Part 13 (1/2)

So far as we can think, the ether is a manifest, perhaps a primary manifest, of Infinite and Eternal Reality.

It is coming to be scientific to hold that matter reduces in its last a.n.a.lysis to electricity and is a complex form of vibrations of the ether within the ether. Matter is not merely pervaded by the ether; it is a state of the ether.

Matter, then, is a manifest of Infinite and Eternal Reality.

Life is a phase of the activity of matter. If we think of matter in its grossest form, nearest to us in the process of evolution, life may be regarded as an ent.i.ty different from that matter. We do somehow feel that matter and life are distinct realities. But if we think of matter as a complex form of etheric vibrations, nothing forbids our saying that life also is a form of vibration of the ether within the ether. With this view in mind, we shall think of matter and life as comparatively simultaneous manifests of the ether, life, however, appearing only when the state of etheric vibrations resulting in matter has reached a stage in which vibrations resulting in life can be possible. We should then say that life is a product of etheric vibrations emerging through those that have resulted in matter; that is, life is a product of material activities. This view cannot justly be called materialism because Life is, then, also a manifest of Infinite and Eternal Reality.

We do not scientifically know any sort of mind that is not exhibited through matter. The human mind always exhibits through a human body. What we call mind is a complex of states of consciousness engaged in various activities. Consciousness involves certain physical activities within us. If nothing were acting within, we should not be conscious. This has always been true. The first dawn of consciousness in Nature involved activities within the organism. If we think of that first faintly conscious existence as a ma.s.s of crude matter, then the self and its body will appear to be distinctly separated in reality. But if we think of that body as a manifest of etheric vibrations in which life-vibrations also obtained, there is nothing to forbid our saying that consciousness was equally a product of such vibrations. If so, the psychic factor was a form of vibrations of the ether within the ether--and so, when it appeared, had evolved to higher forms, was consciousness.

Matter is an evolution, and out of it hare evolved life, the psychic factor, consciousness. But consciousness is, then, for the reasons above indicated, a manifest of Infinite and Eternal Reality.

Consciousness is the condition of personality. When the former first appeared, it was a product. Thenceforth, because personality was a psychic factor in consciousness, it became a creator. That is to say, it was capable of enlargement and enrichment, and so, began to unfold its powers, to enrich its own contents by appropriation, and to organize itself in various ways depending upon its nature in each case and the influence of environment. In seeking to realize itself, as it must do in the nature of things, and in adjusting to environment, which was a second necessity of its being, it began to direct the activities of matter comprising its own body, to select matter from without needful for its kind of body, and to build this material up into a kind of body best adapted to its existence, and thus, by its own character, to determine the character of the organism which it inhabited.

All this work seems entirely independent until we remember that ether, matter, life, the psychic factor, are manifests of Infinite and Eternal Reality. But when we so remember, we see that personality consisting of a conscious self and a body is similarly a manifest of that Reality.

This conclusion will appear to identify man and Deity unless we discriminate a little. Every object in Nature is a manifest of Infinite and Eternal Reality, but the latter transcends the former simply because the object is such a manifest, A thing which is a manifest or expression of something superior cannot be identified with the superior something. I am not the words which I write, although they manifest me and could not exist without me. Every object in Nature is precisely what it is as a manifest of Reality.

There is scant freedom in the natural world apart from man.

Nothing in Nature could be other than it is. Man, on the other hand, is a manifest of Infinite and Eternal Reality in the sense that he has a body, and must have one, and is a personality and must be one (if he is man); but in the man psychic factor has come to consciousness, and consciousness, as we have seen, always reveals itself in SELF-DIRECTION AND SELF-ORGANIZATION ACCORDING TO ITS DEVELOPED POWER TO THINK OF ITSELF AS SELF-CONSCIOUS EXISTENCE. Were it unable to so think of itself, it could not be self-directive in the fullest sense. And were it unable to self- direct its own activities, it could not be conscious in the fullest sense of the word. Our existence manifests Infinite and Eternal Reality, but the power to USE that existence is determined by the fact that we are psychic factors in the highest sense exhibited in the earth, and the use we make thereof is determined by our exercise of the power of self-direction and self- organization. We cannot help being human beings, but what KIND of human beings we are, within the limits of personal endowments, depends solely upon ourselves.

We may see, then, that the psychic factor within us builds the bodies we live in, so that our physical character is largely an expression of our personal character. Ages of wrong thought-life are behind us, yet even so, it is within our power to improve physical character very greatly indeed.

Now, the power of personal right thinking and harmony with the White Life of Infinite and Eternal Reality may be explained in the following way (you will understand, of course, that the outline is designed merely to be suggestive):