33/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

The kind of thought necessary to estimate and compare facts, events, opinions, has breadth as well as duration; it extends in more than one direction of time. This is the distinctively intellectual type of thought. It exhibits different degrees of intensity, as do colors in space, but it suggests only superficial qualities.

In space we see only the surfaces of bodies; yet we have evidence of their substantial quality, although none of the physical senses reveal it, because, holding the three-dimensional conception of space, we are obliged to see objects in that way, i.e., as substantial bodies. And it is precisely so in regard to the interior aspect of life.

Thoughts have substantial as well as superficial properties. One may be conscious of hardly more than a mere procession of mental phenomena in his thought-world, as he counts the passing moments; or he may recognize the broad phase of thought, while almost utterly oblivious to its depth; or again, he may comprehend its substantial content, its “solid” quality.

Thoughts, doctrines, conceptions of truth, systems of belief, appear to grow and sustain relations to one another in the temporal world, precisely as do bodies in the spatial world. In order to properly estimate spatial relations, we must assume some point as a center from which to observe objective phenomena.

We conceive of motion and extension because our standpoint is fixed. We see an outer world extending around us in every direction. We seem to stand at the center of an indefinitely extensive sphere. Just so, in order to properly estimate temporal relations, we must assume some point as a center from which to observe subjective phenomena; we must concentrate, center our consciousness.

It is only in this way that we become aware of past and future in connection with our lives. From this central view-point we see an inner world extending around us in every direction of time. To properly comprehend the content of our inner world, then, we must realize the meaning of the three dimensional conception of time.

This conception will prove the key to an understanding of psychic phenomena that seem weird and mysterious to those who are unaccustomed to associate more than one dimension with time.