taken into account.