The Sixth Sense: Its Cultivation and UseBrent, Charles Henry
Religion
The Sixth Sense: Its Cultivation and Use
Brent, Charles Henry
New Thought
To perceive an ideal is as real a sensation as to look at a flower.
An impression is left behind not unlike the photograph of the flower
retained on the retina of the eye and revived by act of memory and
will. But the visualizing has nothing to do with physical sense
perception, and the part of the personality thus impressed is spiritual.
To characterize tactual sensation of the body as real necessitates a
like characterization of the tactual sensation of the spirit. If it be
argued that in the latter relationship there is no certainty as to what
is phantasm and what reality, let it be remembered that the history of
science is largely a series of corrections of imperfect sense records.
A highly developed power of observation with ability for accurate
registration and correlation is the distinguishing feature of culture.
The Mystic Sense, like the bodily senses, is capable of increasingly
accurate perception by skilful and disciplined use. It takes its
beginnings in gropings like the awkward jerks of a baby’s limbs, and
develops into ordered and reliable movement by exercise and experiment,
which includes mistakes and the profit accruing to the experience.
Superstition bears the same relation to faith that a false scientific
hypothesis bears to ascertained fact. The Mystic Sense in its infant
working catches a distorted view of the ideal, as when Darwin propounded
his conception of heredity by pangenesis, and leads us astray in science;
in like manner in religion a glimpse, through a mist of ignorance and
moral deficiency, of the Absolute, eventuates in superstition. Both are
necessary stages in the training of the Mystic Sense. Similarly to the
way in which the theory of pangenesis stimulated discussion and research
so as to aid the Mystic Sense to a more accurate perception of the true
hypothesis of the manner of heredity, the superstitions of the nations
conceived in sincerity, crude and even repulsive though they be, have
contributed to the complete knowledge of God and His character which
forms our most valuable heritage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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