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Lesson IX: More About Dharma.401
the light is enabled to reach the remaining ones—and at the end all is light.
This is a forced figure of speech but we are compelled to use such. Let us
take another, equally clumsy, but which may be plainer to you. Imagine a
tiny, but strong, electric light bulb confined in many wrappings of cloth. The
light is the Spirit—the glass bulb the Spiritual Mind, through which the Spirit
shines with a minimum of resistance and obstruction. The outer layers of
cloth are very thick, but each layer is thinner than the one next further away
from the light—the layers nearest the light are quite thin, until they grow
almost transparent. Try to fix this figure in your mind. Now, very little light
reaches the outside layer of cloth, but still that which does reach it is the
best light it is capable of receiving or conceiving. We remove the first layer
of cloth. The second layer is found to receive and show forth more light than
the one just cast aside. We remove the second one, and we find the third
one still brighter, and able to radiate considerably more light. And so on,
and on, each layer when removed bringing to view more light and brighter
light, until at last all the layers are removed and the light of the Spirit is seen
shining brightly through the glass bulb of the Spiritual Mind. If the layers
of cloth had been able to think, they would have thought of the whole
bundle of cloth (with the lamp in the center) as “I.” And each layer would
have seen that “closer in” was something a little lighter than is ordinary self,
which light would stand for the highest conception of light possible to the
outer cloth—its “conscience,” in fact. Each layer of cloth would be conscious
of the next inner layer being brighter than itself. The second layer would
appear very “good” to the first one, but to the fourth or fifth the second
would be darkness itself (by comparison), quite “bad” in fact. And yet each
would have been “good” because it carried light to the layer still more in
the dark. Conscience is the light of the Spirit, but we see it more or less
dimly because of the layers surrounding it—we see only as much as filters
through the cloth. And so we call the next inner layer “conscience”—and
so it is, relatively. Do you understand the matter any clearer, now? Can
you see why the “consciences” of different people differ? Does the fact