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Lesson X: The Riddle of the Universe.423
cannot see “the Thing in Itself” by the Intellect, but inasmuch as the Intellect
is a partial manifestation of that “Thing,” and, inasmuch as unless we use the
Intellect, we, in our present state of unfoldment, cannot think of the “Thing”
at all, we may feel fully justified in asking the Intellect the question: “What
can you tell us concerning this thing?” And in the following pages we will
endeavor to tell what is the answer of the Intellect. Later on, we will offer
the evidence of the higher plane of the mind—the message of the Spiritual
Mind, so far as it has been shown us.
The mind of Man when it unfolds sufficiently to reason at all about the
Universe—Life—Existence; when it forms even the elementary idea of
Cause and Effect—when it reaches the stage of consciousness known as Self-
Consciousness, that is, the stage at which it forms an idea of the “I” and the
“Not I”—invariably conceives the idea of “something back of it all.” The man’s
first ideas are crude, but he grows in understanding and constantly improves
upon his idea of the underlying cause of Life and the Universe. In addition
to his intellectual conception, he is impressed by a “feeling” of a Higher
Power, which feeling he afterward called “faith,” and the manifestation of
it “religion.” He evolves fanciful theories, according to the direction of his
religious thought and teaching, and invents gods without number (not to
speak of devils), to explain that which the mind and “feeling” insisted upon.
After a bit the thought on the subject split into two forms—the thought
of the priests, and the thought of the philosophers. The priests contented
themselves with assertions that their particular god or gods “created”
everything, and invented fanciful tales to illustrate the same, as time went
along. The philosophers generally discarded the theory of the priests,
and attempted to explain the thing by theories of their own, although as
a matter of safety and prudence, they generally took care to fall in with
the prevailing religious ideas, at least so far as words were concerned.
After a time, the priests, inoculated with the reasoning of the philosophers,
invented “Theology,” a system of philosophy attempting to explain “why”
and “how” a preconceived personal god did certain things, and what was