interpretation 1

We Study in order to bring Conscious Understanding & Intelligent Order into our Body, our Mind, & our World. To begin, our very first motive for Higher Mind Study is to consider our view about an important question:-

   Is the Universe in which we live Impersonal or Personal?

If we think of the universe as a manifestation of impersonal energies, we can approach it in a quite different way from that we must use if we believe that it is the work of an intelligent all-aware God. This has been the starting premise for thinkers throughout all ages, perhaps since the time when man first walked the earth in self-awareness.

   Impersonal

If the world is just an impersonal system of energies that are open to scientific investigation and technical manipulation, then we can view ourselves, because of our scientific and technical knowledge, as “masters of the world”. Then we can believe that we are “in charge of the universe”, that we are the highest beings yet evolved by natural forces, and that we can legitimately, as “masters of the world”, do with it whatever we like. We have but to study “the way nature works” and then appropriate this knowledge and so force nature to obey us.

   Personal

But if we accept for a moment that the energies of the universe are but special modes of an infinite power which is intelligent and knows itself to be such a power, then we shall have to take into account the possibility that this intelligent power has some purpose of its own in bringing the universe into existence. And if this should be so, then it will be for our own welfare if we find out what this purpose is. Our study will have a different viewpoint, and will be personal.

How might we decide?

That there is a universe of active forms demonstrates that it is a work of power.
That these active forms are related together in certain mutually influencing ways shows that this power is a relating power, not merely a chaotic mass of unharmonised energies.

The stars have their places and movements within the vast pattern of things and events.

The sun has its function in passing energy from the infinite to determining the orbiting of the planets in the solar system and to provide a means of sustenance for life-forms on earth.

All of these facts we might admit without believing that the originating power of the universe is an intelligent being, self-aware and in charge of the world’s processes.

   But we human beings present ourselves with the problem of our own being.

We know that we have a certain amount of power, and that this power is part of the universal power, part of the vast store of energy which constitutes the world we live in.

We know also that we have a certain amount of intelligence.

If, then, we are forced to believe that what power we have is derived from the same power that has brought the universe into being, then we must also admit that whatever intelligence we have is derived from the same source.

Ultimately all things are but ways in which universal power behaves and manifests itself.

Therefore, any Study we undertake might consider how we are to more deeply inform ourselves about this initial question of governance. Rather than to merely drift through life, instead we are to enhance our intelligence function in order to be able to feel and act in accordance with this intelligence. The Study we are to undertake will be in the realm of the Higher Mind, Wisdom, the Logos as it is called.