MT is easier to meet the situations of life, if we understand. It is ignorance that keeps us in fear. It is the unknown that haunts us and lays its ghostly fingers upon us. For life to be at all livable, we must know something about it, since thought affects not only our immediate mental states but also the people and things by which we are surrounded. And unless our thoughts are right, our world cannot be right. There are, then, certain questions upon which we must have decisive convictions if we are to be happy in the fullest way. There is little pleasure in an uphill trail if we do not know from whence we came, whither we are going, nor why we are on our way.n5560 ¶1
I feel sure that, for all of us who are thoughtful, all these questions are related to what we believe or do not believe about the nature of the self and God. Most of us feel that to be able to relate ourselves with an Unseen but not Unknown Presence will go far to put us on the pathway of understanding and so of peace and attainment.n5560 ¶2
To understand God and his way of working, is to understand our own self, since we are firmly enveloped in the Cosmic Consciousness from which our own consciousness springs, as we shall see. Or we may turn this about and say, that, to know the self in its truest and widest nature will bring us into a clearer knowledge of God. Then to know God and the self will help us to answer these big questions which confront the thoughtful heart: Is life worth while? Is there a purpose which this life fulfils or is intended to fulfil ? What power have I to control the conditions of my body and environment ? Is there magic in the realm of thought ? Whither do I go ? Can I extract joy out of existence? Can I have health when I seek it : prosperity aside from mere chance : and happiness independent of rare good luck? In short, is there a law of lifefn5560 ¶3
THE SELF AND CONSCIOUSNESS When we speak of consciousness, we mean the power to think ; we mean the ability to be aware of the self and of that which occurs in relation to the self. The word " conscious" comes from the Latin words, cum or with, and scio, to know or have knowledge. When we say one is conscious of a thing we mean that he is ' ' with knowledge of that thing, ' ' at least to the extent of his being aware that it is. And the "consciousness* of a person is the "knower," or that which, within him, knows. The knower is the self, the "I am." There is neither any proof that there is an "I am," nor any knowledge of what it is in its ultimate nature. Yet, if I know anything at all, I know that I am ; and I must either say that I do not know anything at all, or else say that what I know can only be known because I, the knower, exist before that which I know. How could anything be known unless there were an "I," that is, a self to know it? This may seem very involved; but it is also very important because it shows us that "consciousness"n5560 ¶4
or the knowing self exists before the body. Before the physical Jesus was the spiritual self, forever existent; the Master himself said, " Before Abraham was, I am." It is true that scientists once said that consciousness is a product of the brain, and that physical reactions in the brain cause us to think. They have claimed this because some kind of action does occur in the brain when we think. For example, if I hurt my feet, the nerve telegraph wires carry a vibration to the brain ; and the message is recorded in a certain area by a little cell-shock or explosion. Then I say, "It hurts" and withdraw my feet. Now, my thought about the hurt and the cell action in the brain occurred at the same time; but that does not prove that my brain produced the thought. "I," the self, the consciousness, simply noted it; that is all. But again scientists said, "We know that it is the brain that produces consciousness because, when anything happens to any portion of the brain, we cannot think the things which that particular part of the brain is accustomed to think." In other words, we lose our consciousness to that extent. For example, they said, "Suppose I injure the brain center in which my hearing is recorded. My ear may remain as perfect; but I have lost that part of 'me' or the consciousness which hears because that part, of the brain is injured. So that, if I continue to lose parts of the brain, the T would disappear little by little until it would be lost altogether."n5560 ¶5
On the contrary, other scientists call attention to the fact that the brain is merely the instrument of the consciousness and that whatever happens to it merely affects the power of the instrument but not of the consciousness. For example, if my eye is injured, the self can no longer use it as an instrument; but the self is not injured. If I break the lens of my binoculars, I cannot see through them ; but I am still a * ' seer. ' ' And that the self still exists after an injury to the brain, with its hearing and seeing consciousness intact, is shown by the fact that often the brain and cell life learn to use other agencies than the eye and ear to do the work that "I," the conscious self, wants done. Take, for illustration, the finer sense of touch which the blind man develops. It enables him to read, to get messages through his fingers from your lips, and to find his way about. He did not lose his seeing consciousness. He merely lost one of its instruments; his consciousness immediately set to work to find another.n5560 ¶6
The fact is that we are safe in saying that, if we cannot prove just what the consciousness is in its essence, we can say that it is, and how it works. And the greatest of the scientists today are assisting us in showing a pre-existent self or consciousness.n5560 ¶7
We find, too, that the search for the self or consciousness is not to be ended by concluding that it has taken up a temporary habitation in the body any more than we can say that a man is inseparable from his house merely because he is at home. To find what the nature of the self is, we must look beyond the body ; and our study will necessarily lead us into an investigation of the universe in which consciousness finds one of its fields of expression. What is the nature of the world in which we live? Are we related to it organically only or in some higher way? Is there a consciousness back of it? If so, what is its nature? In short, what is the Cosmic Consciousness ?n5560 ¶8