| Again, the growth
of religious consciousness is generally along the same lines in all men from the
unconscious mind to the conscious will, emotion and understanding, thence to the
super conscious spirit. From a study of the inner lives of the saints and seers all over
the world and belonging to various religions it has been found that their spiritual
development is marked by the same stages and follows more or less the same order. From the stirring of the unconscious mind and what is called the
awakening of the soul the religious man passes, through a period of self-discipline and
purification, to one of illumination of the mind and thence to the vision of God with whom
he there after lives in conscious union. If we take this path of the soul common to all
religious men as our guiding line, we can easily classify the religions of the world,
which are all like the branches of a single tree. |
