Читать книгу The psychology of sleep онлайн

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Professor William James has shown that in our waking hours, each of us is not so much a single self as a cluster of separate selves—a business self, social self, the material self, and so on—all making up the man as his casual acquaintances know him. Professor James found that in every individual there is rivalry and sometimes discord among these partial selves. Now may it not be that in the silence, these warring factions lose their identity in a state of broader conscious life, and merge themselves into a harmoniously acting “Spiritual Me”?

From the standpoint of this spiritual self, then, the waking state shows only the objective aspects of the mind. It is that understanding which shows us all men working, whether willingly or unwillingly, for the common good, and each receiving what he needs or has power to use. It is a recognition that all men are comprehended in the Spirit’s plan, that nothing can be for the common harm; that even mistakes work out for good, and that life gives to each the experience from which he will get most development and the power which he can best use and relate to his whole life. From the spiritual standpoint the subjective mind is the indwelling life of the soul; and its growth a matter of gradual self-attainment. At its highest stage it is the realization of that which we have in common with everyone—that understanding and that consciousness of the law of harmony which makes us love all mankind, and live in communion with the love that is the substance of all things. The separate self does not appear at all on the horizon of such thought and purpose.