There Is a River

by Thomas Sugrue

  Each design carried within it, inherently, the plan of its evolution, which was to be accomplished by movement, growth, or, as man calls it, change. This corresponds to the sound of a note struck on a piano. The sounds of several notes unite to make a chord; chords in turn become phrases; phrases become melodies; melodies intermingle and move back and forth, across and between and around each other, to make a symphony. The music ends as it began, leaving emptiness, but between the beginning and the finish there has been glorious beauty and a great experience.

  (The terms “light,” “heat,” and “electricity” with regard to the cosmos are of no use in this type of discussion, since they are effects observed sensorily, within the earth’s atmosphere. The human senses do not operate outside the earth’s atmosphere: the sun might be, to the surviving individuality, an idea, an influence, or an angel.)

  Everything moved, changed, and assumed its design in various states of form and substance. Activity was begun and maintained by the law of attraction and repulsion: positive and negative, attracting each other and repelling themselves, maintained the form and action of all things.

  All this was a part of God, an expression of His thought. Mind was the force which propelled and perpetuated it: mind did everything God imagined; everything that came into being was an aspect, a posture, of mind.

  Souls were created for companionship with God. The pattern used was that of God Himself: spirit, mind, individuality; cause, action, effect. First there had been spirit; then there had been the action which withdrew spirit into itself; then there had been the resulting individuality of God.

  In building the soul there was spirit, with its knowledge of identity with God; there was the active principle of mind; and there was the ability to experience the activity of mind separately from God.

  Thus a new individual, issuing from and dependent upon God, but aware of an existence apart from Him, came into being. To the new individual there was given, necessarily, the power to choose and direct its own activity; without free will it would remain a part of the individuality of God. Mind, issuing as a force from God, would naturally fulfill His thoughts, unless directed otherwise. The power to do this—to direct otherwise the force of mind—is what man calls his free will. The record of this free will is the soul. The soul began with the first expression which free will made of its power, through the force of mind. The first thought which it generated of itself, the first diversion of mind force from its normal path, was the beginning of the soul.

  The nucleus of the soul was in balance, positive and negative force in equal power, producing harmonious activity: the positive initiating, impregnating, thrusting forward; the negative receiving, nourishing, ejecting. The steps of this action were the stages of thought: perception, reflection, opinion.

  Thus the soul consisted of two states of consciousness: that of the spirit, bearing a knowledge of its identity with God, and that of the new individual, bearing a knowledge of everything it experienced.

  The plan for the soul was a cycle of experience, unlimited in scope and duration, in which the new individual would come to know creation in all its aspects, at the discretion of will. The cycle would be completed when the desire of will was no longer different from the thought of God. The consciousness of the new individual would then merge with its spiritual consciousness of identity with God, and the soul would return to its source as the companion it was intended to be.

  In this state the soul would retain its consciousness of a separate individuality and would be aware that of its own free will it now acted as a part of God, not diverting mind force because it was in agreement with the action toward which this force was directed. Until this state was reached the soul would not be a companion in the true sense of the word.

  The idea that a return to God means a loss of individuality is paradoxical, since God is aware of everything that happens and must therefore be aware of the consciousness of each individual. Thus the return of the soul is the return of the image to that which imagined it, and the consciousness of an individual—its record, written in mind—could not be destroyed without destroying part of God Himself. When a soul returns to God it becomes aware of itself not only as a part of God, but as a part of every other soul, and everything.

  (What is lost is the ego—the desire to do other than the will of God. When the soul returns to God the ego is voluntarily relinquished; this is the symbology of the crucifixion.)

  The plan for the soul included experience of all creation, but it did not necessarily mean identification with and participation in all forms and substance. Nor did it mean interference in creation by souls. It did not mean that they were to spin their own little worlds, twisting and bending laws to make images of their dreams. But these things could happen. The soul was the greatest thing that was made; it had free will. Once free will was given, God did nothing to curb it; however it acted, it had to act within Him; by whatever route, it had to return to Him.

  (The fact that man’s body is a speck of dust on a small planet leads to the illusion that man himself is a small creation. The measure of the soul is the limitless activity of mind and the grandeur of imagination.)

  At first there was little difference between the consciousness of the new individual and its consciousness of identity with God. Free will merely watched the flow of mind, somewhat as man watches his fancy disport in daydreams, marveling at its power and versatility. Then it began to exercise itself, imitating and paralleling what mind was doing. Gradually it acquired experience, becoming a complementary rather than an imitative force. It helped to extend, modify, and regulate creation. It grew, as did Jesus, in “wisdom and beauty.”

  Certain souls became bemused with their own power and began to experiment with it. They mingled with the dust of the stars and the winds of the spheres, feeling them, becoming part of them. One result of this was an unbalancing of the positive-negative force, by accentuating one or the other; to feel things demanded the negative force; to express through things, and direct and manage them, required the positive force. Another result was the gradual weakening of the link between the two states of consciousness—that of the spirit and that of the individual. The individual became more concerned with, and aware of, his own creations than God’s. This was the fall in spirit or the revolt of the angels.

  To move into a portion of creation and become part of it, a soul had to assume a new or third aspect of consciousness—a method of experiencing that portion of creation and translating it into the basic substance of mind by means of thought. Man refers to this aspect of awareness as his “conscious mind.” It is the device by which he experiences earth: physical body, five senses, glandular and nervous systems. In other worlds, in other systems, the device differed. Only the range and variation of man’s own thoughts can give an idea of the number of these other worlds and systems and the aspects of divine mind which they represent.

  When a soul took on the consciousness of a portion of creation it separated itself temporarily from the consciousness of its own individuality and became even further removed from the consciousness of its spirit. Thus, instead of helping to direct the flow of creation and contributing to it, it found itself in the stream, drifting along with it. The farther it went from shore, the more it succumbed to the pull of the current and the more difficult was the task of getting back to land.

  Each of the systems of stars and planets represented, in this manner, a temptation to the souls. Each had its plan and moved toward it through the activity of a constant stream of mind. When a soul leaped into this stream (by immersing itself in the system through which the stream was flowing), it had the force of the current to contend with, and its free will was hampered. It was very easy, under these circumstances, to drift with the current.

  (Each system also represented an opportunity for development, advancement, and growth toward the ideal of complete companionship with God—the position of co-creator in t
he vast system of universal mind.)

  The solar system attracted souls, and since each system is a single expression, with its planets as integral parts, the earth came into the path of souls.

  (The planets of the solar system represent the dimensions of consciousness of the system—its consciousness as a whole. There are eight dimensions to the consciousness of the system. The earth is the third dimension.)

  The earth was an expression of divine mind with its own laws, its own plan, its own evolution. Souls, longing to feel the beauty of the seas, the winds, the forest, the flowers, mixed with them and expressed themselves through them. They also mingled with the animals and made, in imitation of them, thought forms: they played at creating; they imitated God. But it was a playing, an imitating, that interfered with what had already been set in motion, and thus the stream of mind carrying out the plan for earth gradually drew souls into its current. They had to go along with it in the bodies they had themselves created.

  They were strange bodies: mixtures of animals, a patchwork of ideas about what it would be pleasant to enjoy in flesh. Down through the ages fables of centaurs, Cyclops, etc., have persisted as a relic of this beginning of the soul’s tenancy of earth.

  Sex already existed in the animal kingdom, but the souls, in their thought forms, were androgynous. To experience sex they created thought forms for companions, isolating the negative force in a separate structure, retaining the positive within themselves. This objectification is what man calls Lilith, the first woman.

  This entanglement of souls in what man calls matter was a probability from the beginning, but God did not know when it would happen until the souls, of their own choice, had caused it to happen.

  (Of the souls which God created—and He created all souls in the beginning; none has been made since—only a comparative few have come into the experience of the solar system, though many have gone through or are going through a similar entanglement in other systems.)

  A way of escape for the souls which were entangled in matter was prepared. A form was chosen to be a vehicle for the soul on earth, and the way was made for souls to enter earth and experience it as part of their cycle. Of the forms already existing on earth one of the anthropoid apes most nearly approached the necessary pattern. Souls descended on these apes—hovering above and about them rather than inhabiting them—and influenced them to move toward a different goal from the simple one they had been pursuing. They came down out of the trees, built fires, made tools, lived in communities, and began to communicate with each other. Swiftly, even as man measures time, they lost their animal look, shed bodily hair, and took on refinements of manner and habit.

  All this was done by the souls, working through glands, until the body of the ape was an objectification—in the third dimension of the solar system—of the soul that hovered above it. Then the soul descended into the body and earth had a new inhabitant: man.

  He appeared as a consciousness within an animal, a consciousness which was felt on the earth in five different places at the same time, as the five races. The white race appeared in the Caucasus, the Carpathians, and Persia. The yellow race appeared in what is now the Gobi Desert. The black race appeared in the Sudan and upper west Africa; the red race appeared in Atlantis; the brown race appeared in the Andes.

  (The Pacific coast of South America was then the western coast of Lemuria. The Atlantic seaboard of the United States comprised the lowlands of Atlantis. Persia and the Caucasus were rich lands—the Garden of Eden. The poles of the earth as we know them today were tropical and semitropical. The Nile emptied into the Atlantic Ocean. The Sahara was fertile and inhabited. The Mississippi basin was part of the ocean.)

  The problem was to overcome the attractions of earth to the extent that the soul would be as free in the body as out of it. Only when the body was no longer a hindrance to the free expression of the soul would the cycle of earth be finished.

  (In a smaller field this was the drama of free will and creation. In a still smaller field each atom of the physical body, being a world in itself, is a drama of free will and creation. The soul puts life into each atom, and each atom is a reflection in flesh of the soul’s pattern.)

  There were males and females in these new, pure races, and both had complete souls. Eve replaced Lilith and became a complement to Adam—the ideal companion for the threefold life on earth: physical, mental, and spiritual. In Eve the positive pole was suppressed and the negative pole expressed; in Adam the negative pole was suppressed, the positive expressed.

  (Which a soul would become—male or female—was a matter of choice, unless the soul was already entangled and unbalanced. Eventually the positive and negative forces would have to be brought into balance, so there was not, basically, more advantage in one than in the other. For souls in balance it was a device to be employed for the duration of the earth cycle, and whichever sex would best suit the problems to be attacked was chosen. It was a voluntary assumption of an attitude, not a fall into error, and once a sex was assumed it was generally retained through the cycle of earth lives, though it could be changed from life to life, if the change were considered advantageous. Awareness of sex was retained between lives but could only be expressed on earth.)

  Man became aware, with the advent of his consciousness, that sex meant something more to him than to the animals. It was the door by which new souls entered the earth, a door unnecessary elsewhere in the system. It was the only means the trapped souls had of getting out of their predicament—by being reborn through the bodies of souls which had entered the earth through choice. These bodies were not entangled with animals or thought forms. They represented the ideal vehicle for the soul on earth. Therefore sex was a creative power which could be used for good or evil. Used rightly, the race would be kept pure, the earth would be a paradise for souls in perfect bodies, the trapped souls could be freed of their cycle of rebirth in monstrous, half-animal forms and provided with perfect bodies.

  (This is the story of Adam and Eve, the serpent, and the apple. The serpent, wisdom, offered the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Eve, the negative, receptive force, took and fostered it. When Adam, the active force, partook of it, the peaceful animal life of man was ended.)

  The plan for the earth cycle of souls was a series of incarnations, interlarded with periods of dwelling in other dimensions of consciousness in the system—the planets, until every thought and every action of the physical body, with its five senses and conscious mind, was in accord with the plan originally laid out for the soul. When the body was no longer a hindrance to the free expression of the soul—when the conscious mind had merged with the subconscious, and the atomic structure of the body could be controlled so that the soul was as free in it as out of it—the earth cycle was finished and the soul could go on to new adventures. This conquest of the physical body could not be attained until there was perfection in the other dimensions of consciousness in the system, for these made up, with the earth, the total expression of the sun and its satellites. Whichever state of consciousness the soul assumed became the focal point of activity. The other states of consciousness receded to the position of urges and influences.

  The race of man was fostered by a soul which had completed its experience of creation and returned to God, becoming a companion to Him and a co-creator. This is the soul man knows as the Christ.

  The Christ soul was interested in the plight of its brother souls trapped in earth, and after supervising the influx of the pure races, it took form itself, from time to time, to act as a leader for the people.

  Though at first the souls but lightly inhabited bodies and remembered their identities, gradually, life after life, they descended into earthiness, into less mentality, less consciousness of the mind force. They remembered their true selves only in dreams, in stories and fables handed down from one generation to another. Religion came into being: a ritual of longing for lost memories. The a
rts were born: music, numbers, and geometry. These were brought to earth by the incoming souls; gradually their heavenly source was forgotten, and they had to be written down, learned, and taught to each new generation.

  Finally man was left with a conscious mind definitely separated from his own individuality. (He now calls this individuality the subconscious mind; his awareness of earth is the conscious mind.) The subconscious mind influenced the conscious mind—gave it, in fact, its stature, breadth, and quality. It became the body under the suit of clothes. Only in sleep was it disrobed.

  With his conscious mind man reasoned (for all mind, left to itself, will work out the plans of God). He built up theories for what he felt—but no longer knew—to be true. Philosophy and theology resulted. He began to look around him and discover, in the earth, secrets which he carried within himself but could no longer reach with his consciousness. The result was science. The plan of man went into action. Downward he went from heavenly knowledge to mystical dreams, revealed religions, philosophy and theology, until the bottom was reached and he only believed what he could see and feel and prove in terms of his conscious mind. Then he began to fight his way upward, using the only tools he had left: suffering, patience, faith, and the power of mind.

  Atlantis and Lemuria sank; civilizations rose and fell; man was here a little better, there a little worse. He descended to the depths of earth consciousness, then slowly began to climb back. In earthly seasons it was a long journey from the moment when the first soul, looking down through the trees, saw a violet and wanted to pluck it, to the instant when the last soul should leave its body forever.