44/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

Out of this cosmic, spiritual substratum, this fundamental type of consciousness, arises a multitude of individualized experiences, just as myriads of leaves, each endowed with peculiar characteristics of its own, spring from a common source, the life of the tree.

The forms through which this personal aspect of consciousness is expressed, appear and disappear; but deeply hidden beneath every superficial expression lies the eternal, spiritual consciousness, ever the same, the ground of immortality in every human being.

To realize immortality is the supreme desire of every man the end toward which his hopes tend, however mistaken he may be in regard to its real significance and the method of its attainment. In the last analysis, the incentive to live is the desire to escape from the harassing conditions of the lower planes to some higher state of consciousness which will afford us peace and satisfaction.

When one realizes this permanent, eternal type of consciousness which enables him to become aware of a deep, spiritual identity persisting through all reverses such as loss of property, or friends, and even the dissolution of the body he possesses a clear title to immortality; for by steadfastly identifying one’s self with that element in consciousness which is able to survive the death of the body,

because it transcends all conditions of time and space, viz., spiritual Principle, life and immortality are brought to light. Conditions change, forms perish, beliefs disappear; nothing is stable on the sensuous or the intellectual planes. By allying one’s Self and one’s hope of perpetual existence with things, events or beliefs transient factors of experience,

uncertain phases of life by building of “wood, hay or stubble,” one must, sooner or later, suffer the loss of what he has built; and even though he be “saved as by fire,” it will be naked, forlorn and destitute of that spiritual garment which must be woven, stitch by stitch through experience in the highest realm of consciousness.

“I who must be saved because I cling with my mind To the same, same self, same love, same God ; ay, what was, shall be.”