Thinking And Destiny by Harold W. Percival

This first chapter of Thinking and Destiny is intended to introduce to you only a few of the subjects that the book deals with. Many of the subjects will seem strange. Some of them may be startling. You may find that they all encourage thoughtful consideration. As you become familiar with the thought, and think your way through the book, you will find that it becomes increasingly clear, and that you are in process of developing an understanding of certain fundamental but heretofore mysterious facts of life—and particularly about yourself. The book explains the purpose of life. That purpose is not merely to find happiness, either here or hereafter. Neither is it to “save” one’s soul. The real purpose of life, the purpose that will satisfy both sense and reason, is this: that each one of us will be progressively conscious in ever higher degrees in being conscious; that is, conscious of nature, and in and through and beyond nature. By nature is meant all that one can be made conscious of through the senses. The book also introduces you to yourself. It brings you the message about yourself: your mysterious self that inhabits your body. Perhaps you have always identified yourself with and as your body; and when you try to think of yourself you therefore think of your bodily mechanism. By force of habit you have spoken of your body as “I,” as “myself.” You are accustomed to use such expressions as “when I was born,” and “when I die”; and “I saw myself in the glass,” and “I rested myself,” “I cut myself,” and so on, when in reality it is your body that you speak of. To understand what you are you must first see clearly the distinction between yourself and the body you live in. The fact that you use the term “my body” as readily as you use any of those just quoted would suggest that you are not altogether unprepared to make this important distinction. You should know that you are not your body; you should know that your body is not you. You should know this because, when you think about it, you realize that your body is very different today from what it was when, in childhood, you first became conscious of it. During the years that you have lived in your body you have been aware that it has been changing: in its passing through its childhood and adolescence and youth, and into its present condition, it has changed greatly. And you recognize that as your body has matured there have been gradual changes in your view of the world and your attitude toward life. But throughout these changes you have remained you: that is, you have been conscious of yourself as being the same self, the identical I, all the while. Your reflection on this simple truth compels you to realize that you definitely are not and cannot be your body; rather, that your body is a physical organism that you live in; a living nature mechanism that you are operating; an animal that you are trying to understand, to train and master. You know how your body came into this world; but how you came into your body you do not know. You did not come into it until some time after it was born; a year, perhaps, or several years; but of this fact you know little or nothing, because your memory of your body began only after you had come into your body. You know something about the material of which your ever-changing body is composed; but what it is that you are you do not know; you are not yet conscious as what you are in your body. You know the name by which your body is distinguished from the bodies of others; and this you have learned to think of as your name. What is important is, that you should know, not who you are as a personality, but what you are as an individual—conscious of yourself, but not yet conscious as yourself, an unbroken identity. You know that your body lives, and you quite reasonably expect that it will die; for it is a fact that every living human body dies in time. Your body had a beginning, and it will have an end; and from beginning to end it is subject to the laws of the world of phenomena, of change, of time. You, however, are not in the same way subject to the laws that affect your body. Although your body changes the material of which it is composed oftener than you change the costumes with which you clothe it, your identity does not change. You are ever the same you. As you ponder these truths you find that, however you might try, you cannot think that you yourself will ever come to an end, any more than you can think that you yourself ever had a beginning. This is because your identity is beginningless and endless; the real I, the Self that you feel, is immortal and changeless, forever beyond the reach of the phenomena of change, of time, of death. But what this your mysterious identity is, you do not know. When you ask yourself, “What do I know that I am?” the presence of your identity will eventually cause you to answer in some such manner as this: “Whatever it is that I am, I know that at least I am conscious; I am conscious at least of being conscious.” And continuing from this fact you may say: “Therefore I am conscious that I am. I am conscious, moreover, that I am I; and that I am no other. I am conscious that this my identity that I am conscious of—this distinct I-ness and selfness that I clearly feel—does not change throughout my life, though everything else that I am conscious of seems to be in a state of constant change.” Proceeding from this you may say: “I do not yet know what this mysterious unchanging I is; but I am conscious that in this human body, of which I am conscious during my waking hours, there is something which is conscious; something that feels and desires and thinks, but that does not change; a conscious something that wills and impels this body to act, yet obviously is not the body. Clearly this conscious something, whatever it is, is myself.” Thus, by thinking, you come to regard yourself no longer as a body bearing a name and certain other distinguishing features, but as the conscious self in the body. The conscious self in the body is called, in this book, the doer-in-the-body. The doer-in-the-body is the subject with which the book is particularly concerned. You therefore will find it helpful, as you read the book, to think of yourself as an embodied doer; to look upon yourself as an immortal doer in a human body. As you learn to think of yourself as a doer, as the doer in your body, you will be taking an important step toward understanding the mystery of yourself and of others.