THE EVOLUTION OF THE PSYCHE

IN the previous pages will be found a rough chart of existence. It was inadvisable to enter, in such a chart, upon any detailed description of the qualities essential to the navigator if he would speedily and successfully steer his course across these strange worlds.

When I was on earth I was a firm believer in the power and strength of agape or love. In the New Testament St. Paul uses the word which is translated as "charity," but attributed to it a meaning which has been also allotted to love.

Here, in the After-life, I perceive that neither of these words conveys the whole significance of the Good, for they have been so long interpreted by human and finite minds that they have become worn and defaced, soiled and obscured by contact with many natures of an infinitely varied character.

To some, the word "love" means only the passion which lights up between man and woman, to others, it is the intellectual love shared by two friends, kindred souls. Thirdly, and lastly, love is held by many to be compassion for others and to contain within it that communal sense of the brotherhood of man, that love, in a general sense, which has led, undoubtedly, to fine endeavour in past times.

But always these conceptions fall short of the ideal. Though again and again agnostic and Christian study the Gospels, image in their hearts the Sermon on the Mount, still they fail, still their understanding perishes in the presence of the great words of immortality.

No man or woman has ever really succeeded in under

THE ROAD TO IMMORTALITY

standing or grasping the whole lofty vision of love as it was seen by the Christ. So now, as I survey the present earth and perceive the chronicle of the years, I am sensible of the need of a word which has not been debased by men, which can still suggest and contain the primary need of the soul, which will define that urge so essential to the psyche when it would climb from one rung to another on the ladder of consciousness.

The permanent reality of progress is to be found in increase of wisdom. For wisdom may be defined as "right judgment concerning truth."

Upon every plane of being the conception of truth must necessarily be limited or enlarged by the conditions of life, by the form the soul assumes, or by that extension of consciousness which, at the last, tends to shake off form, as the trees in autumn cast off their leaves.

On the dense plane of matter known as earth the term "truth" is still holy and, to the minds of many men, unsoiled. It may, therefore, be used to illustrate what I believe to have been Christ's meaning where the word "love" is put into His mouth in the Gospels. But it is not complete unless "right judgment" is added to it.

Consider, then, the significance of "wisdom." For, clearly, within that lofty word resides the highest love between man and woman, intellectual love, compassion, faith and last, but not least, the power of vision. All these are possessed by the man or woman who rightly judges truth. And, on whatever plane your soul or the soul of the beloved is evolving, be assured that wisdom is the primary urge which causes this soul to choose to go up rather than down, to select the finer life, the greater reality, rather than existence in denser form, in more material worlds.

"Love your enemies. Bless them that persecute you." These beautiful and enigmatic phrases have troubled and perplexed every sincere Christian who has endeavoured to apply them to his own life. Only through wisdom can he,

THE EVOLUTION OF THE PSYCHE

in any measure, fulfil their command, expressing them literally in act and thought. For they are contained in wisdom. Their idea depends for its manifestation, for its very life, on right judgment of the truth.

The simple peasant, the humble working man or woman, ignorant in the eyes of the world, may yet be wholly wise if they possess this spiritual discernment, which, for the human soul, expresses Christ's vision when He spoke of "love."

So must it be on each plane of being in the Unseen. Wisdom is the light that, in every instance, gives shape and life to love, is its secret hidden root, is the inspiration, the power that causes the forward and upward progression expressed in the term--the evolution of the psyche.

PART II

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 893