24/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE
Throughout our search we have seen simply the outer aspect of something; and what is the something? No amount of analyzing brings us any nearer the reality. Definition fails to acquaint us with it. Is its essential nature, therefore, unknowable? We search in vain for life within the bud—in fact we are foiled in every attempt to find an absolute inside.
Whenever we dissect any object in search of the inside we conceive it to possess, we discover nothing but other outsides. We recognize the outside of things by means of physical senses, but they never reveal an inside; yet we are just as positive that an inside does exist, as if it were visible to the eye of sense. Clearly the idea of internality must be acquired in some other way.
Inasmuch as an inside is never discovered by the senses, the knowledge that it certainly exists must be derived from some other source. Here is the paradox of matter: we cannot conceive of an exterior without its interior; yet the interior of matter is never visible. Verily we are bound to confess that matter has no inside corresponding in appearance to its external aspect.
It is the symbol by which we recognize life exteriorly our outward interpretation of life. The symbolical outer world has always been recognized by deep thinkers and appreciative observers as a commentary on the inner life. Poets and seers find the inner mirrored in the outer. Philosophers and scientists are only beginning to appreciate the full significance of this fact.
Man becomes acquainted with his own nature by tracing analogous features in the outside world. The outer corresponds to the inner as does the outside of a circle to its inside. The inside and the outside are totally unlike; one is concave, the other convex. A superficial observer, on looking at a hollow sphere from the outside, would see nothing about it to suggest the view he obtains from the inside; yet the two distinct impressions are derived from contemplating the same thing in its different aspects.
The world we see without —in space —and the world we see within —in time are objective and subjective manifestations of one Reality. It is inevitable, then, that we should find analogies subsisting between them. By penetrating deep enough, we may discern something of the inner significance of every outward manifestation; and likewise we may discover an outer symbol for every inward experience.
If we thus discerningly study the universe we see without, it will come to hold for us a deeper meaning and inter- est than attach to it as an aggregation of objects. Matter is mind viewed exteriorly. Every object, process, or formation we observe in our symbolical outer order has its inner significance.
Every outside has its interior aspect, and vice versa. Let us, then, undertake a brief analysis of the outward forms of life —the world in space — preparatory to contemplating the interior aspect of life.