48/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

The world in general still continues to assiduously pursue the clumsy, crude, roundabout, cart before the horse method of realizing ends, in spite of the magnificent example of Jesus and the early Christians, and the marvelous achievements that attended their adoption of the reverse method.

“Narrow is the gate and straightened the way [spiritual consciousness] that leadeth unto life, and few be they that find it.” Jesus rejected the objective method in toto. He healed only such as were inwardly receptive to the Truth in a degree sufficient to enable him to reach their lives from the spiritual center of Being, at which his thought continually rested.

This method (the subjective.) assumes the Principle of consciousness to be the basis of all expression. It exerts its activity from the absolute center of life, working outward toward all points on the circumference. As each individual’s center of consciousness becomes established at the universal center, the whole outward aspect of things changes for him.

According to this method, instead of supposing the basis of consciousness to be in the physical realm, we assume spiritual Principle as the basis of all physical manifestations; and wherever this affirmation is made, not as a theory, but as a fact of selfconsciousness, its correctness is proven by results achieved.

God is Spirit, absolute, unconditioned Principle. Nothing real is outside him, external to him. There can exist for him nothing transcending his own consciousness, no objective thing superior to his own subjectivity; otherwise he would not be the Supreme Being. His will is absolute freedom and spontaneity. As we approach this standpoint, where the supremacy of the subjective is realized, we know it through actual experience to be the basis of all expression.

We do not realize heaven by going to it, but by assuming that consciousness, now. “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven” (this spiritual kingdom which is “within you”), and all else “shall be added unto you.” “And no man hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven.”