You will not denounce it in the foolish
way of many people, because in denouncing it you will know that you
denounce all intellectual manifestations, an absurdity of which very
few people are likely to be guilty; if you take your intellectual
manifestations in the physical world as admirable things, to be always
encouraged, strengthened, developed, then you will be compelled, by
parity of reasoning, to understand that the manifestations of the same
consciousness in finer matter, astral or mental, are equally worthy,
and no more worthy, of development, of consideration. You will not
find yourself in the absurdly illogical position of declaring it a
good thing to train the physical plane consciousness, while it is
dangerous to cultivate the astral and mental plane consciousness. You
will understand that all psychism is of the same kind, that on each
plane the development of psychism has its own laws; but that it is
absurd to admire the working of consciousness on the lower plane, and
shrink from it as something dangerous, almost diabolical, when it
appears on a plane higher than the physical.
It is this rational and common-sense view which I want to impress upon
you to-night, to get you out of the region of mystery, marvel, wonder,
and fear, which to so many people surround what is called psychism; to
make you understand that you are unfolding consciousness, showing out
your powers on one plane after another according to the organisation
and the fineness of the bodies in which your consciousness is working;
and that if you will only keep your common sense and reason, if you
will only not allow yourself to be terrified by what at present is
unusual, you may then walk along the psychic pathway in the astral or
mental world, as resolutely, and with as great an absence of hysteria,
as you walk along the psychic pathway in the physical world. That is
the general idea; and, of course, this is the meaning in which, after
all, the word is often used down here. When you say "psychology" you
do not mean only the workings of consciousness in astral and mental
bodies; you mean the whole consciousness of the man, the workings of
the mind, wherever the mind is active; the whole of that you include
under "psychology." Why, then, when you change its form, should you
narrow it down, as though that which is mind on one plane is not also
mind on all planes on which the mind is able to function?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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