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The Seventh Lesson: The Unfoldment of Consciousness.601
in the future. He holds that the manifestation of it which has come to some
few of the race, as above stated, is but the first beams of the sun which are
flashing upon us and which are but prophecies of the appearance of the
great body of light itself.
We shall not here consider at length the reports of certain great religious
personages of the past, who have left records that in moments of great
spiritual exaltation they became conscious of “being in the presence of the
Absolute,” or perhaps within the radius of “the light of Its countenance.” We
have great respect for these reports, and have every reason for believing
many of them authentic, notwithstanding the conflicting reports that have
been handed down to us by those experiencing them. These reports are
conflicting because of the fact that the minds of those who had these glimpses
of consciousness were not prepared or trained to fully understand the
nature of the phenomena. They found themselves in the spiritual presence
of Something of awful grandeur and spiritual rank, and were completely
dazed and bewildered at the sight. They did not understand the nature of
the Absolute, and when they had sufficiently recovered they reported that
they had been in the “presence of God”—the word “God” meaning their
particular conception of Deity—that is, the one appearing as Deity in their
own particular religious creed or school. They saw nothing to cause them
to identify this Something with their particular conception of Deity, except
that they thought that “it must be God,” and knowing no other God except
their own particular conception, they naturally identifying the Something
with “God” as they conceived Him to be. And their reports naturally were
along these lines.
Thus the reports of all religions are filled with accounts of the so-called
miraculous occurrences. The Catholic saint reports that he “saw of light of
God’s countenance,” and the non-Catholic reports likewise regarding God
as he knows him. The Mohammedan reports that he caught a glimpse of the
face of Allah, and the Buddhist tells us that he saw Buddha under the tree.
The Brahman has seen the face of Brahma, and the various Hindu sects have