7/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

If we are to be free, in the truest sense, we must be released from bondage to belief. We must conquer the intellect, and make it our servant, instead of permitting it to be our master. We must assume a standpoint above the plane of understanding, so as to be able to control our thinking, and not allow it to control us. The vast majority of people, knowingly or ignorantly, merely reflect the opinions of others in intellectual matters, instead of developing original tendencies of thinking.

Just at present it is comparatively easy for most persons to forsake old beliefs and conceptions for newer ones. These are days of transition, of revision, of reconstruction, in the world of thought. It is now, indeed, more natural for progressive minds to accept new forms of belief than to cling to old ones. So general is this disposition, so widespread has become the tendency to adopt new ways of thinking, that, unless one is extremely careful, he is in danger of yielding to a “fad” in changing his views.

History proves that when any reconstructive movement has once gained sufficient headway, new recruits flock eagerly to its support. But, after all, the significance of such movements does not lie so much in the superiority of the new doctrines they proclaim as in the spirit evinced by considerable numbers of people identified with them to become independent truthseekers, instead of to adhere tenaciously to any single phase or expression of truth.

In time, however, a large proportion of the champions of new doctrines allow themselves to come into bondage to them, just as have men, in times past, to older ones. History constantly repeats itself. Principles, vital truths, give rise to doctrines, and in turn doctrines degenerate into dogmas. It is the dogmatic spirit rather than allegiance to any particular belief that stamps one a bondservant of thought instead of a free man.

Every dogma is a dry, shriveled husk that once contained the seeds of a vital truth. Men recognize the familiar external form, and by association confound it with the spiritual essence it once embodied. But the living germ has already fallen into the ground where, warmed and nourished by the revitalizing influences of faith and love, it is again growing into manifestation fresh forms.

Such is the common history of all beliefs. Doctrines, philosophies and theologies are born, grow, bear fruit and die. “Except a kernel of wheat fall into the ground and die, it cannot bear fruit.”