43/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE
Intuition is the supreme court of our Being, from the decisions of which no appeal can be made. However, for him who first discerns the Truth, Reality, Spirit, intuitively, the intellect and the senses furnish invaluable sidelights which add immeasurably to its appreciation.
Their echoes are like the overtones or harmonics accompanying the fundamental tone heard when any string of a musical instrument is struck or caused to vibrate. No man in whose consciousness the light of truth is entirely diffused, by the refracting power of the intellect, into separate beliefs, definite periods or external events, can appreciate Spirit. “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”
When one’s ear becomes attuned to certain discordant notes in the symphony of life, or his eye over-sensitive to certain distasteful colors from constant emphasis of them in their separateness, the ideal unity of life known through the spiritual consciousness alone, fades away, so that in time he comes to realize nothing but a narrow, disjointed, material existence.
After awhile, by dwelling perpetually on the phenomenal aspect of life, he grows to perceive only a monotonous repetition of certain coarser vibrations; his spiritual sight and hearing become continually duller, and the distinguishable vibrations coarser, until he finds himself in the silence of that ” outer darkness ” which is death.
Only as one’s consciousness expands sufficiently to enable him to appreciate Reality itself, does he understand the true meaning of experiences that come to him, seemingly at random, from without; and not until divested of the fictitious values with which time and space have endowed them, are they visible in their true light.
The purely spiritual consciousness is both broad and deep, extending beyond the personal sphere and furnishing the common basis of all separate, superficial experiences that arise in our lives. He who realizes this type of consciousness may, through it, reach another’s thought fundamentally enough to suggest to him ideas that, if accepted and acted upon until they penetrate into the more superficial channels of expression, will transform his whole outward appearance.
If, as in the case of Jesus, one’s consciousness be profound enough, its regenerating power may be made manifest instantaneously, providing a sufficient degree of receptivity exists in the mind of the subject toward whom it is exerted. Such is the possibility of consciousness when one becomes fully awakened to the power behind his own and other finite lives; and today many are rapidly approaching that point in their actual experience.