Month: May 2021

Specters that seem very real in the dark, vanish in the light. A balloon rises because the specific gravity of the substance with which it is inflated is less than that of the medium in which it floats. Just so must one overcome the world by cultivating the quality of consciousness which renders him superior to the lower attractions of life. Paul recognized this principle when he said: “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds.” It is not by putting forth greater exertions, through titanic efforts of the…

Read More

The ideal of Jesus was to the materialist only a wild flight of the imagination, an impracticable dream. But together with the ideal came the power of realization. If we yield ourselves unreservedly to the power of the Absolute within us, and trust It to direct the course of our lives, the realization of our ideals will be spontaneous. Our failures are due to reliance upon external supports and props. We shrink from casting ourselves loose like the worlds in space, trusting the omnipotent inner law. But if, surrendering antagonism…

Read More

We invite impressions by rendering ourselves receptive to them. We may attune our thought to respond to the vibrations of low, coarse, material influences, or to those that are high, fine, spiritual. If to the former, a world of materiality, selfishness, sensuality, brutality, suffering and disease will dominate us and stand out as the one evident reality. But all material conditions are of comparatively short duration. The coarser vibrations that give rise to clashing discords and jarring dissensions are soon spent and neutralized; while the finer, spiritual ones continue unaffected…

Read More

In philosophy the majority of people still hold ideas of externalism, materialism. Ever since man began to think logically, he has tried to solve the problem of an outer, objective world of phenomena—matter. Considered solely with the understanding, that world seems, in its essential nature, very far removed from the inner, subjective realm of thoughts, ideas and principles. Apparently two worlds exist, interrelated and inseparable, yet distinct in quality and essence. Formerly the natural world of forms, colors and objects, was regarded as the finished work of Deity, who summoned…

Read More

Matter is the negative through which truth is revealed in perfect pictures. But men often err by looking for the picture on the plate itself. It is not there; we must go a step further and allow the light to shine through the negative so as to produce impressions on our highly sensitized spiritual nature. Those impressions prove to be precisely the reverse of the image registered on the material plate. As we look backward from the deck of a moving boat, the shore seems to move. The image of…

Read More

To illustrate: Our attention is attracted by some character which seems to us a perfect expression of goodness; i. e., the Absolute Principle discerned through that character, appears to us as goodness, for that Principle, shining through it, radiates in goodness. The same Absolute Principle, discerned through some external form, appears to us as beauty; discerned through some inward thought, it appears to us as truth. In a masterpiece of music it is revealed to us as harmony. Any medium through which we see the Absolute, becomes idealized for us.…

Read More

The doctrine of the “new birth” is founded on a universal principle. Beneath the distorted conception of conversion taught in the “old theology,” is a fact of experience that finds new emphasis in each successive epoch of the world’s unfoldment. Before any human being can appreciate his right relation to the universe, it is necessary for him to utterly forsake the viewpoint he accepted on entering this sphere of finite thought, the earthly life, to cease relying on intellectual impressions as the basis of absolute knowledge. Through the spiritual re-birth,…

Read More

Agnosticism and skepticism have dealt some heroic blows at lingering, decaying forms from which the Spirit had departed, lopping off and pruning away the dead wood of dogmatism to make way for fresh expressions of a vital character. Honest skepticism is like fire, consuming the dross, and leaving only the genuine substance of truth unscathed. A positive, vital faith is impervious to the thrusts of such negative weapons as doubt and unbelief. They can only prevail where faith is in decadence and the dry rot of conventionality has set in.…

Read More

Every belief is destined at some time to be outgrown and cast aside. He who pins his faith to beliefs, ancient or modern, builds on an unstable foundation. The free man is absolved even from the desire for a permanent system of thought. Just now we need to be exceedingly careful lest, in our enthusiasm for a newly discovered ideal, we establish a dogma of healing. The final word in this matter has not yet been spoken, in fact it never can be spoken in any matter with which the…

Read More

If we are to be free, in the truest sense, we must be released from bondage to belief. We must conquer the intellect, and make it our servant, instead of permitting it to be our master. We must assume a standpoint above the plane of understanding, so as to be able to control our thinking, and not allow it to control us. The vast majority of people, knowingly or ignorantly, merely reflect the opinions of others in intellectual matters, instead of developing original tendencies of thinking. Just at present it…

Read More

Conceptions are at best only suggestive. They cannot comprehend the Truth, for that is infinite and transcends all possibility of perfect formulation. They can only indicate the direction in which it lies, the atmosphere in which it exists. They are its ever-changing body, which the dogmatist mistakes for the soul. They are its appearance, not its reality. The forms of our conceptions must necessarily be deduced from experience. At the surface of life is manifold expression in infinite variety, apparently without unity of source, or direction of purpose. If we…

Read More

The process of evolution reveals growth through a succession of stages. The inner life develops each form to its utmost capacity, until, transcending its limits, it appears in the guise of a higher one. The insect larva passes through a succession of moults, discarding each outgrown form for a fresh one representing a higher stage of development. Catastrophe, or seeming destruction, is but the ushering in of a new order of existence; and that which appears to be death is only transition to higher conditions of life. Every dogma contains…

Read More