Eternal Mind

“ And, as the same is true with regard to all other finite created spirits, it necessarily follows there is an omnipresent Eternal Mind, which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view. ”

“ Beauty is a thing of Life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind, and reflects the charms of His goodness in form, outline, and color. It is Love which paints the petal with myriad hues, glances in the warm sunbeam, arches the cloud with the bow of beauty, blazons the night with starry gems, and covers earth with loveliness. ”

“ I at length determined to inquire if there were anything which was a TRUE GOOD, capable of imparting itself, and by which alone the mind could be affected to the exclusion of all else; whether, indeed, anything existed by the discovery and acquisition of which I might have continuous and supreme joy to all eternity," and the remainder of his life was penetrated by a noble passion for the Eternal, and dedicated to the interpretation of the Highest Good which he had discovered, and which henceforth no rival good was ever to eclipse. ”

“ A personal mind manifests all manner of error, and thus proves the material theory incorrect. Who hath found finite life or love sufficient to meet the demands of human want and woe, — stilling the desires, satisfying the aspirations? Infinite Mind cannot be in a finite form, or it would lose its infinite character as inexhaustible Love, eternal Life, omnipotent Truth. ”

“ But God, who is the Eternal Mind, is undoubtedly of excellence, complete and perfect in every part. ”

“ Eternal life is no diffusion or dilution of personality, but its consummation. It seems certain that in such a state of existence individuality must be maintained. If every life in this world represents an unique purpose in the Divine mind, and if the end or meaning of soul-life, though striven for in time, has both its source and its achievement in eternity, this, the value and reality of the individual life, must remain as a distinct fact in the spiritual world. ”

“ Only by losing the false sense of Soul can we gain the eternal unfolding of Life as immortality brought to light.
XX. Mind is the divine Principle, Love, and can produce nothing unlike the eternal Father-Mother, God. The one divine Mind Reality is spiritual, harmonious, immutable, immortal, divine, eternal. Nothing unspiritual can be real, harmonious, or eternal. ”

“ The human mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God. ”

“ But, in what way can man be made to realize that there is an eternal world, to which he is rapidly tending, and realities there, with which, by the very constitution of his spirit, he is forever and indissolubly connected either for bliss or woe? How shall thoughtless and earthly man, as he treads these streets, and transacts all this business, and enjoys life, be made to feel with misgiving, foreboding, and alarm, that there is an eternity, and that he must soon enter it, as other men do, either as a heaven or a hell for his soul? ”

“ From the beginning of time, man, in spite of his bodily appetites and desires, in the midst of all his clinging to earthly and impermanent things, has ever been intuitively conscious of the limited, transient, and illusionary nature of his material existence, and in his sane and silent moments has tried to reach out into a comprehension of the Infinite, and has turned with tearful aspiration toward the restful Reality of the Eternal Heart. ”

“ He has traced the reality of everything unto the Lord, that centre, that Unity of everything, and that is Eternal Bliss, Eternal Knowledge, Eternal Existence. Neither death nor disease, nor sorrow nor misery, nor discontent is there ... in the centre, the reality, there is no one to be mourned for, no one to be sorry for. He has penetrated everything, the Pure One, the Formless, the Bodiless, the Stainless, He the Knower, He the Great Poet, the Self-Existent, He who is giving to everyone what he deserves. ”

“ When this will be known in truth, that the inner man shall stand, immovable, and that the outer man shall and must be moved,—the inner man has a why and wherefore of his moving, which is nothing but an 'it must and shall be' ordered by the Eternal Will. ”

“ Though the sense of your own dwelling within the Eternal transfuses and illuminates it, the sense of your own necessary efforts, a perpetual renewal of contact with the Spiritual World, a perpetual self-donation, shall animate it too. When the greater love overwhelms the lesser, and your small self-consciousness is lost in the consciousness of the Whole, it will be felt as an intense stillness, a quiet fruition of Reality. Then, your very selfhood seems to cease, as it does in all your moments of great passion ”

“ Man was now to him an atom, and earth a speck! the collective force of his mind was directed to one sole object, but that object was—eternity! The struggle between the mortal and immortal being was over; passion no longer gave to his imagination the vision of its disappointed desires, nor love the seductive images of its frail enjoyment: the ambition of religious zeal, and the blandishments of tender emotion, no longer influenced a soul which was, in so short a space of time, to be summoned before the tribunal of its God. ”

“ In our immature sense of spiritual things, let us say of the beauties of the sensuous universe: “I love your promise; and shall know, some time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light, and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and knowing this, I shall be satisfied. Matter is a frail conception of mortal mind; and mortal mind is a poorer representative of the beauty, grandeur, and glory of the immortal Mind.” ”

“ Leaving the path of things known or unknown, he stands in the Self alone; like a god in presence is this most excellent knower of the Eternal.
Though still in life, yet ever free; his last aim reached; the most excellent knower of the Eternal, when his disguise falls off, becoming the Eternal, enters into the secondless Eternal. ”

“ Yet the soul craves and feels herself fit for something better, a wisdom that shall look upon the myriad ways in which men seek their common end—the development and elevation of their natures,—with calmness, as the Eternal does. ”

“ The heart and will are intensely determined to do wrong, while the conscience is unyielding and uncompromising, and utters its denunciations, and thunders its warnings. And what a dreadful destiny awaits that soul, in whom this conflict and collision between the dictates of conscience, and the desires of the heart, is to be eternal! for whom, through all eternity, the holy law of God, which was ordained to life peace and joy, shall be found to be unto death and woe immeasurable! ”

“ If we define the Eternal to ourselves, 'a Great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe,' we can never verify that this has from age to age been a refuge to men. But if we define the Eternal, 'the enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness,' then we can know and feel the truth of what we say when we declare: Eternal, thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another! For in all the history of man we can verify it. Righteousness has been salvation ”

“ I saw that all things—all wrong, all pain, all darkness, everything which made life dark and terrible—were only for a moment, and that they were overruled by the Eternal God, so that those who suffered them merged through the ages into Eternal Love and Eternal Light. ”

“ The Eternal, the Life, the Self is seen here under many forms; all in this world is the Eternal, the secondless Eternal; the scripture says "I am the Eternal"; knowing this clearly, those whose minds are awakened, who have abandoned the outward, becoming the Eternal, dwell in the Self, which is extending consciousness and bliss. ”

“ When you begin to realize this you will begin to control your thoughts, to regulate and discipline your mind, and to rebuild the inward temple of your soul, eliminating all useless and superfluous material, and incorporating into your being thoughts alone of joy and serenity, of strength and life, of compassion and love, of beauty and immortality; and as you do this you will become joyful and serene, strong and healthy, compassionate and loving, and beautiful with the beauty of immortality. ”

“ As the past fuses with the present you awaken to a larger privilege of life than man now knows. You feel yourself encompassed by truth, vital and strong. This art, erstwhile so baffling, stands revealed as the struggle of a superhuman entity for self-expression. The tendency toward God has to begin anew with each round of the life-spiral - that eternal circle which life pursues. ”

“ Yet, once fully achieved and its obligations accepted by us, it continues as a grave melody within our busy outward acts: and we must by right direction of our deepest instincts so find and feel the Eternal all the time, if indeed we are to actualize and incarnate it all the time. ”

“ To will, not from self, but with the Eternal, is to live. ”

“ And if the soul of humanity is eternal, if the human collective consciousness is eternal, if there is a Consciousness of the Universe, and if this Consciousness is eternal, why must our own individual consciousness—yours, reader, mine—be not eternal? ”

“ If I have described life as a flux of moods, I must now add, that there is that in us which changes not, and which ranks all sensations and states of mind. The consciousness in each man is a sliding scale, which identifies him now with the First Cause, and now with the flesh of his body; life above life, in infinite degrees. The sentiment from which it sprung determines the dignity of any deed, and the question ever is, not, what you have done or forborne, but, at whose command you have done or forborne it. ”

“ I saw that the Eternal Love and the Eternal Life, which was everywhere, was bringing out of all that at first seemed a meaningless chaos an infinite order; that even the War of the World in which men lost their lives by thousands and hundreds of thousands, in which unholy passions seemed to prevail, and in which Death stalked triumphant: I say I saw evolving out of all this, confused and contradictory as it all appeared, a higher life and a higher thought—a movement towards the Eternal Will and towards the Eternal Purpose which was behind everything. ”

“ Its impulsion is always in one direction; to a finding of some wider and more enduring reality, some objective for the self's life and love. It is a seeking of the Eternal, in some form. I allow that thanks to the fog in which we live muffled, such a first seeking, and above all such a finding of the Eternal is not for us a very easy thing. The sense of quest, of disillusion, of something lacking, is more common among modern men than its resolution in discovery. ”

“ Thus it is true to say that the object of life for all living souls is the eternal vision. Towards the attainment of the eternal vision the love in all living souls perpetually struggles; and against the attainment of the eternal vision the malice in all living souls perpetually struggles. ”

“ Thus reaching bodiless purity, mere Being, partless, the being of the Eternal, the sage returns to this world no more.
He whose forms born of unwisdom are burnt up by knowledge of oneness with the everlasting Self, since he has become the Eternal, how could he, being the Eternal, come to birth again? ”

“ Whatever is delusively perceived by one deluded, is the Eternal; the silver shining is only the pearl shell. The Eternal is perpetually conceived as formed; but what is attributed to the Eternal is a name only.
Therefore the supreme Eternal is Being, secondless, of the form of pure knowledge, stainless, peaceful, free from beginning or ending, changeless, its own-nature is unbroken bliss. ”

“ On the other hand if we have in this world realized the true principle of the Worship of the Eternal Source from which all conditioned life flows out--an inner communing with the Great Reality--we have already passed beyond that consciousness of life which is limited by Time and Space ”

“ That rests in itself, different from the existent and the nonexistent; partless, nor bound by causality, is the Eternal, THAT THOU ART; become it in the Self.
Birth and growth, decline and loss, sickness and death it is free from, and unfading; the cause of emanation, preservation, destruction, is the Eternal, THAT THOU ART; become it in the Self. ”

“ It is not mine or thine, but the will of all mind. It is poured into the souls of all men, as the soul itself which constitutes them men. I know not whether there be, as is alleged, in the upper region of our atmosphere, a permanent westerly current, which carries with it all atoms which rise to that height, but I see, that when souls reach a certain clearness of perception, they accept a knowledge and motive above selfishness. A breath of will blows eternally through the universe of souls in the direction of the Right and Necessary. ”

“ Thy Life, as alone the finite mind can conceive it, is self-forming, self-manifesting Will:—this Life, clothed to the eye of the mortal with manifold sensuous forms, flows forth through me, and throughout the immeasurable universe of Nature. ”

“ Yet there are continual momentary suggestions which make for gratifying our apparent self, for unrighteousness; nevertheless, what makes for our real self, for righteousness, is lasting, and holds good in the end. Therefore: Trust in the Eternal with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding; there is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Eternal; there is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death; there are many devices in a man's heart, nevertheless, the counsel of the Eternal, that shall stand. ”

“ They insisted that the Eternal Spirit, who had been educating the race from its birth, bringing all things up to better, and who had used now one symbol and now another to fit the growing spiritual perception of men, is a real Presence in the deeps of men's {45} consciousness, and is ceaselessly voicing Himself there as a living Word whom it is life to obey and death to disregard and slight. ”