Читать книгу A Search for God Anniversary Edition - Edgar Cayce - Страница 23
The Mental and Spiritual Bodies
ОглавлениеIn the same manner the desires of our mental and spiritual bodies build our individualities. This process of building has been going on for ages. The great factors of heredity, environment, karma, thought vibration, and the action of universal laws in the planes beyond the physical all have their influences, just as the desires and vibrations of the physical organs attract and build the composition of the physical body. We are the results not only of the development of the race before us but also of our individual development that has been going on since our creation as individual souls.
We are the sum total of all our experiences in every state of consciousness. “In my Father's house are many mansions”1 (states of consciousness). In our body temples we are building, by thoughts and acts, not only our physical bodies, but the mental and spiritual bodies as well. Christ, the Master, said: “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.”2 Those of us who live to gratify only our fleshly bodies may be beautiful without, but we have so starved our souls that we are able to give out only that which makes for discord and corruption. In speaking of the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus said: “For ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”3 The same principle may be applied to right thinking, for we become what we think.
The soul will seek that which it has builded, not only in the material plane but in the universal, for “as a tree falls, so will it lie.”4 This is well understood if we know and study ourselves, for we will realize that each experience is a lesson to help bring the knowledge of the Whole, that “I and my Father are one.”5
When we are seeking to lose ourselves in the Whole, it is possible to see ourselves as did the individual who had the following dream:
“I saw myself pass out of my body and become three bodies, physical, mental, and spiritual. At first the physical was the largest, but as the other two grew it gradually became smaller, until it finally faded into dust. The others then grew larger and moved around fourth-dimensionally.”
When our acts and thoughts are measured by the standard of Christ, and when we reach the place where we desire only to be channels of blessings to others, we have lost sight of ourselves. Then we have the mind of Christ, for He came not to be ministered to, but to minister, and gave His life as a ransom for many.