Monday, January 10, 2011

Thomas Troward on INTUITION and the SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND


Thomas Troward (1847-1916) was an English author whose works influenced the New Thought Movement and mystic Christianity. Troward was a divisional Judge in British-administered India. He advocated the study of comparative religion. Influences on his thinking, as well as his later writing, included the teachings of Christ, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.
His work on mental science and religion contributed to the philosophy of Ernest Holmes who founded Religious Science. Of Troward, Holmes said: "This is as near to my own thoughts as I shall ever come".

http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2010/12/reading-emerson-is-like-drinking-water.html


INTUITION The importance of understanding and following the intuition cannot be exaggerated, but I candidly admit the great practical difficulty of keeping the happy mean between the disregard of the interior voice and allowing ourselves to be run away with by groundless fancies. The best guide is the knowledge that comes of personal experience which gradually leads to the acquisition of a sort of inward sense of touch that enables us to distinguish the true from the false, and which appears to grow with the sincere desire for truth and with the recognition of the spirit as its source. The only general principles the writer can deduce from his own experience are that when, in spite of all appearances pointing in the direction of a certain line of conduct, there is still a persistent feeling that it should not be followed, in the majority of instances it will be found that the argument of the objective mind, however correct on the facts objectively known, was deficient from ignorance of facts which could not be objectively known at the time, but which were known to the intuitive faculty. Another principle is that our very first impression of feeling on any subject is generally correct. ...IN TOUCH WITH SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND. For the purpose, then, of getting into touch with our subconscious mind we must endeavour to think of ourselves as pure being, as that entity which interiorly supports the outward manifestation, and doing so we shall realize that the essential quality of pure being must be good. It is in itself pure Life, and as such cannot desire anything detrimental to pure Life under whatever form manifested. Consequently the purer our intentions the more readily we shall place ourself en rapport with our subjective entity; and a fortiori the same applies to that Greater Sub-conscious Mind of which our individual subjective mind is a particular manifestation.
In actual practice the process consists in first forming a clear conception in the objective mind of the idea we wish to convey to the subjective mind: then, when this has been firmly grasped, endeavour to lose sight of all other facts connected with the external personality except the one in question, and then mentally address the subjective mind as though it were an independent entity and impress upon it what you want it to do or to believe.
Everyone must formulate his own way of working, but one method, which is both simple and effective is to say to the subjective mind, "This is what I want you to do; you will now step into my place and do it, bringing all your powers and intelligence to bear, and considering yourself to be none other than myself." Having done this return to the realization of your own objective personality and leave the subjective mind to perform its task in full confidence that, by the law of its nature, it will do so if not hindered by a repetition of contrary messages from the objective mind.
This is not a mere fancy but a truth daily proved by the experience of increasing numbers. The facts have not been fabricated to fit the theory, but the theory has been built up by careful observation of the facts; and since it has been shown both by theory and practice that such is the law of the relation between subjective and objective mind, we find ourselves face to face with a very momentous question.
THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCETHOMAS TROWARD
(1909)

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