The Astral World—Higher Occult Powers: Clairvoyance, Spiritism, Mediumship, and Spirit-Healing Fully ExplainedTiffany, Joel
Religion
The Astral World—Higher Occult Powers: Clairvoyance, Spiritism, Mediumship, and Spirit-Healing Fully Explained
Tiffany, Joel
Spiritualism
I said that man was not immortal in consequence of his
spirit-individuality alone. The reason that man is immortal is very
manifest. The highest principle in the animal individuality is the
nerve-principle, the principle of consciousness which can perceive
material forms and material phenomena. That interior principle is not
unfolded in the animal. The inmost principle of the animal, I grant,
is spiritual, but that principle is not individualized. The animal has
only the nerve-principle, but in the spirit-principle; and joining
perceive facts and phenomena; but he can not perceive relations—has
no desire after relations—and knows nothing of moral duties. He can
not be active in that way, because his highest individuality is his
mere nervous individuality. God does not breathe into the animal that
breath of life which makes him a living soul. But man is individualized
not only in this nerve-principle, but in the spirit-principle; and
joining upon the infinite he does take the divine breath into him as
the inmost principle of his being. Man is immortal by his relation to
the self-sufficient and self-existent. It is his _relation_ to God that
makes him immortal. The animal is not immortal, because he has not
this relation. Man having this higher principle individualized in him
becomes a religious being.
In the example heretofore cited of Sir Isaac Newton and his dog
perceiving the falling of an apple, the dog was seen as observing only
the fact, while Sir Isaac Newton observed the law, which he called
gravitation; yet not being developed in his divine consciousness, which
perceives the absolute and divine, he could not tell the absolute cause
of the phenomenon. The dog is in the manifestational sphere, while Sir
Isaac Newton was developed in the manifestational and relational,
but not yet in the absolute, but was capable of being developed in
that sphere by induction. Man is therefore a microcosm. He has all
those conditions which pertain to the universe. He is its fruit. There
are three stages in the development of man: first, form; second,
individuality; third, personality—to which Jesus made allusion in
speaking of the development of fruit, saying that there was first the
blade, next the ear, and after that the full corn. Man, standing at the
head of the development, is the fruit of the universe. He is the grand
ultimate of all preceding action. He is the footings-up of all that is
and all that has been. There is no condition of being not a condition
of relation in the wide universe which man does not contain in some
department of his being; and just as he unfolds in his conscious
nature, does he represent different spheres in the Spiritual world. If
in self-lust, he registers his name in that department of the Spiritual
universe called Gehenna, if in charity, he records his name in the
sphere Paradise; and if in divine love—if the divine is so developed in
him that it is a ruling love—he is registered in heaven; and then it
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