Inspirational Stuff From Percival

CONSCIOUSNESS is another mystery, the greatest and most profound of all mysteries. The
word Consciousness is unique; it is a coined English word; its equivalent does not appear in other
languages. Its all-important value and meaning are not, however, appreciated. This will be seen in
the uses that the word is made to serve. To give some common examples of its misuse: It is heard
in such expressions as "my consciousness," and "one's consciousness"; and in such as animal
consciousness, human consciousness, physical, psychic, cosmic, and other kinds of
consciousness. And it is described as normal consciousness, and greater and deeper, and higher
and lower, inner and outer, consciousness; and full and partial consciousness. Mention is also
heard of the beginnings of consciousness, and of a change of consciousness. One hears people say
that they have experienced or caused a growth, or an extension, or an expansion, of
consciousness. A very common misuse of the word is in such phrases as: to lose consciousness, to
hold to consciousness; to regain, to use, to develop consciousness. And one hears, further, of
various states, and planes, and degrees, and conditions of consciousness. Consciousness is too
great to be thus qualified, limited, or prescribed. Out of regard for this fact this book makes use of
the phrase: to be conscious of, or as, or in. To explain: whatever is conscious is either conscious
of certain things, or as what it is, or is conscious in a certain degree of being conscious.
Consciousness is the ultimate, the final Reality. Consciousness is that by the presence of
which all things are conscious. Mystery of all mysteries, it is beyond comprehension. Without it
nothing can be conscious; no one could think; no being, no entity, no force, no unit, could
perform any function. Yet Consciousness itself performs no function: it does not act in any way; it
is a presence, everywhere. And it is because of its presence that all things are conscious in
whatever degree they are conscious. Consciousness is not a cause. It cannot be moved or used or
in any way affected by anything. Consciousness is not the result of anything, nor does it depend
on anything. It does not increase or diminish, expand, extend, contract, or change; or vary in any
way. Although there are countless degrees in being conscious, there are no degrees of
Consciousness: no planes, no states; no grades, divisions, or variations of any sort; it is the same
everywhere, and in all things, from a primordial nature unit to the Supreme Intelligence.
Consciousness has no properties, no qualities, no attributes; it does not possess; it cannot be
possessed. Consciousness never began; it cannot cease to be. Consciousness IS.
In all your lives on earth you have been indefinably seeking, expecting or looking for
someone or something that is missing. You vaguely feel that if you could but find that for which
you long, you would be content, satisfied. Dimmed memories of the ages surge up; they are the
present feelings of your forgotten past; they compel a recurring world-weariness of the evergrinding
treadmill of experiences and of the emptiness and futility of human effort. You may have
sought to satisfy that feeling with family, by marriage, by children, among friends; or, in business,
wealth, adventure, discovery, glory, authority, and power--or by whatever other undiscovered
secret of your heart. But nothing of the senses can really satisfy that longing. The reason is that
you are lost--are a lost but inseparable part of a consciously immortal Triune Self. Ages ago, you,
as feeling-and-desire, the doer part, left the thinker and knower parts of your Triune Self. So you
were lost to yourself because, without some understanding of your Triune Self, you cannot
understand yourself, your longing, and your being lost. Therefore you have at times felt lonely.
You have forgotten the many parts you have often played in this world, as personalities; and you
have also forgotten the real beauty and power of which you were conscious while with your
thinker and knower in the Realm of Permanence. But you, as doer, long for balanced union of
your feeling-and-desire in a perfect body, so that you will again be with your thinker and knower
parts, as the Triune Self, in the Realm of Permanence. In ancient writings there have been
allusions to that departure, in such phrases as "the original sin," "the fall of man," as from a state
and realm in which one is satisfied. That state and realm from which you departed cannot cease to
be; it can be regained by the living, but not after death by the dead.
You need not feel alone. Your thinker and knower are with you. On ocean or in forest, on
mountain or plain, in sunlight or shadow, in crowd or in solitude; wherever you are, your really
thinking and knowing Self is with you. Your real Self will protect you, in so far as you will allow
yourself to be protected. Your thinker and knower are ever ready for your return, however long it
may take you to find and follow the path and become at last again consciously at home with them
as the Triune Self.
In the meantime you will not be, you cannot be, satisfied with anything less than Selfknowledge.
You, as feeling-and-desire, are the responsible doer of your Triune Self; and from
what you have made for yourself as your destiny you must learn the two great lessons which all
experiences of life are to teach. These lessons are:
What to do;
and,
What not to do.
You may put these lessons off for as many lives as you please, or learn them as soon as you
will--that is for you to decide; but in the course of time you will learn them.
CHAPTER II
THE PURPOSE AND PLAN OF
THE UNIVERSE
SECTION 1
There is a purpose and a plan in the Universe. The law of thought. Religions.
The soul. Theories concerning the destiny of the soul.
he Universe is guided according to a purpose and a plan. There is a simple law by which
the purpose is accomplished and according to which the plan is carried out. That law is
universal: it reaches all entities without exception. Gods and the weakest beings are equally
powerless against it. It rules this visible world of change, and it affects the worlds and spheres
beyond. At present it can be understood by man only as it affects human beings, though it is
possible that its operations in animate nature may be seen. It affects human beings according to
the responsibility which can be charged to them; and it determines their duty, measured by their
responsibility.
This is the law: Every thing existing on the physical plane is an exteriorization of a thought,
which must be balanced through the one who issued the thought, and in accordance with that
one's responsibility, at the conjunction of time, condition, and place.
This law of thought is destiny. It has aspects which have been expressed by such terms as
kismet, nemesis, karma, fate, fortune, foreordination, predestination, Providence, the Will of God,
the law of cause and effect, the law of causation, retribution, punishment and reward, hell and
heaven. The law of thought includes all that is in these terms, but it means more than all of them;
it means, essentially, that thinking is the basic factor in shaping human destiny.
The law of thought is present everywhere and rules everywhere;
and is the law to which all other human laws are subservient. There is no deviation from, no
exception to, this universal law of thought. It adjusts the mutually interdependent thoughts and
plans and acts of the billions of men and women who have died and lived and who will continue
to live and die on this earth. Happenings beyond number, some apparently accounted for, some
apparently inexplicable, are marshalled to fit into the limiting framework of time and place and
causation; facts innumerable, near and far, apposite and contradictory, related and unrelated, are
worked into one whole harmonious pattern. It is only by the operation of this law that people exist
together on the earth. Not only physical acts and their results are thus ordered; the invisible world
in which thoughts originate is likewise adjusted. All this adjustment and universal harmony out of
selfish discord is brought about by the action of universal forces operating under the law.
The mechanical part of the operation of this law in the physical world may not be apparent.
Yet, every stone, every plant, every animal, every human, and every event has a place in the great
machinery for the working out of the law of thought, as destiny; each performs a function in the
machine, whether as a gear, a gauge, a pin, or a transmission. However insignificant a part a man
T
may seem to play, he starts the machinery of the law when he starts to think; and by his thinking
he contributes to its continued operation. The machinery of the law is nature.
Nature is a machine composed of the totality of unintelligent units; units which are conscious
as their function only. The nature machine is a machine composed of laws, through the worlds; it
is perpetuated and operated by intelligent and immortal Ones, complete Triune Selves, who
administer the laws from their individual university machines through which as unintelligent
nature units they have passed; and as intelligent units in the Realm of Permanence (Fig. II-G;H),
they have qualified as Governors, in The Government of the world.
The university machines are perfect physical bodies composed of balanced nature units; all
units are related in and organized into the four systems of the perfect body and are coordinated as
one entire and perfect whole mechanism; each unit is conscious as its function only, and each
function in the university machine is a law of nature through the worlds.
Only the phenomena of the machinery are seen; the nature machine itself is not seen by
mortal eyes; neither are the forces which work it. The Intelligences and complete Triune Selves
who direct the operation cannot be seen by the human. Hence come the many theories about the
creation of the human world, and about the nature and powers of gods and the origin and nature
and destiny of the human. Such theories are furnished by various systems of religion.
Religions center about a God or gods. These deities are credited with universal powers to
account for the operation of universal forces. Gods and forces alike, however, are subject to the
Intelligences and the complete Triune Selves, who rule this world according to the law of thought.
It is due to the operation of this law as destiny that events occur on the physical plane in the
harmonious manner which makes certain the continuance of the law's operation so that the plan of
the Universe may be carried out and its purpose accomplished.
Religions have been substitutes for what a knowledge of the law of thought should be, and
for what it eventually will be to man, when the human is able to stand more Light. Among such
substitutes is a belief in a God who is supposed to be all-wise, all-powerful, ever-present; but
whose alleged actions are arbitrary and capricious and show jealousy, vindictiveness, and cruelty.
Such religions have held the minds of men in bondage. In this bondage they have received
fragmentary and distorted information about the law of thought; what they received was all they
could stand at the time. In every age one of the Gods was represented as a ruler, and as the giver
of a law of justice; but his own acts did not seem just. A solution of this difficulty was sometimes
found in an after death adjustment in a heaven or a hell; at other times the matter was left open.
As the human becomes more enlightened he will find in the clear and precise understanding of the
law of thought that which will satisfy his sense and reason; and he will accordingly outgrow the
need for belief in the doctrine, or of fear and faith in the decrees of a personal God.
The rationality of the law of thought is in marked contrast to the various contradictory or
irrational teachings concerning the origin and nature and destiny of that which has been called the
soul; and it should dissipate the general ignorance that has existed concerning the soul. An error is
commonly made in believing that the soul is something above or superior to that which is
conscious in the human. The fact is that the conscious self in the body is of the doer of the Triune
Self and that the "soul" is merely the form of the breath-form or "living soul", which still belongs
to nature but which must be advanced beyond nature by the Triune Self. In that sense only is it
correct to speak of the need of "saving one's soul".
Concerning the origin of the soul, there are two principal theories: one is that the soul is an
emanation from the Supreme Being or One, as the source of all creatures and from whom all
come into existence and into whom all return; the other theory is that the soul comes from a
previous existence--either down from a superior state or up from a lower. There is another belief,
current mainly in the West, that each soul lives but one life on earth and is a special, fresh
creation furnished by God to every human body brought into the world by a man and a woman.
As to the destiny of the soul after death, the theories are chiefly these: that the soul is
annihilated; that it returns to the essence from which it came; that it goes back to the God by
whom it was created; that it goes immediately either to heaven or hell; that before going to its
final destination it enters a purgatory; that it sleeps or rests until it is resurrected on the Day of
Judgment when it is examined and sent forthwith to hell or to paradise. Then there is also the
belief that the soul returns to earth for experience necessary to its progress. Of these, the belief in
annihilation is favored among materialists, while the beliefs in resurrection and in heaven and hell
are held by most religions, both of the East and the West.
The religions which teach of emanation and reincarnation include not only the worship of a
godhead, but the doctrine of the improvement of the conscious self in the body and the
corresponding improvement of the nature-matter with which the embodied self comes into
contact. The religions which are based upon a personal God are primarily for the purpose of
glorifying the God, the improvement of the embodied doer being secondary and acquired as a
reward for worshipping that God. The nature of a religion and of its God or gods is indicated
unequivocally by the requirements of the worship; and by the symbols, hymns, rites, ornaments,
vestments, and edifices that are used in its practice.
No teaching has been generally accepted which states that the individual is solely responsible
for whatever happens to him. This is due to the fact that a vague sentiment of fear, arising from
religious teachings, affects all persons who share the notions of the majority of their
contemporaries concerning the origin and nature, the purpose and destiny, of the human.