42/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE
Inasmuch as one’s own consciousness is the prime factor in the creation of his outer world, if he would live in one superior to that which he now enjoys, he must set about transforming his consciousness; and it matters not how radical the change in his view-point may be, it will effect a corresponding regeneration of his outer world, as surely as the image in the mirror corresponds to the figure of the body that stands before it.
His attention, then, should not be directed, primarily, toward changing those specific objects and circumstances he may have imagined to have an absolute existence outside him, but to transforming his inward life or consciousness, thus preparing the way for an outward change.
This is quite the reverse of what most men are accustomed to regard the true order of things. The ordinary type of mind grows confused and bewildered in trying to find out what is real, either through the senses or the intellect faculties which are but mediums of interpretation and finally jumps at erroneous conclusions, mistaking its own imperfect thoughts about truth for the Truth itself.
Truth may be formulated intellectually, as the spiritual idea of the poet is cast into forms of verse symbolizing or suggesting to appreciative minds the Reality known to the poet himself, and which must be discerned by the reader as well, in the last analysis, through the intuitive faculty. Spirit can no more be perceived through the intellect than can the stars through the microscope.
Many pursue the quest for spiritual truth with the intellect, until it leads them to agnosticism or pessimism; others, in whom the discriminative faculty is less keenly developed, are satisfied with such aspects of truth as the intellect is able to reveal,
and imagine those transient, kaleidoscopic reflections of the real to be Reality itself. But “spiritual things are spiritually discerned.” The intellect can neither perceive what lies above its own plane, nor recognize the existence of such a plane.
Therefore learning, of the conventional description intellectual knowledge, observations concerning truth may, and frequently does, preclude the discernment of truth itself, by preoccupying the entire mental horizon so as to obscure the higher vision, causing the attention to be so constantly and persistently centered in the lower channels of perception that, through practical neglect of the higher soul-faculty, its very existence is often either forgotten or denied.
Conventional standards of education as yet make comparatively little account of this highest of human faculties, and the incomparable benefits to be derived from its further development. The material consciousness is cultivated and freely propagates itself, while the spiritual starves for lack of suitable nourishment ideals upon which to feed. But first of all we must become aware of the existence of a spiritual faculty as a positive certainty, and not as a mere vague, shadowy possibility.