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
The experience of man has been such, in respect to organization, that
all prudent and careful men and women are beginning to have fears for
the welfare of a cause when it assumes the shape of an organization;
and they have just ground for fear; for the experience of the past
has been such as to justify them in supposing that evils arise out
of organizations. Their tendency usually has been to beget a party
feeling, or that which corresponds in the organization to selfishness
in the individual. It is natural that every individual should love
himself better than others, and when individuals associate together,
they acquire a spirit of individuality—a selfishness which pertains
to their particular society or organization. Individuals who unite in
religious organizations entertain a sort of selfishness in reference to
their particular denomination. The Presbyterian, for instance, likes
Presbyterians a great deal better than Methodists, and the Methodists
likes Methodists a great deal better than Presbyterians, and prefers
to bestow his favors upon Methodists. In fine, the general tendency of
this kind of organization is to lay in men and women the foundation of
a selfishness in addition to their natural or individual selfishness.
There are many reasons for the evil results of organization; and if we
continue to organize upon the principles observed in organizations of
times past, we may expect that the same evils will continue. I propose
to inquire whether there is not a natural basis, and endeavor to
discover the causes of evils for the past, so that we may know how to
rectify them and guard against them in future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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