THE ETERNAL THINKER

           THE ETERNAL THINKER 
Life for each of us is exactly as we construe it to be, and this is the mental law under which we live. Similarly, all notions of theology and metaphysics are, for each of us, exactly as we construe them to be, for the ideas that take root in our consciousness determine the scope and limitation of our consciousness. In short, God is as we fancy Him to be, and we have only to change our notion of Him in order to change Him. He is idea only because He is mind, and that idea which is the largest, the most perfect, most workable, clearest, is therefore the nearest approximation of the Godhead. Our illness is caused by the little way we are able to see, and only as we enlarge our vision, push back our horizons, are we cured. 
There is an eternal thinker eternally thinking, and each thought he thinks appears to be separate from him, but it is not; it represents the thinker only, but not entirely, and insofar as the thought exists at all it is the thinker, though not completely. The thinker is God, the thoughts man, and God has absorbed himself in the thought but is not bound by this absorption, and may liberate himself at any time by expanding his awareness. As long as man is absorbed in the ego, he is absorbed in the thought and remains  the thought, is bound by the idea that actuated him in the first place, but when he lays aside his absorption in the ego, then his entrancement has begun to shatter, and he is beginning to recognize himself as God. As soon as he makes any approximation of this psychic position whatever, he has arrived at a place where he can change the idea that actuated his ego in the first place, where he can make himself into an entirely different, person simply by being able to accept an entirely new and different idea about himself. 
We must penetrate the apparent duality of life before we are able to clearly understand our oneness with the Secret Self. There are not many different natures and beings at work in the world; only one. All are different aspects of this one being. In each is enclosed that amount of consciousness that determines the form of the thing, but the consciousness enclosed is still the consciousness of the Secret Self, limited and apparently separated because it is absorbed in the thing it has become. And this absorption, this limitation, is what we know as surface self as ego, and it is the veil that separates us from knowledge of our vaster nature and true being. To get rid of ego then is the thing to be done. To subordinate it to the Secret Self, to place it in proper psychic position to its master and director, and above all to recognize it as primarily illusion, a changing thing, a temporary cloud that stands between us and pure and complete unity with the Divine, these are the steps a novitiate must take before his works in the world are marked by power and effectiveness.