Page:The astral world, higher occult powers; (IA astralworldhighe00tiff).pdf/176

 highest destiny. To persuade the inebriate to give up his cups, you desire to create in him a love and respect for the welfare of mankind—to implant in him a ruling influence which shall elevate his character.

When you look at yourselves even, you see that your character is undergoing a change. When a boy, there were certain kinds of amusements in which I took delight. Moral and religious exercises were nothing compared with my hoop, top, etc.; but when I became a man, and began to be manly in my aspirations, my character had changed. So it has been with us all. That within us which we call character, we suppose must be forever subject to change. Each of us as we progress, hopes to change, to become wiser, better, purer. He who boasts that he has never changed his opinion, virtually says that he has not progressed. He who claims that he feels as he did twenty years ago, boasts of his own shame. Our hope to progress implies our expectation of change from that which is false to that which is more true—implies a change of this external changing principle within us, which constitutes our individual character—our finite selfhood.

The question arises whether we shall take this distinguishing character with us into the Spiritual world. We need not be left to conjecture here, if we will only enter into a philosophical examination of what will constitute our character. You see clearly, that what constitutes you an individual being here, is that which is external to the absolute consciousness within, and that when you lose this, you lose your individuality—that if it should be absorbed, your individuality would be gone, and you would be taken up by the