21

Travel in Consciousness

The Bridge, Vol. 1, No. 5

August 1952

Consciousness is our thought and feeling self which abides within the bodies, God and the Elemental Kingdom have provided for us. Every experience we have adds to the sum total of wisdom or foolishness which makes up our individual, distinctive consciousness. In the years between infancy and maturity, every individual, through choice and circumstance, adds to and changes his consciousness for better or for worse. We can experience both terror and ecstasy without using the medium of the physical body, for all have known the   joys of happy dreams and the horrors of a nightmare. In the fields of drama, literature and art, man has learned to free his consciousness from the prosaic environments from whence he views this imagery.

Consciousness endures beyond the dissolution of the physical body at the time of so called 'death' through the intermediate life, and returns as the personal heritage of the re-incarnating ego, forming the foundation of his new experience in life. Therefore, the richer and more perceptive our individual consciousness, the more rapid our growth in this and succeeding lives. When we ask the gentle reader to travel in consciousness, we are but encouraging him to use the same faculties by which he transfers himself temporarily into the world of the dramatist, the poet, or the master of literature.

A good formula for such travel is outlined here. 1) Determine where you want to go. Nourish the outer mind through reading about and contemplating upon the sphere or location which is to be your goal until you can close your eyes and picture your objective. The Presence of God and His Messengers are your compass charts. Your mind is like the sail of a boat. 2) Will, through your feelings, that you will reach your destination. Your feeling world is like the wind in the sails. Use your feelings also to generate joy and anticipation for your journey. 3) Relax and let God, through you, do the work. When you are going to sit down before the fire with a good book, you anticipate a time of relaxation. In like manner, if you are going to attend the opera or the theater, you welcome it as an opportunity to relieve the conscious or unconscious tensions of the work-a-day world. Spiritual journeys and exercises should also be a mode of relaxation and enjoyment and not be entered into with mental strain, restraint, and the accompanying uncertainty of either your ability to make the journey or to retain the benefits received. Be assured that over eighty percent of your benefits are to the unfolding soul, and the mental retention of your experience will come with time. 4) Utilize the results of your experience in your daily living. To look at a vision, to smell a rose, to contemplate and recognize a truth is commendable, but to translate the vision and truth into action is to serve God's Purpose. Also, the balance you return to life for any expansion of consciousness, determines how much you will receive on your next visitation to the Cosmic Well.

There are among the people of Earth individuals who have chosen to cultivate the friendship and association of certain liberated or perfected beings and by choosing to contemplate the lives of these liberated beings, of studying their words when such are available, by contemplating their pictures, or meditating upon their individual force of intelligence, such human beings absorb the life, the radiation and the substance of the Master they are wise enough to contact through the magic medium of their thoughts and of their feelings. You can cultivate the friendship of the Master with greater ease than you can build a human friendship between men because you are always connected with the Master through the medium of thought and feeling in an instant, whereas the human bodies bound by time and space, must have personal contact in order to enjoy association one with the other.

No man need affirm that he is a disciple of the Holy Spirit. His kindly eyes, his gentle smile, his helping hand, his embodied virtue speaks for him. Within the individual who truly loves his neighbor as himself, there stirs the renewal of the Spirit of the Most High. The sweet perfume and essence of divinity pouring forth from such a one brings peace, hope, faith, grace, healing and spiritual illumination. Even if such a disciple should speak not a word in the course of an entire lifetime, the Spirit of God through him, could do more than a thousand zealots whose souls are still locked against the Gentle Presence.

Paul, the Maha Chohan

May 1970