Real Presence

“ It is so much easier for me to conceive of his presence than of that of any other spirits, that it is the thought of his inspection of my inmost soul that dwells perpetually on my mind, whatever I do, or say, or think, to the exclusion, except by an effort, of the idea of even a higher presence. ”

“ They are in a remote and lofty solitude, and in touch with the naked elementals of which the world has built itself. But they do not feel alone. They feel themselves in a great Presence, and in a Presence with which they are most intimately in touch. And it is no dread Presence, but one which they delight to feel. Holiness is its essence, and their souls are purged and purified. ”

“ Experience, already reduced to a swarm of impressions, is ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we can only conjecture to be without. Every one of these impressions is the impression of the individual in his isolation, each mind keeping as a solitary prisoner its own dream of a world. ”

“ The very emphasis of those objects, their importunity to the eye, the ear, the finite intelligence, was but the measure of their distance from what really is. One's personal presence, the presence, such as it is, of the most incisive things and persons around us, could only lessen by so much, that which really is. ”

“ First, in so far as I am a social being, I take my fellow’s experience to be as live and real an experience as is mine. In appealing to the consensus of other men’s experiences, I am so far appealing to what I regard as a real experience other than my own momentary experience, and not as a merely possible experience. ”

“ Thus we may confidently say that the reality of purposive significant experience which is not my own is as directly certain as the reality of my own experience, and that the knowledge of both realities is inevitably gained together in the process of coming to clear insight into my own practical aims and interests. The inner experience of my fellows is indubitably real to the same degree as my own, because the very existence of my own purposive life is meaningless apart from the equal existence of theirs. ”

“ That which I desire is not consciously assumed to exist, but still vaguely, somehow and in some strange region, it is felt to be there; and, because it is there, its non-appearance excites painful tension. Pursuing this subject we should find that, in every case in the end, to be thought of is to be entertained as, and so judged to be, real. ”

“ But, we have behind our personalities the Eternal Background of Reality, which changeth not, neither doth it Disappear. Shadows on a screen though our Personalities may be, yet the Screen is Real and Eternal. ”

“ Does he not fill heaven and earth with his presence? The presence of our fellow-creatures affects our senses, and our senses give us the knowledge of their presence; which hath different kinds of influence upon us; love, joy, sorrow, restraint, encouragement, reverence. ”

“ I have several times within the past few years felt the so-called ‘consciousness of a presence.’ The experiences which I have in mind are clearly distinguishable from another kind of experience which I have had very frequently, and which I fancy many persons would also call the ‘consciousness of a presence.’But the difference for me between the two sets of experience is as great as the difference between feeling a slight warmth originating I know not where, and standing in the midst of a conflagration with all the ordinary senses alert. ”

“ When ideal presence is complete, we perceive every object as in our sight; and the mind, totally occupied with an interesting event, finds no leisure for reflection of any sort. This reasoning, if any one hesitate, is confirmed by constant and universal experience. ”

“ So men have said in effect throughout the ages, and where they have conceded reality or substantial character to manifoldness, the concession has simply concealed a reassertion, but with fuller and deeper meaning, of the intimacy of unity with reality. What makes for real unity or wholeness, then, must impart realistic character, giving actual contact and intimacy with just that of which, so to speak, the world is made. ”

“ He stood and gazed, then, with his arms folded on his chest, while the people walking to and fro passed and repassed him, and many a one commented as they went, and assigned him a history and a character from their own imagination. How seldom is it, in the busy world with which we mingle, that any of the conjectures regarding our thoughts, our feelings, our state of existence, are correct! ”

“ All his powers and energies are expended on and exerted for teaching, preaching, and talking. Bodily presence is his vocation: unlike some, writers and others, he must be seen to be felt; and unlike others again, writers and others, the more he is seen, the more he is felt. ”

“ For there is no way of qualifying the Real except by appearances, and outside the Real there remains no space in which appearances could live. Reality appears in its appearances, and they are its revelation ”

“ And, finally, our experience, whether internal or external, never shows us what we, above all, regard as the Real, namely, the Individual fact. Hence, in consulting experience, we are simply seeking aid in the undertaking to give our ideas a certain positive determination, to this content and no other. But never, in our human process of experience, do we reach that determination. It is for us the object of love and of hope, of desire and of will, of faith and of work, but never of present finding. ”

“ The breaking point, so to speak, of man's vision, that ecstasy of comprehension which I call his apex-thought, is the moment which makes him aware of these companions' existence. And, at this ecstatic moment, all individual souls find their personality deepened to such a point that they feel themselves possessed of the very secret of the ultimate duality, feel themselves to be, in fact, unfathomable personifications of that duality. ”

“ Here we find ourselves suddenly not in a critical speculation but in a holy place, and should go very warily and reverently. We stand before the secret of the world, there where Being passes into Appearance and Unity into Variety. ”

“ Breaking down the fences of personality, merging itself in a larger consciousness, it has learned to know the World of Becoming from within--as a citizen, a member of the great society of life, not merely as a spectator. But the more deeply and completely you become immersed in and aware of this life, the greater the extension of your consciousness; the more insistently will rumours and intimations of a higher plane of experience, a closer unity and more complete synthesis, begin to besiege you. ”

“ I have tried to relate the experiences of that secret, elusive, invisible life which in every man is so far more real, so far more important than his visible activities—the real expression of a life much occupied in other employment. ”

“ In the development of the system, whether in the mind of its author or in that of a learner, the starting-point is necessarily the individual consciousness,—the finite Ego. But when the logical processes of the understanding have performed their office, and led us from this, the nearest of our spiritual experiences, to that higher point in which all finite individuality disappears in the great thought of an all-embracing consciousness,—an Infinite Ego,—the theoretical stage of the investigation is superseded by the loftier conception of a Divine Presence. ”

“ The self-manifestation of the primary act is self-consciousness. The eternal self-consciousness is God.
62. The continued act of self-consciousness, or becoming self-conscious repeated, is called representation. God is therefore comprehended in ceaseless representation. Representations are single acts of self-consciousness. Single acts, however, are real things. All real things, however, are the world. The world therefore originates with the representations of the Eternal. ”

“ Such presences are no more discernable by the multitude, than are the beautiful principles of life, which lie every day about us, but which though not seen by them, are none the less visible to the few. ”

“ There are men and women whose presence seems to radiate sunshine, cheer and optimism. You feel calmed and rested and restored in a moment to a new and stronger faith in humanity. There are others who focus in an instant all your latent distrust, morbidness and rebellion against life. Without knowing why, you chafe and fret in their presence. You lose your bearings on life and its problems. ”

“ Did I then see all, or might not other images in the same series emerge at some later time and the connection be lost? If I had written a tale and had imagined an inner room, an old mother, an absent son, a family trouble, might I not all the while be still adventuring in another's life? While we think we are imagining a character we may, so marvellous are the hidden ways, be really interpreting a being actually existing, brought into psychic contact with us by some affinity of sentiment or soul. ”

“ But we will know that at the Center of things is to be found that Universal Presence, and we feel that we can safely rest ourselves on his bosom—trust ourselves in his hands. The cares, sorrows and trials of Life seem very small indeed when viewed from the absolute position, although from the relative position this world often seems to be a very hell. ”

“ But this neither means that their ultimate reality consists in being thought, nor does it mean that they exist outside of finite souls. And it does not mean that the Real is made by merely adding thought to our actual presentations. Immediate experience in time, and thought, are each alike but false appearance, and, in coming together, each must forego its own distinctive character. ”

“ When a clamour of many voices arises making accusations, pointing to time, place and circumstance; to things which we cannot personally investigate, it is only the spirit within us can speak and decide. Others with more knowledge may give answering circumstances of time, place and act; but, with or without these, I back up my intuition with the reason—where the light breaks through, there the soul is pure. ”

“ This was the experience, then, of ‘distinct pre-eminence’ in whose recollection his mind was ‘nourished and invisibly repaired.’ It is in such a moment that the soul’s strength is shown; when common objects evoke what he calls the imagination, the reality, of which they are a suggestion. ”

“ What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another, through them! The glance is natural magic. The mysterious communication established across a house between two entire strangers, moves all the springs of wonder. The communication by the glance is in the greatest part not subject to the control of the will. It is the bodily symbol of identity of nature. We look into the eyes to know if this other form is another self, and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession what inhabitant is there. ”

“ But the Absolute Experience and Will form, as we have asserted, one Unity of consciousness, one moment or instant of fulfilled life, over against which there is no external Other wherewith this whole could be contrasted. If I know myself by contrast with my neighbour or with my distant ideal, how can the Absolute, who has no neighbours, and no unfulfilled ideals, know such a contrast between himself and somebody else? In this sense, one would say, the Absolute must simply transcend self-consciousness. ”

“ Snatches of dialogues once held are recalled, faint recollections of old friendships return, and fragments of landscapes beheld and deeds performed long ago pass in weird procession before the mind's half opened eye. We know a professional gentleman of unimpeachable veracity, of distinguished talents and attainments, who is a firm believer in his own existence on the earth previously to his present life. ”

“ Perceiving this the conditioned passes out of our consideration, for it is seen not to be the Eternal Reality--we have reached that level of consciousness where Time and Space remain no longer. Yet the reverence which the vision of this Supreme Center of all Being cannot fail to inspire is coupled with a sense of feeling quite at home with It. This is because as the Center of all Being it is the center of our own being also. ”

“ Only the individual, or that part of life which is in the firm grasp of the individual, is real. ”

“ And I might there perceive characters, which for the several finite beings give direction to their lives, which, as such, do not fall within finite experience, and which, if apprehended, show both directions harmoniously combined in a consistent whole.
To transcend experience and to reach a world of Things-in-themselves, I agree, is impossible. But does it follow that the whole universe in every sense is a possible object of my experience? Is the collection of things and persons, which makes my world, the sum total of existence? ”

“ She frequently visited towns where a popular preacher or lecturer was announced, and made one of the vast throng that passed about him; then, taking a favourable position, rapidly scanned the upturned faces, wondering, meanwhile, what that strange, subtle something is, by which we recognise each other; that unerring consciousness, so that among ten thousand faces, could we view them one by one, we know at a glance that the one we seek is not there; we do not stop, and doubt, and compare—we know. ”

“ As a fact, only individual experience is real, be that the experience of man or God. And whoever asserts: “The reality is experience,” has precisely those alternatives to face about the sense in which experience is real which have been discussed in the foregoing general account of the problem of Being. There are in the world the experiences of men. ”