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Lesson III: Spiritual Consciousness.275
can describe Love, Sympathy, or any other emotion to a race which had
never experienced the sensation. They are things which must be felt. And
so it is with the “I Am” consciousness. It comes to a soul which has unfolded
sufficiently to admit of the rays of knowledge from the Spiritual Mind, and
then that soul simply knows—that’s all. It has the actual spiritual knowledge
that it is an entity—immortal—but it cannot explain it to others, nor can
it, as a rule, even intellectually explain it to itself. It simply knows. And that
knowing is not a matter of opinion, or reasoning, or faith, or hope, or blind
belief. It is a consciousness—and like any other form of consciousness, it is
most difficult to explain to one who has never experienced it. Imagine what
it would be to explain light to a man born blind—sugar to one who had
never tasted a sweet thing—cold to one who dwelt in a tropical country
and who had never experienced the sensation. We simply cannot explain
to those who have not experienced them our spiritual experiences—a fact
that is well known to those who have at some time in their lives had what are
generally known as “religious” experiences.
We know of a case in which this consciousness came to a man who lived
in a community in which there seems to have been no one in a like stage of
development. He was a business man of no mean ability, and his associations
had been along entirely different lines. He felt the flood of light beating
into his mind—the certainty of his spiritual existence impressed upon his
consciousness—and he became very much disturbed and worried. He
thought it must be a sign of approaching insanity, and he hoped it would
pass off, although it gave him the greatest happiness. But it did not pass off,
and he went so far as to make arrangements to transfer his business interests,
fearing that he was becoming mentally unbalanced, for he had never heard
of a similar case. However, one day he picked up a book, in which the writer
gave utterances to words which could come only from one who had had
a like experience. The man recognized the common language (although
another would not) and throwing his hands above his head, he cried aloud:
“Thank God, here’s another crazy man.”