To Netnews Homepage Previous Next Index Table of Contents
From Intellect to Intuition - Chapter Six - Stages in Meditation
In the East, and by many in the West, the mind is regarded as separate and distinct from the brain. Dr. C. Lloyd Morgan in Emergent Evolution quotes Descartes as saying that "there are indeed (1) corporeal substance (res extensa), and (2) mental or thinking substance (res cogitans); but they need for their being the concurrence of God... Apart from this common dependence on God neither is dependent on the other." - Morgan, C. Lloyd, Emergent Evolution, page 291. He sums up his own point of view in another book, Life, Mind, and Spirit, as follows: "Spirit is nowise separable from life and mind, nor they from it. What is given for reflective contemplation is a world-plan of natural events. I hold that this world-plan is a manifestation of Divine Purpose... We too are manifestations of Spirit which is 'revealed' within us. Each of us is a life, a mind, and Spirit - an instance of life as one expression of the world-plan, of mind as a different expression of that world-plan, of Spirit in so far as the Substance of that world-plan is revealed within us... This revelation is only partial since each of us is only an [123] individual instance of that which in full manifestation is universal." - Morgan, C. Lloyd, Life, Mind, and Spirit, page 32. God reveals His purpose through the activity of the form. He does the same through the activity of the mind, which impresses in its turn the brain, attuned to receptivity. Later again, the mind becomes responsive to an illumination, emanating from the Spirit aspect, and this we will shortly consider. This approaches very close to the Oriental position which infers a " mind-stuff" which is thrown into activity from the outer world of human affairs by the agency of the senses, by the emotions and by other minds. This intense activity of the mind-stuff has to be definitely offset through concentration and meditation if the mind is to be brought into a condition wherein it can be refocused and reoriented to an other field of perception and another range of ideas. For the esotericists, therefore, the objective of the meditation (carried forward into its later stages) is that the mind should cease to register any form activity whatsoever, no matter of how high an order, but should begin to register impressions emanating from that steadily manifesting Factor which we call (for lack of a better term) the Mind of God, the Universal Mind. This mind is distinguished by a sense of Wholeness, and of synthesis. The entire history of evolving humanity might be considered from the angle of this Plan concept, and the focus of interest might be noted to be that of a growing consciousness in man of a Universe which [124] is a revelation of a Life and of Deity, and in which mankind plays its part in the greater Whole. Ludwig Fischer calls our attention to the fact that all our faculties "are founded on the mysterious and unconscious something which dominates the whole of our intellectual life," and points out the necessity for what he calls the non-rational element in the answers which we give to the complex questions of every day. His conclusions as to the basic situation which man has to face in connection with thought and our progress into higher and non-rational realms are true and forceful. He says: "One way of advancing only is possible. The way is led by the intuition of minds of a more than average instinctive sensitiveness; analytical reason follows, consolidating the position and making practicable the road for the rest of mankind. The advance into the unknown begins with a hypothesis, and a hypothesis is nothing but a more or less non-rational structure, obtained intuitively. Once it has been set up, it is compared in all its implications with experience, so that, if possible, the hypothesis can be tested and rationalized." - Fischer, Ludwig, The Structure of Thought, page 361. We have reached the stage in our study of the process of mind control when we must proceed upon hypothesis. Yet, primarily, it will be hypothesis only to the materially-minded, for the conclusions reached and the realm of knowledge entered are recorded as truth and proven fact by many thousands down the ages.
To Netnews Homepage Previous Next Index Table of Contents
Last updated Monday, July 6, 1998 © 1998 Netnews Association. All rights reserved.