Page:The astral world, higher occult powers; (IA astralworldhighe00tiff).pdf/113

 make him finite, and just so sure as you attempt to make that finite image or idea represent the Infinite, that moment you involve yourself in inextricable confusion. You make an individual of God and make him finite. By personality, which is quite another thing, I refer to this principle of consciousness. That being only has attained personality where the subject arises and the object terminates within himself. That being is a personality alone who possesses self-existence and self-sufficiency. Now I standing before you am liable to influences outside of myself. An act arising from such influences is not strictly mine, not depending entirely upon me for its existence. If you influence me, and my act be a good one, you are entitled to part of the credit; if it be bad, you are chargeable with part of the censure. You can see that under this law of motive, which belongs to the first and second spheres of mind, no action depending upon outward condition is perfect, not being self-sufficient or self-existent. It belongs to the individuality; but when the act is of such a character that it can not receive outward influence arising from a sort of divine spontaneity, it is self-existent and self-sufficient, and the person capable of such an act may be said to be a personality; that is, he is becoming independent—attaining to a self-sufficiency and self-existence. An individual is neither. It is only that which receives. Hence man, who is said to be begotten the child of God, has another's self-sufficiency. All that he has he has received. Said Jesus, speaking from the natural plane, "I can of my own self do nothing. As I hear I judge. It is not I that doeth the work, but the Father that dwelleth in me that doeth