Spirituality-Religions
Spiritual Discovery
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I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.
This unwillingness to acknowledge the shortcomings of Jesus is partially due to fear of sustaining a great loss. The familiar answer to heretical arguments is that faith should not be destroyed unless something can be put in its place -- ignoring the fact that something always may be substituted for beliefs destroyed. That substitute is faith in the world as it really is. And our modern world, with all its shortcomings, is infinitely preferable to the earth, or even the heaven, of the first century.
The fact of sexual need in man and animal is expressed in biology by the assumption of a "sexual impulse." This impulse is made analogous to the impulse of taking nourishment, and to hunger. The sexual expression corresponding to hunger not being found colloquilly, science uses the expression "libido."
This thesis on sexual morality was originally published in 1919 at the beginning of the sexual revolution of the 'Roaring Twenties'. It was a medical and scholarly look at both sides of the Sexual Morality issue. Excellent research material.
It has been asserted that there is no such thing as Indian Religion, though there are many Religions in India. This is not so. As I have already pointed out (Is India Civilized?) there is a common Indian religion which I have called Bharata Dharma, which is an Aryan religion (Aryadharma) held by all Aryas whether Brahmanic, Buddhist or Jaina.
he student in India expects the teacher to state positively the principles involved, and the methods whereby these principles may be manifested, together with frequent illustrations (generally in the nature of fables or parables), serving to link the new knowledge to some already known thing. The Hindu student never expects or demands anything in the nature of "proof" of the teachers statements of principle or method; in fact, he would regard it as an insult to the teacher to ask for the same.
The lessons which compose this volume originally appeared in monthly form, the first of which was issued in October, 1907, and the twelfth in September, 1908. These lessons met with a hearty and generous response from the public, and the present volume is issued in response to the demand for the lessons in a permanent and durable form.
This book is quite old (written 1930s), yet it's a perennial shining light amongst the plethora of channelled material available nowadays. Stewart and Betty White published several books in the 1930s. The Gaelic Manuscripts was never properly published.
"This book is the record, condensed, of the excursions of 'Betty,' a psychic intimately known to me and of absolute integrity, into the world of 'other-consciousness' and of communications received by her from forces which I have ventured to call 'the invisibles'.
"Today, the first essential of brotherhood is freedom. Freedom to think,
freedom to believe, freedom to strive, freedom to develop, from highest
to lowest. And the employer who refuses this opportunity to the men who
work under him is no more truly a force of disintegration than the
laborer who refuses to cooperate with his employer and thus proves
himself unworthy of a place in the procession of progress...
Suddenly you fit into the place where the thing you shaped will go with mathematical nicety. It is as though a lot of scattered things were dancing about; and Clap! they were all in a pattern. You call it fate, or luck, or destiny, but all the time it is just the preparation of your days on days..
What I have called the "war dead," the multitudes passing over from battle, are the bereavements that hit with the strongest impact. Yet actually they differ in no manner from any other loss by death. We are inclined to think more of their mass, their sheer weight of numbers, than of the fact that each carries its full of poignancy. Indeed, it may even be some small comfort to reflect that others are grieving too! And there is the sustaining glow and pride in sacrifice for a common cause. But each death on the battlefield is to some one the full measure of bereavement.
THE MATERIAL for this book is drawn from some 2,500 single-typed pages of verbatim records. The latter are made up of communications from discarnate entities we called the Invisibles, mainly through the mediumship of one of us known as Betty. The latter had become a station for this sort of transmission only by dint of a rigorous twenty years of training.
Perhaps it was largely for my own satisfaction; in any case I did again go through the roughly million and a quarter words that were the records of Betty's work while here. Passages directed at her personally, and no one else, I red-penciled. Next I cut them out and pasted them seriatim. They totaled nearly two hundred thousand words. For the first time I read them consecutively; and realized that, even with no further arrangement, I had a NARRATIVE.
The success of telephone communication depends on the perfection of the telephonic mechanism. If the connection is imperfect, the message is confused. And so it is, Stephen says, with communication between persons on his plane and persons here on earth; the connection, so to speak, may be good, bad, or indifferent.