12/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

Matter is the negative through which truth is revealed in perfect pictures. But men often err by looking for the picture on the plate itself. It is not there; we must go a step further and allow the light to shine through the negative so as to produce impressions on our highly sensitized spiritual nature. Those impressions prove to be precisely the reverse of the image registered on the material plate.

As we look backward from the deck of a moving boat, the shore seems to move. The image of the real world appears inverted on the lens of sensation. In olden times men held a theory of the natural universe which was based on the testimony of the senses —a theory which the facts of the case were afterward found to flatly contradict.

They conceived the earth a flat expanse, around which revolved the heavenly bodies, held in their places by external forces. But in due time a conception developed, of forces operating from within. Men discovered that atoms, planets, suns and solar systems, are held in their places, not by any power essentially external, but by a universal law of attraction.

This discovery led to a complete reconstruction of ideas relating to physical phenomena. But it proved only a step toward a far more comprehensive reconstruction of ideas concerning the psychical and spiritual planes. Any definite recognition of universal principles operating on the latter planes is comparatively recent.

Although the idea that every soul-center possesses attracting power capable of unlimited increase by cultivation, is not strictly new as a theory, still it has never gained any general acceptance heretofore, nor has it been formulated as a proposition capable of intelligent demonstration; in fact, even at the present day, comparatively few have embraced the conception of universal inner law.

In religion most people still regard external authority as a fixed center around which all spiritual ideas must revolve. They shudder at the thought of yielding this apparently stable foundation; of becoming free from bondage to the understanding, and relying on the internal authority of intuition; of discarding old props, and trusting the soul’s law of gravitation.