77/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

Details are indispensable to the realization of a perfectly satisfactory effect. Phenomena that, distinguished separately, seem, in the act of perception, like flaws or blemishes in their relation to the whole, because they suggest imperfection or ugliness, are factors essential to the complete representation.

Every detailed expression of a perfect ideal exhibits certain phases that may be construed as imperfect, in a way; and such imperfection must be accounted for, not on the supposition that the ideal is deficient, but solely on the ground of the inadequacy of our method of trying to comprehend its significance.

Parts cannot exist without a whole; they must be parts of something. The fact that we recognize them as partial is evidence that we have knowledge of a complete unit to which they are related.
“The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil so much good more;
On earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.”

Life viewed in detail may seem to exhibit attributes entirely foreign to those revealed by contemplation of it in its totality. As we know it in the light of Absolute consciousness, we discern in it neither good nor evil, in the finite sense. Appreciation transcends discrimination. The bright and the dark spots of the finite picture resolve into an infinite ideal.

The signification of the term “good,” when used to designate the absolute quality of experience, is quite different from its signification when applied to relative distinctions. There is a relative sense in which experience consists of both good (the positive element) and evil (the negative element).

In the absolute sense, “all is good,” not because those factors of life which the finite mind accounts evil, have been eliminated from experience, but because, in the higher vision, both its good and evil aspects are transfigured and made to blend together in a satisfying whole.