41/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

Spirit is not an entity or substance existing apart from matter, concealed from view, waiting to be revealed to mortals at death. On the contrary, it is ever-present Reality, independent of time and space not a reality, or a particular kind of reality, but Reality itself; the absolute, ideal Principle or Essence of things, about which all conceivable qualities and attributes are predicable;

unalterable, formless, undifferentiated, unconditioned; neither describable nor comprehensible, but simply appreciable. By many, the spiritual realm is conceived to be a sort of extension of, or adjunct to, the material. They look forward to the time when it shall be disclosed to them as if by magic.

But it is only through cultivation of the spiritual faculty that Spirit can be made to appear, and that factor of experience does not depend on time or space. It is futile to search for Spirit within the domain of objective experience; it must be approached subjectively.

Whenever we try to apprehend the Absolute Principle of things. Spirit, with the intellect, we see it indefinitely extended in time or space, differentiated in endless numbers, relations, forms just as by refraction and reflection, light, although indefinable and indescribable in its homogeneous aspect, is resolved into an infinite number of diffused rays; and in this heterogeneous aspect it displays a world of endlessly changing hues.

Yet the principle which is the source of these varied phenomena remains all the while unaltered, regardless of the way we chance to perceive its effects. It is not light, but our manner of observing it, that changes. One person may possess a normally sensitive vision, while another is color-blind or even blind; but it is only the effects perceived that vary, and not, in its ultimate essence, that which is perceived.

The existence of discrepancies in impressions received must be accounted for by the observer’s view-point, or the conditions under which his experiments are made. We see outwardly just what we are inwardly conditioned to see by reason of the status of our own consciousness; and if we would see otherwise,

it must be primarily, through the cultivation of a different quality or degree of consciousness, rather than through the substitution of different external conditions. In the last analysis, the suggestion that leads to a change of view must operate from within; the view-point must be altered.