THE SEED OF PERFECTION

Each of us is an infant in the metamorphosis of the soul through myriad forms and an eternity of changing. We fancy ourselves as concrete things, something with boundaries, unchanging, and when we have occasion to refer to ourselves or examine ourselves intro-spectively, we believe we know what we refer to and are adamant in our avowal of self. The truth is we neither know ourselves nor are we the same from one moment in our lives to the next. If we think of ourselves as bodies, our changing self becomes apparent.

It is nearly impossible even for families to recognize a loved one after thirty years of absence, so greatly has the self altered. And a little reflection upon the changing quality of consciousness is sure to give us some insight into the numberless selves our surface minds and egos have become since first appearing in the world.

“First the infant, mulling and puking, then the schoolboy with his shining morning-face, then the lover, sighing like a furnace, then the soldier, full of strange oaths, then the justice, in fair round bel-ly, then the lean and slippered pantaloon, then second childishness, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” Shakespeare in-deed perceived the many masks donned by the Secret Self in its journey through life, and the man who points to himself, and charging his surface mind and ego to be recognized, says, “I am this” or “I am that,” only bespeaks his tendency to become like the image in his mind. The rest is illusion.

The emerging knowledge of self naturally brings with it a fear of the vast and impenetrable universe. There is no such fear in a cow, who, chewing cud and contented with pasture, does not know itself as a cow or as anything. It simply exists as a complex bundle of nerves and blood and tissue, reacting to situations that surround it according to a set of established reflexes called instincts. Since it does not see the stars, it does not wonder about the size of the world, about whether it is separate from it or a part of it or even ex-isting. Only imagination and increased awareness know self, know

ego and the surface mind, and this knowledge, this contained and refined consciousness makes man different from all other forms of life. To be aware of one’s self is to be human, to have arrived at that currently highest stage of evolutionary development of the Se-cret Self. A number of individuals have evolved much further, however, and more are breaking through each day. Soon a new race of intellectual and spiritual giants will appear upon the earth, as higher in consciousness as present-day man is above the ape, to whom the secrets of space and time and dimension will be re-vealed, making the entire universe home, journeying from planet to planet, star to star.

In this broad earth of ours,

Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed of perfection.

—Walt Whitman STAR GAZER

It is often true that men who make astronomy their vocation have a philosophical turn of mind. Perhaps this is because the focus of their consciousness is among spaces that dwarf their physical selves, and they cannot help but be concerned with the beginnings and ends of life, with the destiny of man. It does seem impossible to gaze into the incredible glowing vault of the heavens without becoming reverent with awe at the obvious handiwork of a su-preme intelligence. In any case, Sterling became a student of phi-losophy at very nearly the same time that he became a student of astronomy, and he maintained throughout his career that one activ-ity was simply an extension of the other. Yet despite his efforts in both directions, throughout the major part of his life he had achieved no notable success in either.

He would say, “I suppose I’m just a reasonably good mechanic.

Some people are born to put the pieces together after others think up the ideas. I put pieces together.” Yet it was easy to discern that he was far from pleased with this judgment of himself, even though it seemed true. In whatever observatory he worked, he was given chart-work to do. Theoretical probabilities and exploratory work were left to others.

Even in his philosophical endeavors, Sterling took a like path. He became a walking compendium of all the philosophy ever written.

He could quote page and number from the works of Plato, Des-cartes, Hume, Locke, Lao Tze, the Bhagavad-Gita, but even though he embraced all, none took root within him, and he pro-fessed no particular philosophy. Despite all his learning and all his studies, he seemed in an intellectual bog, as if ideas simply would not take root in a soil so barren of germinating power.

As it must to all men, time finally brought Sterling to a point in his life where he could look as far backward as it was possible to look forward, and what he saw distressed him. He suddenly was aware that the routine moves of his existence would not be bearable for another thirty years. He decided that he either must find some other profession or discover new meaning in the one he had. He sought help.

“What is it,” he asked, “that I am missing? It is almost as if some ingredient had been left out of me at birth, so that I am incapable of grasping the meaning of life. I see the design in all, in the hea-vens, in the logic and concentration of man’s intellectual effort, but I cannot see what it has to do with me, why the simple fact of my existence has anything to do with the world and what is going on in it.”

“Can you imagine a world without yourself in it?” he was asked.

“Certainly. And I often think it would be much better.”

“If you think it is possible that you once never existed at all, how can you feel you will continue to exist after this life is finished.”

“I don’t. I figure this is all. When the curtain comes down here, that’s finis.”

“But what about the design you mention, the obvious concerted ef-fort of life toward some common goal?”

“That belongs to somebody else, not to me. I can’t even understand it, let alone be a part of it.”

“How can you isolate yourself from the things you see about you?

If all of life seems to be part of some central, guiding intelligence, surely you can see that you must be too. If whatever is being done here is being done through the incarnations of some supreme be-ing, then each incarnation represents that supreme being and is not different or isolated from it.”

“Perhaps not. Logic seems to support you. I can only tell you how I feel, and I feel left out, not a part of what is going on.”

“Then your trouble must be selfishness.”

Sterling nearly leaped out of his chair. “Selfishness!” he ex-claimed. “I have a wife and four children, and I provide for them all. I serve on the board of my church, on the chamber of com-merce, and I belong to four service clubs. Seems to me that half my life is spent serving others. How can you say I am selfish?”

“I didn’t mean that you lack concern for others. I mean you are over-concerned with yourself. Anyone who completely delimits and isolates his own being is selfish, is egoistic. Because he cannot expand his consciousness beyond the limits he has imposed upon

it, he has no chance whatever of perceiving his unity with all life, with all beings.”

“How does one go about this?”

“By trying. By making an attempt. As long as you continue to rail against the meaninglessness of life, so long will you add substance to the veil, for you are encysting the ego, giving it a reality that it does not truly have, and therefore you are blinding yourself with it.”

“Do you mean that simply by trying to know a higher conscious-ness one automatically achieves a higher consciousconscious-ness?”

“Perhaps it is that simple. Certainly when the human psyche opens itself to reception of a knowledge that lies beyond it, then and only then is it in a position to receive such knowledge. Is not this a change in consciousness? What was closed and impenetrable now is open and receptive. That is the secret of increased awareness.”

“Is this a solitary thing? Must one retire from the active life in or-der to achieve it?”

“By no means. The best spot of all is the area of your daily work and activity. If you will get outside yourself in each thing you do and make a deliberate effort to feel and think from the standpoint of others who are involved in events with you, then you will find that door in your consciousness will be opened. Light will shine through.”

Sterling decided to give it a try. He stated that his exploration of the heavens had always been a thing apart from him. He had peered into space as if he were an interloper, and the only thing that had been revealed to him was that he was an indiscernible speck upon an indiscernible speck. He decided to work on the

theory that the entire heavens were within his own consciousness.

The idea intrigued him.

Several months later he discovered a new novae. Within a year he presented a paper elucidating upon the constant creation of hydro-gen. It was widely acclaimed. He made this statement to his friends:

“It is impossible to penetrate the heart of a matter if one is de-tached from it. In some kind of mysterious way we all share the same consciousness, and when we manage to break down the walls that separate us from the things we are doing, we are able to grasp their meaning by a kind of direct apprehension. I suppose you could call this intuition, but actually it is a great deal more. It is ab-solute knowing through being the thing you are attempting to know. If this sounds mysterious I can only say it happened to me. I found a novae not because I saw it but because I knew it was there.

I was able to help on the Constant Creation Theory not because I am a mathematical genius but because I knew deep inside me that it was so.”