89/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

11.
MANIFESTATIONS OF THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE.

In all ages there have lived seers, prophets and men of genius, who have professed to find in life a deep, esoteric meaning, unappreciated and unrecognized by the restless throng of human beings, who crave only amusement or entertainment. Individuals of these rarer types are often accounted eccentric, by their less aspiring fellows, because they are uninfluenced by motives and considerations that appeal to the average man.

How one can be serene in the midst of tumult and strife; contented when surrounded by poverty and deprivation; and even, perchance, feel an increased sense of satisfaction as his material resources and creature comforts diminish, these things are fairly incomprehensible to the ordinary mortal.

Such superiority to conditions seems to him sufficiently erratic to warrant the conclusion that his unfortunate brother has gone daft, and is a menace to society, or, at least, a proper subject for charitable consideration.

Evidently this deeply contented state of mind is not derived from outward conditions; its presence must be attributed to an inner consciousness of which the superficial man has little knowledge. Some men, indeed, in their heart of hearts, long for this “peace that passeth understanding,” and yet they are so deceived by appearances of things which appeal to them on the lower planes of consciousness, that they fail to reach this goal, the supreme end of existence.

All manifested forms of life exhibit the characteristics of variety and unity. Everything we perceive may be considered either as a unit in itself, or as constituting a part of some other unit. Whether we attach greater importance to variety or unity in the things we recognize, whether we are more forcibly impressed by the one or the other consideration,

depends on the attitude we assume toward that which we contemplate. The uncultured mind, which relies chiefly on the physical senses for information, is generally so bewildered by the complex phenomena of the spectacle it witnesses, that it does not succeed in comprehending its unity the spiritual idea it represents, a characteristic which is at once evident to the more highly organic type of mind.