Thoughts on things psychic E-Book

Walter Winston Kenilworth

• Herausgeber: Walter Winston Kenilworth
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

CONTENTS

The Theory of "a Lost Soul"

The Presence of the “Ideal”

The Enrichment of Personality

The Abyss of Spirit

Darkness and Light

Reflections

The Harbor of Wisdom

Thoughts on Things Psychic

Moral Truths

Psychic Values and Spiritual Consciousness

Meditations

Emphasis in Religion

"Strength"

The Unity of Life

The Consciousness of Reality

Masks

The Value in Life

Our Relations to others

Possibilities

The Infinite

The Rise of the Profounder Emotions

The Spirit of Womanhood

Night and Resurrection

Vibration

Death

Truth

"Morituri Te Salutant"

Instinct— Intuition— Inspiration

The Subject and the Object Mind

Pregnant Truths

The Appeal of Mysticism

Karma Relations

Some Thoughts on an Understanding of Life

Leseprobe

Thoughts on things psychic

Walter Winston Kenilworth

First digital edition 2016 by Anna Ruggieri

CONTENTS

The Theory of "a Lost Soul"

The Presence of the “Ideal”

The Enrichment of Personality

The Abyss of Spirit

Darkness and Light

Reflections

The Harbor of Wisdom

Thoughts on Things Psychic

Moral Truths

Psychic Values and Spiritual Consciousness

Meditations

Emphasis in Religion

"Strength"

The Unity of Life

The Consciousness of Reality

Masks

The Value in Life

Our Relations to others

Possibilities

The Infinite

The Rise of the Profounder Emotions

The Spirit of Womanhood

Night and Resurrection

Vibration

Death

Truth

"Morituri Te Salutant"

Instinct— Intuition— Inspiration

The Subject and the Object Mind

Pregnant Truths

The Appeal of Mysticism

Karma Relations

Some Thoughts on an Understanding of Life

THE THEORY OF "A LOST SOUL.''

Even in theological misconceptions there are grains of truth. The idea of hell and eternal punishment of ““lost souls'' obtains in most religions. Though the idea is largely due to racial hypochondria, it contains elements of truth. Evil is followed by evil. Man has believed that as moral laxity was in direct violation to the revealed laws of an infinite personal god, the transgression must be followed by infinite, eternal punishment; such has been the dogma of theology. Philosophy, however, corrects the argument of theology. It has dismissed the conception of infinite torture for a finite act. It has modified the theory of a personal god. Hell is not a pit of darkness visible and of everlasting fire. The religious imagination has suffered psychical delusions. It has been working overtime in the zealous effort of bringing truth into closer proximity to the mind through symbolism. The fate of a ““lost soul" is really worse than the imagination can picture. According to spiritual science, a "lost soul" is the perishing of personality, the most dreadful event the spirit of man can experience. In considering the subject, two things must be borne in mind: first, the distinction between personality and individuality; secondly, the idea of eternal loss. Individuality is the thread running through all the changes of personality. Personality is a ray of the individual soul incarnated in this sphere of life. The individual projects many of these rays, and each new projection is a new life. The duty of personality manifests in the weaving of earth experience into the substance and truth of the reincarnating soul. It must garner greater knowledge and greater depth of heart. It must control the animal nature of passion and selfishness. This lower nature is ever at effort to pull the higher principles of man to its level. The complete pulling down manifests when the mind joins hands with the animal nature, and inverts the light of reason in the gratification of unbridled desire. Average expression ranges between low and high ; complete spiritual undoing balances towards lowest and perverted expression. The latter condition, however, is as rare as ultimate perfection, but the possibility of spiritual realization is negatively suggestive of the terrible precipices of ignorance and weakness into which personality may fall. There is the ascetic who emphasizes the union with Self, the soul of the soul. Like the Christ, he gives up life that he may truly live. The ascetic is the ideal in the struggle for realization. There is the sensuous, decadent, and degenerate psychopathic study, whose delight in bestial desire is far beyond normal viciousness. This monster devises individual and shockingly retrogressive methods of self indulgence. Religion and spiritual effort are mythical to him. He turns his back upon the Spirit of love and compassion. Before him is the pit of unspeakable foulness which purer nature cannot approach without scorching itself. In gloom and darkness, the personality is blind to the light of truth and goodness. This state is the severance between the spiritual individual and its personal ray. The redeeming light of Self vanishes and leaves the human being, a brute of retrogressive instincts, dangerous and without human ruth. It leaves it a prey to its horrorloving and horrorinspiring fury. The living force of such an elemental thing — for human it is no longer — is a putrescence such as is now and then found in the alleyways of life; a putrescence defiling the mental atmosphere with evil influences and doomed to final corruption. Such a disintegrating personality is more destructive and primitive than the manape, a resemblance to which form they inhabit in the psychic plane. Indeed, the manape is on the upward path, whereas the manbrute is on the last step of the retrogressive path. In time, the pall of death covers the physical life of the manbrute. He finds himself in a new form, a thing of tremendous power. His greatest delight is in sending his influence to sensitives in low vibration on the earth plane. Goading them to depravities of indescribable character, he vampirizes on their sense enjoyment, or debauches himself in the psychopathic criminal state which often leads the sensitive to murder or selfdestruction. Spiritual teachers claim that such a demon can reincarnate, that enough of the mental elements remain for physical manifestation. Such a birth brings into expression the monster whose criminal insanities shock humanity. In terms of natural law, the force which this monster utilizes finally exhausts itself and, as it is gradually more and more spent, vitality recedes. That, too, is spent, and the lurid flame which spreads infection and riot is extinguished. The elements which composed the original personality are dispersed in universal substance and force, to be kneaded and purified to the uses of developing life. Such depravity is not of sudden origin. It is the climax of lives of perversion, spiritual blindness and shocking iniquity.

THE PRESENCE OF THE IDEAL.

I wandered through the Valley of Life for a very long time. Everywhere did I look for the Ideal. But nowhere was it to be found. I thought its prodigious presence would be visible throughout all time and space. But ever was I confronted by the Real. And the Real so sickened me with its coarseness that my soul staggered in horror. I said: “Where, then, is the Ideal to be found?" An answer came : “'In the glorious paradise of thine own soul, there behold the Ideal.'' And amid the turbulence and the cry and the shadow did I seek. Long did I seek. And despaired in the seeking. Eor my ears were deafened by the shout of the rabble and my soul was scorched by the fever of many passions. At length a mighty eightwinged Seraphim approached and overwhelmed me with the incense of his presence. I forgot my sorrows and forgotten were the many days and nights of greatest trial when I had labored and labored in vain. The angel spoke : ''Child, why art thou troubled?" But the incense of his presence overwhelmed me. After a time of ecstatic beatitude I made answer and said : ''I am troubled because things are so Keal. Because the Real is so gruesome. Because it is without love and pity. Because it is as a densely woven veil which stops my vision of the Truly Real, The Ideal. To me the perfume of the incense of dewcovered violets and the fretting moan of the sea is far more than the greatest treasures. I am happy with the singing of a bird, and more to me is the beauty of a perfect rose than all the struggle of this hopeless order.'' I lay my head on a pillow of mosscovered stone. I gazed into the firmament and saw the splendor of myriad stars. At my feet murmured the interminable ocean. In the immediate distance a nightingale sang her sweetest madrigal. And the beams of a fullshining moon filled my soul with hitherto unknown joy. Softly did I pass into deepest sleep. I dreamed a wonderful dream. And in the dream a Voice admonished: "See thou the wondrous Beauty of the Ideal in all things. Make thou no dis tinctions, for the Ideal is present in all times and in all places, and evermore, O Beloved, is It at peace whether in the lowest or the highest." 'Thns mnst thou know. And thy knowledge shall make thee conscious of the oneness and identity of thyself and the Ideal." Then did I behold a vast, gorgeous temple of whitest marble streaked with bluest veins. Its spires were covered with gold. In that place ten thousand priests wearing richest raiments and holding in their hands strange books of seals and torches of yellow flame sang perpetual songs of praise. There did my soul kneel in adoration before the throne of the Ideal. Ever after did I tread the ways of Peace.

THE ENRICHMENT OF PERSONALITY.

Personality, though complex, is composite. It is the condensation of innumerable correlated sets of sensations and ideas, separately individual and idiocentric. Personality is the summary of an almost infinite accretion, rather than a thing of recent or spontaneous origin. Personality is only an inheritance of an illimitable past. It is subject to change and modification, and therefore reality and the persistence for which reality calls cannot be accredited to it. Though constantly shifting it is true that personality, or what we choose to call personality, has distinct psychological boundary marks which makes one person different from another. No matter how apparently same may be the conditions under which two develop, no matter how approximate their sameness of thought and expression, there is ever a perfect psychical delineation which makes it impossible for one to merge into the personality of another. Personality, however, does not comprise the truth of individuality. It is the depth of ourselves which is the constituent of Being. The changes which personality experiences are only the waves on the surface. They come and they go and all have their respective value in development. They all serve to perfect that which, for lack of better expression, we call Self. Self is the abiding individuality which is the thread holding together the jewels of personal experience. Whatever comes to us is either a positive or negative factor in the education and unfoldment of Self. The personality is the form and external expression of the soul of individuality. The sumtotal of personality is the aggregate of character and experience which it represents. This aggregate represents the degree of individual evolution. Thus the life of an aged person is the composite of all the experiences undergone throughout his earthly career. 'Not one state of consciousness alone represents the man, nor any definite number. All states have had their moulding influence on the individuality. True, there is always one set of thoughts in prominence. It may be the musical, the artistic, the scientific, the inventive, the commercial, the religious, the philosophical and so on. Each person may be classified under a respective heading, be it the mechanical, the practical or the impractical. There is likewise always a set of preeminent emotions, be they highly moral, religious or contraverse. Our continued adjustment to circumstances and events and our relation to others determines the representative self we may express at any given time. But this self is never the same. Today a person may follow this calling and tomorrow that. Today he may be under different circumstances and influence than some time since. 'Now he may be swayed by love and then by hate. All the opposites of emotion and thought have their influence in the ratio of the personal scale in evolution. The radical features of personality must be balanced in the examination of soul by each person. He must draw lines of demarcation between advantageous and disadvantageous tendencies, efficient and deficient characteristics of mind and heart. For the goal of each person should be the perfection of the best within, the realization of the noblest qualities with which he may find himself possessed. Earth life is the opportunity for the education of souls. We are given so many talents of soul and we must enrich these talents by using them to the best advantage. It is life alone which is serious. The accidents to life are ephemeral. Their occurrence has value only in the transforming processes of mind and heart. But the motion of personality, its ebb and its flow, must be constant. We should never falter if we fail, and never stop at success. For in the diminution of experience and its changing value is stagnation. We must never count losses, for the thought of loss leads to depression, and life calls for all the resource we can command. Thus we must realize that time is fleeting and opportunity goes with as much celerity as it comes. We must take time by the forelock and be awake to opportunity. There is no greater regret than that of wasted chance. Our greatest duty is to ourselves, for in helping ourselves we help others. We enlarge our possibilities for service and our area for expression. We should never discount experience for material advantage. For it is infinitely better to be than to have and infinitely better to give than to receive. For in giving we are always on the credit score of life. And this credit is paid to us in the value of richer opportunities and the wealth of great er faculties. We nse our personal experience and from its fruits we store the profits in the treasurehouse of our individuality and soul where thieves cannot enter, unless we prove thieves to the cause of our personal development. Piety, or the religious feeling, has little to do in the coloring and shading of the masterpiece of soul we are painting on the canvas of life. The colors are the fruits of experience which the individual painter employs in toning imperfections and pronouncing advantages. Our experiences are the building factors which we are preparing for the construction of the personality we shall express in a future life. Our responsibility to life is appalling. Busied with endless material cares we have little time for deep reflection on the great issues of life and death which the Law employs for our blessing or curse. We should give some time each day to the study and meditation of life and what it means and examine our relation to it. We must give weighty consideration to our present status of development and measure the scale of the advantages we have taken in perfecting soulinherited virtues of soul and mind. We must also have the courage to blame ourselves for the mistakes we have made. But there must be no weeping over the dead past. Let our mistakes be the steppingstones by which we rise to higher things. Evil and good have equal influence in the evolution of the soul. The new road must be discovered and that means aberrations, struggle and privation. But the mistakes and the fate of earlier pioneers is the wisdom and caution of others. In this manner progress is fashioned and in due time the new road leads to the discovery of new territory with its richness of soil, its advantages of climate and its possibilities for new experience and gain. This outlook is to be cherished with regard to our failings. Failure is often the maladministration of effort. The intention may be right, but the working knowledge may be defective. This working knowledge can only be had in repeated experience, but the goal is worth the effort. In many cases failure is attributable to wilfulness of desire. Life frequently gives the fulfilment of desire and in the end pain is the heritage. Experience is the great teacher. The soul must undergo pain time and time again as the result of inverted desire. It must become conscious of the inadvisability of wrong, not because wrong is theoretically wrong or dogmatically condemned, but because evil is its own curse, even as virtue is its own reward. Evil has its uses, but they are negative. The pain which is entailed is hard to bear, but each punishment is an indirect incentive to do better. We never reason ourselves into the right. Our knowledge of what is morally proper is a conscious knowledge with potent influence for right conduct. Potential within us are many opportunities. Behind this personality is the omnipotence of Spirit. We are surrounded by an ocean of strength. It is not the fault of opportunity if we lose in the battle of life. The means are close at hand. We need only put ourself into relation with Spirit and we are blessed with all the advantages necessary to strengthen our characters and perfect our advantages. The enrichment of personality reaches its climax when we understand that, of ourselves, we can do little, but that infinite strength disposes our needs according to its wisdom and love. We rely not on this immediate self of change, but on that immortal and divine Self which never fails us if we are true to the Faith and firm in obedience to the Law. This Faith is the essence of the soul. It is eternally infused. Its cultivation leads to higher perception and ultimately it identifies itself with the highest knowledge. The attractiveness of personality rests in the perfection of the talents of personality. In the enrichment of these is embodied the development, the increase of personal charm and quality. The highest vocation we have is self perfection. The various situations of commercial, religious, artistic or professional life into which we may drift are only avenues or advantages through which we may more fitly express ourselves. The main necessity lies in our attitude. That must ever be correct, though we may find ourselves unfavorably placed and surrounded with inconveniences. If we are spiritually related, each experience has its developing tendency. There is a usefulness in sickness, poverty and misery, if it only strengthens the qualities of patience, perseverance, humility, resignation, if it only broadens our sympathy and pity, if it only educates our feelings into more exquisite proportions by making us sensitive to pain. This is the permissible spirit of asceti cism, resignation to the nnavoidable. It is true that need, sorrow and affliction are the solid rocks upon which the structure of character is erected. Greatness of conduct and force of will cannot express themselves in the lap of ease. It takes ironbound opposition to confront the soul and bring out the spark of strength, knowledge and the ability to cope with disadvantage. The earnest aspirant for self perfection welcomes pain and sorrow. For it is then that the end of life is well kept in mind. The soul is apt to forget its mission if comfortably adjusted to the wants of material life. It is the denial of comfort which makes men rely on the deeper realities of truth and spirit. It makes one resigned to the provident spirit of the Law which knows best and never deserts us. We are never tested beyond our strength. We can meet difficulties triumphantly if we remember that within our nature resides the principle of victory and achievement. It is our fortune to come in contact with opposition, but it is also our destiny to overcome whatever may befall us, for without this overcoming we remain stationary. A great deal of moral truth is comprised in the pursuit of development. The end of evolu tion is moral, which means that before perfection of soul can be, the instinctive must be subjugated to the needs of spiritual growth. Relatively less importance must be given the outer arrangement than we now give. Our views of the material life must be spiritualized. We must see the material in its relation to the spiritual. In this w”ay all the circumstances of the external are rendered beautiful and useful. They are not regarded either with exaggerated idealism or realism, but proportionately related to the wholesomeness of life. The disadvantage of present idealistic systems is that they are too extreme in their conclusions. Tliey do not fully answer the manysided view of life. They deny phenomenal reality. This cannot be done, for we live in this world and while we are here we must employ the realities we find in the service of our development. Attaching sole importance to the idealistic conception of the universe makes the mind incapable of truly appreciating the outward arrangement and its practical relation to truth. The average mind is too dependent on external symbols to worship ideals because of their own perfection. We cannot appreciate the glory of the Spirit save as we study the marvellous beauty and order of the universe. We can understand the goodness and allloving tenderness of Spirit only as we observe the rewards and spiritual unfoldment it bestows for loyalty to its mandates. Enrichment of personality can alone come when our conception of the things we percieve about us is practical. The sages of spiritual knowledge always seek the practical side of the spiritual life. They do not deny the facts which we sensibly realize. They ask us to see them as presentations of the inner ideal. When the ideal is perceived then is there no further wrangling over appearances. The enrichment of personality is brought about by the change of the ideal of desires. It is necessary to grow apart from unworthy desires and desire those things which will make us richer in experience. The main business in life should be the accumulation of knowledge, not the knowledge of booklearning, but conscious knowledge, the result of experience. If one does not travel, his knowledge of the world is limited. True, he may have studied geography, but that would give him only a theoretical knowledge. Practical knowledge is irrefutable knowledge. The con vincingness of a fact lies in its established proof. So it is necessary to experience, for experience is the really practical proof needed in the discriminations of life. Desires we must have. Desire is the spirit of progress. Dissatisfaction with existing circumstances spurs the soul to the realization of better things. The inanimate does not desire, neither does it evolve. There are times when we unknowingly desire evil conditions by believing that certain circumstances will be to our advantage, when they act otherwise. But even these desires are good. They teach us very good lessons. They may be bitter, but they broaden our knowledge of what is really desirable, good and useful. There is utility in desire and its satisfaction, and there is also utility in the spirit and practice of denial. ISTeither desire nor denial should be overemphasized. Fanaticism is as condemnable as excess. The even balance must be struggle. Too little or too much food, sleep, exercise and enjoyment is not good for the mind or body. Harmonious adaption to the laws of nature and of the soul is the demand which we must obey. If we fail to strike the happy medium, some faculty is overemphasized to the detriment of an other. The body cannot be negelected for the sake of the mind, for it will die. Too much study and too little recreation and exercise has been the death of many an enthusiastic scholar. The body cannot be too much indulged else the mind will suffer. It Avill become stupid, inactive and coarse. And [...]