Spirit world

“ The human spirit is God, no doubt, Is flesh made the word: Jesus, Beethoven and Raphael, And the souls who heard Beyond the rim of the world the swell Of an ocean stirred By a Power on the waters inscrutable. There are souls who gird Their loins in faith that the world is well, In a faith unblurred. How beautiful is the human spirit— The flesh made the word! ”

“ The worlds of spirit and of soul are co-eternal with the Absolute, the inevitable and unceasing expressions of its creative activity. The utterly transcendent Perfect manifests as Mind or Spirit (Nous) ; and this is the world of being. ”

“ The matter enchains the spirit, and the spirit (the principles of Beauty, Use, Goodness, Music, Odor, Tone. Sound, Rhythm, Shape, Sympathy and Coherence, constitute the World-soul or spirit) —and the spirit ever struggles to free itself from its unwilling thraldom. ”

“ The spirit, the agent to connect the soul with God—the body, the medium of the soul’s manifestation or materialization in this world, and the instrument for its use and enjoyment. The mind, seated in the spirit, was intended, under the influence of the spirit, to be the governor and regulator of the soul—enabling the soul rightly to use its appetite and legitimately to satisfy its passions. ”

“ Below us, I say, is this world, tempting us to ease, and pleasure, and vanity; and in the middle, betwixt the two, stands up the third part of man—his soul and will, set to choose between the voice of God’s Spirit and the temptations of this world—to choose between what is right and what is pleasant—to choose whether he will obey the desires of the spirit, or obey the desires of the flesh. ”

“ Look upon and treat others as you do your own hands, your own eyes, your very heart and soul—with infinite care and compassion—as suffering and enjoying members of the same Great Being with yourself. This is the spirit of the ideal universe—the spirit of your own being. It is this alone that can redeem this world, and give to it the peace and harmony for which it longs. ”

“ And yet for those in these days who can "look through the vayle or shell within which the Eternal Spirit works its Wonders," the visible things of the world prove to be "a glasse wherein the similitude of spirituall things are represented" and "the Minde of man is a most clear and undeceiving glasse wherein we may perceive the motions and activities of that Work-Master, the Spirit who hath created everything in the world." ”

“ We are amphibious creatures: our life moves upon two levels at once—the natural and the spiritual. The key to the puzzle of man lies in the fact that he is “the meeting point of various stages of Reality.” [40] All his difficulties and triumphs are grounded in this. The whole question for him is, which world shall be central for him—the real, vital, all-embracing life we call spirit, or the lower life of sense? ”

“ Thro’ the operation of his Spirit, they humble more and more, and abase the soul before God. They calm and meeken our turbulent spirit, tame the fierceness of our nature, soften our obstinacy and self-will, crucify us to the world ”

“ So there are likewise certain constant and general facts which occur in what may be called the spiritual world, the world of internal consciousness. They represent the laws of spirit—that is of the human spirit—in virtue of which things are designed to take place so and not otherwise. ”

“ Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. ”

“ We thus get man’s spirit placed within a world of varying degrees of depth and interiority, the different levels and kinds of which are necessary, as so many materials, stimulants, obstacles, and objects, for the development of that spirit’s various capacities, which themselves again interact the one upon the other, and react upon and within that world. ”

“ What would the soul in its perfection mirror? Would it reflect within itself the myriad life of humanity? Would the spirit mirror the heavens, and the imaginations of the Divine Mind well up within it in mystic and transcendental ideations? ”

“ And the enfranchised intellect, who can guess the grandeur of its destiny—what new provinces of thought, new discoveries of truth, new revelations of science, new disclosures of the mysteries of nature and of God? And the spirit—the ransomed and purified spirit—who can imagine what perfection of love, what affluence of joy, what transports of worship and of song, what society and fellowship with the saints in light, it shall enjoy when it has entered its eternal rest? ”

“ But it is certain that in being admitted to this inner realm the writer has not lost any blessing of earth,—of love, of home, of friends, of practical knowledge and interest in the daily duties and work of life; nor, I believe, can one be barred from any needed experience, however bitter. These teachings, visions, and experiences of soul-life have given to earth an exquisite beauty; to life’s work a meaning and impetus; to trials a lesson and interpretation; to the change called death a glory and radiance; to spirit states a nearness, and to soul a reality. ”

“ It is soul,—one in all bodies, pervading, uniform, perfect, preeminent over nature, exempt from birth, growth, and decay, omnipresent, made up of true knowledge, independent, unconnected with unrealities, with name, species, and the rest, in time past, present, and to come. The knowledge that this spirit, which is essentially one, is in one’s own, and in all other bodies, is the wisdom of one who knows the unity of things. ”

“ All exalted lives (spiritually) moving and living in similar planes of thought—born of their spiritual states—are attracted to each other in spirit life for the interchange of perceptions of Truth and bearing forward the work of illuminating such minds on Earth as are ready to receive along the lines of human progress and unfoldment, imparting “the things they are ready to know.” ”

“ Spiritual knowledge, the unfoldment of the highest from within, this alone can change the ‘shadowed states’ of Earth into brightness. Every life must be reached; every mind touched and awakened by the spirit ”

“ This influence of individual subjects will be all the greater, of course, the nearer and more intimately they are united with the true centre of the universal spiritual life, the spirit of spirits, about which the universe gravitates, whether with or without the conscious will of the individual. ”

“ When days of darkness are at hand, cling to the great truth, spirit will provide. Think of it constantly; live in the very soul of its presence; believe in it from the very depths of the heart. Things will take a turn. ”

“ And it is at the centre that the real life of the Spirit aims first; thence flowing out to the circumference—even to its most harsh, dark, difficult and rugged limits—in unbroken streams of generous love. ”

“ Nothing, then, would be more shortsighted than to try and keep the soul from a deep, ample, recollective movement, from feeding upon and relishing, from as it were stretching itself out and bathing in, spiritual air and sunshine, in a rapt admiration, in a deep experience of the greatness, the beauty, the truth, and the goodness of the World, of Life, of God. ”

“ Your own thoughts, desires, and aspirations comprise your world, and, to you, all that there is in the universe of beauty and joy and bliss, or of ugliness and sorrow and pain, is contained within yourself.
By your own thoughts you make or mar your life, your world, your universe, As you build within by the power of thought, so will your outward life and circumstances shape themselves accordingly. ”

“ By means of such discipline the mental horizon can be flooded with the sunshine of beauty, wholeness, and harmony. To inaugurate pure and lofty thinking may at first seem difficult, even almost mechanical, but perseverance will at length render it easy, then pleasant, and finally delightful.
“The soul's real world is that which it has built of its thoughts, mental states, and imaginations. If we will, we can turn our backs upon the lower and sensuous plane, and lift ourselves into the realm of the spiritual and Real, and there gain a residence. ”

“ The new heart, and the right spirit,—the change, not in the mere external behavior but, in the very disposition and inclination of the soul,—excludes every jot and tittle of self-assertion, every particle of proud and stoical manhood. ”

“ Yet, with a remarkable fusion of sustained thought and of poetic imagination, he does convey the idea of “the Being that is in the clouds and air,” the soul that penetrates all things, the spirit, the mystical essence, the divine knowledge that, as far as he was concerned, lies behind all nature. ”

“ But, long before the elaboration of this concept of the ruthless Thing, and of its blind Force, Our Lord had, by His Life and Teaching, brought to man, with abidingly unforgettable, divine depth and vividness, the sense of Spirit and Personality, with its liberty and interiority, its far-looking wisdom and its regenerating, creative power of love. ”

“ This divine spark, derived from the source of universal life, is the spirit, the active and mysterious and incomprehensible element of our being, which baffles all our explanations, and without which we are nothing. ”

“ But what is the truth of the Spirit but the Spirit itself,--the conscious I? which is never even thought of in connection with it. In what form, then, shall we recognize it? In its own,--the form of Life,--the life of the Human Being; that self-projecting, realizing power, which is ever present, ever acting and giving judgment on the instant on all things corresponding with its inscrutable self. We now assign it a distinctive epithet, and call it Human.
It is a common saying, that there is more in a name than we are apt to imagine. ”

“ As in lofty experiences of appreciation of beauty, or of music, or when the chords of life are swept by a great love, or by a momentous moral issue, the spirit rises in mystical experience to a form of consciousness which no longer marks clock-time and succession of events, whether outward or inward. ”

“ One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of the spirit in a form,—in forms, like my own. I live in society, with persons who answer to thoughts in my own mind, or express a certain obedience to the great instincts to which I live. I see its presence to them. I am certified of a common nature; and these other souls, these separated selves, draw me as nothing else can. They stir in me the new emotions we call passion; of love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thence come conversation, competition, persuasion, cities and war. Persons are supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. ”

“ Yet, we may faintly shadow those ecstatic raptures, if we remember that every faculty of the mind, each affection of the spirit, will then be fully and forever occupied in fulfilling its highest destinies—Love, Knowledge, Use. ”

“ We realize that we have not lost his Holy Spirit; and if we continue to encourage it, it will be in us a spirit of life, light, intelligence, and truth,—in fact, a spirit springing up unto everlasting life. ”

“ The distinction is not a purely sentimental one—not a belief founded simply on emotion. There is a physical world—the world as known to our senses, and there is a psychical world—the world of feeling, consciousness, thought, and moral life. ”

“ Let your feelings be governed and controlled by the principles of eternal life, as should the children of God, delighting in truth and righteousness. Let the wicked say what they please, for their breath is in their nostrils, and all their glory is like the grass and the flower of the grass that passeth away. ”

“ There is real conflict between such a creed, centred on the idea of something done once for all to the soul—to the world—from outside, and that which is centred on the idea of a life perpetually welling up in the soul, on growth, movement, organic change. ”

“ What would it mean for a soul that truly captured it; this life in which the emphasis should lie on the immediate percepts, the messages the world pours in on us, instead of on the sophisticated universe into which our clever brains transmute them? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The part of man which is not body I will call the Spirit; under that term including all the faculties not sensual. Let me, for convenience' sake, distribute these faculties of the human spirit into four classes: the intellectual,—including the aesthetic,—moral, affectional, and religious. Let Mind be the name of the intellectual faculty, — including the threefold mental powers, reason, imagination, and understanding; Conscience shall be the short name for the moral, Heart for the affectional, and Soul for the religious faculties. ”

“ But aspiring souls, as evidenced by the æsthetic man and woman of culture, presently perceived the error. They recognized that aspiration, to be vital, must start with a conception of the world as it was, and seek a realization of the world as it might be, and that in this seeking lay service to God and preparation for heaven. Proceeding they fixed on unselfish human love and on beauty as the motive of their creed, and endeavored to live lives animated by these principles. ”

“ Thou art the main-spring, the vital secret, the fountain-source, of our existence. What is life but a genial current of joy and grace that wells up incessantly from Thy centred self? Thou art the life, the inner vitality, of our senses. ”

“ It is more than mere feeling or emotion; it is not blind, but rational, and above deception, having its ground in our moral and religious nature. It extends to the whole person, to body, mind, and spirit, to the character as well as to the face and form. ”