Divine consciousness

“ By the Deity we mean—and I suppose everyone means—the all-controlling consciousness of the universe as well as the infinite, unfathomable, and unknowable abyss of being beyond. By divinity we mean the essence of the nature of the immanent God, the innermost and all-determining quality of that nature; we have already seen that according to the Christian religion the innermost quality of the divine nature is perfect love. ”

“ Now there are two states of consciousness manifested in the Lord's life on earth—the one when he spoke as man only, with the consciousness on the plane received from the natural; that which theologians call his state of exinanition (of emptying himself) or humiliation; and the other state of consciousness, which we may refer to as the state of glorification, when he spoke as absolutely and consciously Divine. ”

“ After deep prayer and meditation he is in touch with his divine consciousness; there is no greater power than that inward protection.” ”

“ And these are the illuminations proceeding from the Gods, the spirits imparted by them, and the all perfect domination of divinity, which comprehends indeed every thing in us, but exterminates entirely our own proper consciousness and motion. This divine possession, also, emits words which are not understood by those that utter them; for they pronounce them, as it is said, with an insane mouth, and are wholly subservient, and entirely yield themselves to the energy of the predominating God. ”

“ An incontestable point in Divine Science is, that because God is All, a realization of this fact dispels even the sense or consciousness of sin, and brings us nearer to God, bringing out the highest phenomena of the All-Mind. ”

“ The divinity that there is in everything, from the lowest—that is to say, from the least conscious—of living forms, to the highest, including our own human consciousness, this divinity we feel to be personalized, conscious of itself, in God. And this gradation of consciousnesses, this sense of the gulf between the human and the fully divine, the universal, consciousness, finds its counterpart in the belief in angels with their different hierarchies, as intermediaries between our human consciousness and that of God. ”

“ He comprehends this Life with clear consciousness as the immediate life and energy of God within him, as the fulfilment of the Divine Will in and by his person. It is unnecessary to repeat the proofs which we have already adduced in general, that through this consciousness his thought is sanctified, transfigured, and bathed in the Divinity. ”

“ To my distinct consciousness the spirit of the Lord is that living divine, or divine substance which constantly proceeds from His divine person, somewhat in the same way and manner that rays of light and heat are continually proceeding from our natural sun. It is written that 'God is love/ and that 'God is light/ or truth. ”

“ This reality is assured both in the teaching of the Scriptures and the testimony of the Christian consciousness. We must distinguish between the simply natural action of conscience and the quickening and helping by the divine Spirit. Revelation fully recognizes the natural conscience and its obligating energy, Rom. ”

“ I found certain great primal Intuitions of Human Nature, which depend on no logical process of demonstration, but are rather facts of consciousness given by the instinctive action of human nature itself. I will mention only the three most important which pertain to Religion. 1. The Instinctive Intuition of the Divine, the consciousness that there is a God. 2. The Instinctive Intuition of the Just and Right, a consciousness that there is a Moral Law, independent 116 of our will, which we ought to keep. ”

“ A theistic theological belief may agree with physics and anatomy that reason and will are properly classified as mind, located in the brain; also, that the functions of these faculties depend on conditions of matter, or brain, for their proper exercise. But reason and will are human; God is divine. ”

“ We wake from them to find that they are but dreams. Wanderings of an overwrought brain do not stand this test. These highest experiences that I have had of God's presence have been rare and brief—flashes of consciousness which have compelled me to exclaim with surprise—God is here!—or conditions of exaltation and insight, less intense, and only gradually passing away. ”

“ Already, even in the present chaos of scientific and religious opinion, indications can be seen by the observant, that the Divine Spirit of order is breathing on the mass, and will evolve from it new and beautiful worlds of mental and spiritual existence. ”

“ Also, as we have seen (ante-Lesson III) , not only is the Immanent Spirit the Divine Power, but that spirit carries with it into the immensity of space which it pervades, at least certain attributes of the Divine Intelligence from whom it proceeds, and becomes the inspiration to intelligence in men, and the atmosphere of wisdom, holiness, truth, and of love. ”

“ The spiritual man begins to see, to hear, to touch, to taste. And, besides the senses of the spiritual man, there awakes his mind, that divine counterpart of the mind of the physical man, the power of direct and immediate knowledge, the power of spiritual intuition, of divination. ”

“ From the Lord proceed the celestial, the spiritual, and the natural, one after the other. What proceeds from His Divine Love is called celestial, and is Divine Good; what proceeds from His Divine Wisdom is called spiritual, and is Divine Truth; the natural is from both, and is their complex in the ultimate. ”

“ But from this vision which the spirit had, it passed to climb to still greater heights—it was spiritual, it might attain divinity. The change from the original transcendental state of vision to that other state of being, of all-pervading consciousness, could only be accomplished by what is known as the descent into matter where spirit identifies itself with every form of life, and assimilates their essences. ”

“ In the consciousness of the utter impotence of our own wisdom or understanding to know God, our souls must in contrition, brokenness from ourselves and our power or efforts, yield to God’s Spirit, the Spirit of Holiness, to reveal God as the Holy One. ”

“ Whatever diverges from the one divine Mind, or God, — or divides Mind into minds, Spirit into spirits, Soul into souls, and Being into beings, — is a misstatement of the unerring divine Principle of Science, which interrupts the meaning of the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of Spirit, and is of human instead of divine origin. ”

“ Following up the track of these wild dreams, we might imagine an unconscious God, slumbering in matter, and gradually wakening into consciousness of everything, consciousness of His own divinity; we might imagine the whole Universe becoming conscious of itself as a whole and becoming conscious of each of its constituent consciousnesses, becoming God. ”

“ We may as well do this, as discern divine and supernatural things by natural and human reason. God has endued us with different faculties, suitable and proportionable to the different objects that engage them. We discover sensible things by our senses, rational things by our reason, things intellectual by understanding, but divine and cœlestial things he has reserved for the exercise of our faith, which is a kind of divine and superior sense in the soul. ”

“ When in meditation and worship you have sought to take in and express what God’s word has taught, then comes the time for confessing how you know nothing, and for waiting on God to reveal Himself.
6 The Divine necessity and meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity is seen from the counterpart we have of it in nature. In every living object that exists we distinguish first the life, then the form or shape in which that life manifests itself, then the power or effect as seen in the result which the life acting in its form or manifestation produces. ”

“ O thou who dost believe in the Spirit of Christ, in the Kingdom of God!
The body is composed, in truth, of corporeal elements and every composition is necessarily subject to decomposition; but the spirit is an essence, simple, pure, spiritual, eternal, perpetual and divine. He who seeketh Christ from the point of view of His body hath, in truth, debased Him and hath gone astray from Him; but he who seeketh Christ from the point of view of His Spirit will grow from day to day in joy, attraction, zeal, proximity, perception and vision. ”

“ Section IV But, inasmuch as the Divine Being is source of sacred order, within which the holy Minds regulate themselves, he, who recurs to the proper view of Nature, will see his proper self in what he was originally, and will acquire this, as the first holy gift, from his recovery to the light. ”

“ By this incoming spiritual power and life-substance the entire personality of the recipient is affected. The {72} recreative energy which pours in transforms both soul and body. The inner eternal Word of God, who became flesh, acts upon the inner nature of man, so that the believing man is changed into something spiritual, divine and heavenly, and like Jesus Christ, the incarnated Word of God. ”

“ It is agreed among all Catholic theologians: 1. That created intelligence can, by the explication of its own constitutive principles, attain to the knowledge of God as causa altissima; or, that God is, per se, the ultimate object of reason. 2. That there is a mode of the relation of intelligence to its ultimate object, or to God, a permanent state of the intuition of {153} God, by a created spirit, called the intuitive, beatific vision of the divine essence, which can be attained only by a supernatural elevation and illumination of the intelligence. ”

“ Neither is it possible that Divinity can be proved by Mathematical Demonstrations; for if Nature be not able to do it, much less is Art: Wherefore it is inconvenient to mix supernatural Spirits with Air, Fire, Light, Heat, Cold, &c. and to apply corporeal actions and qualities to them; and the Divine Soul, with the Brain, Blood, Flesh, Animal Spirits, Muscles, Nerves, Bones, &c. of Man; all which makes a confusion betwixt the Mind or Natural Soul of Man, and the Supernatural and Divine Soul inspired into him by God ”

“ The Holy Spirit is called the proceeding Divine, yet no one knows why it is called proceeding. This is not known, because until now it has been unknown that the Lord appears before the angels as a sun, and that heat, which in its essence is Divine love, and light, which in its essence is Divine wisdom, proceeds from that sun. ”

“ These, and the varied phenomena of nature are the direct expressions of the Divine Energy, the modes of operation of the Divine Mind, the manifestations of the Divine Wisdom and the expressions of the Divine Love. ”

“ Centuries ago, this opinion was blasphemy, as being irreconcileable with the sacred books which every Christian reveres as inspired by the Deity himself. Notwithstanding divine revelation, astronomers now depend rather upon evidence, than upon the testimony of their inspired books.
What is the hidden principle of the motions of the human body? The soul. What is a soul? A spirit. What is a spirit? A substance, which has neither form, nor colour, nor extension, nor parts. How can we form any idea of such a substance? How can it move a body? ”

“ The vitality which animates the mortal frame, the Breath of Life of the Hebrew Genesis, the Hindu Philosophers in general held, perishes with it; but the Soul is divine, an emanation of the Spirit of God, but not a portion of that Spirit. ”

“ The Spiritual thus appears as itself already the Divine, and the Spirit as the exclusive, characteristic property of God, something which is foreign to man, apart from his Christian renovation and elevation to a higher form of existence. Only with the entrance of faith and its consequences into the mind and will of man, does this transcendent Spirit become an immanent principle: “through His Spirit dwelling in you.” ”

“ Some believe that God can be seen by corporeal sight, others entirely deny it. But all believe that when the human souls are gathered up in the Great Account, the Divine Presence will enfold the Universe. ”

“ Philosophical analysis shows that the intrinsic nature of our psychic operations is no more a subject of immediate consciousness than the substance of the soul itself. Consequently, sanctifying grace cannot reveal its presence through our inner consciousness. ”

“ So, the rich experiences of the religious consciousness seem to be resumed in these three outstanding types of spiritual awareness. The cosmic, ontological, or transcendent; finding God as the infinite Reality outside and beyond us. The personal, finding Him as the living and responsive object of our love, in immediate touch with us. The dynamic, finding Him as the power that dwells within or energizes us. These are not exclusive but complementary apprehensions, giving objectives to intellect feeling and will. ”

“ The various beliefs of mortals, culminating in religious dogmas and medical theories, are mainly predicated of matter; and that affords no gleam of God, Truth. Spiritual ideas, like numbers and notes, start from Principle instead of person, and admit no illusions concerning them. They lead up to their divine origin, which, once understood, brings harmony. ”

“ In both respects human cognition is aided through the revelation of grace. For the natural light of the intellect is strengthened through the infusion of light graciously given (luminis gratuiti) ; while the images in the man’s imagination are divinely formed so that they are expressive of things divine, rather than of what naturally is received through the senses, as appears from the visions of the prophets.” [591]
Natural reason stops with the unity of God, and can give no knowledge of the Trinity of divine Persons. ”

“ By contemplative absorption of the soul into the depth of the Divine life it seeks an immediate vision, experience and enjoyment of the Divine, and as an indispensable condition thereto requires purity of heart, the love of God in the soul and thorough abnegation of self. ”

“ But the whole group of them forms a combination which, as such, is religious, for it seems to flow from the sense of the divine as from its psychological centre. Whoever possesses strongly this sense comes naturally to think that the smallest details of this world derive infinite significance from their relation to an unseen divine order. ”