Perhaps it is difficult for you to realize a phase of life which consists entirely of companionship through Awareness. Did you ever see a little company of children at play, or a child, alone as far as your vision goes, amusing itself talking and laughing with some familiar childish spirit which is as real to it as a fleshly playmate could be? The child may have a stick of wood with a rag wrapped around it, and you may hear it addressing it something after this fashion: "Now, Ethel, you've got the loveliest silk gown you ever saw, trimmed with real lace and all covered with frills and beads. You have on the loveliest silk stockings and white kid slippers that I could buy, and your lovely blonde hair curls just beautifully. What lovely blue eyes you have, and such pretty teeth, and such del-i-cate hands! You're the loveliest lady in the land, and we're going to a ball right now !" And the youngster dances around with the doll or stick of wood, and it responds to her as completely as if it were alive. The youngster has simply fixed a Point of Rightness for the doll, and it thinks back to her from this Point of Rightness ; it does not speak, but she does they are both on the same plane.
A little company of children are arranging something to play. A masterful little boy asserts: "I'm a millionaire and have just paid a million dollars for a yacht, and I'll take you all out for a cruise. (Chorus of children: 'Oh, isn't he rich!') Isn't it fine sailing away out of sight of land! ('I hope it won't storm pipes a little voice.) It won't matter” cries the boy. "This ship doesn't rock. What's that I see out there? It's an island, and that over there is a sail! Aha!" cries the little captain, "it's a pirate! ('Will the pirate catch us?' whisper the children in terror.) I'm afraid he will," cries the captain, "before we can make land." Instantly the scene changes, and the awareness of the children changes to the new Point of Rightness fixed in them by their leader. "You are all drownded," he cries, "and lying on the sand of the island! (Instantly the children drop on the lawn and stretch themselves out as if dead.) The pirate caught us and threw us all overboard, and I rescued you and brought you to this island, but you're all drownded. Lie still! ('Hurry up whispers a little voice; 'I don't like to be drownded.') Never mind," shouts the lad; "I've been and bought a new yacht for two million dollars, and now I'll bring you all to and we'll start off again." The little fellow had the power of fixing a Point of Rightness in the Supraconsciousnesses of his childish playmates, and they had not become sufficiently materialized to find any difficulty in being just the persons and in the conditions he asserted them to be. They had not yet received those hard jolts which are almost sure to cause us in later life to demand an objectivity of our thoughts which we can sense. In other words, their thoughts instantly became Things, regardless of the fact that they could sense nothing in their environment to confirm their awareness; for the moment they and the things about them became what they thought they were; they were living on a spiritual plane, and their bodies and the things about them became unreal, while their thoughts, as in truth they were, became reality.
"Except ye become as little children ye can in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Harmony), says the Great Philosophy. Till you cultivate your Awareness to the extent of making real things that are not material, ye cannot enter the State of Harmony. The things we so much prize Here and Now and the senses by which we appreciate them are but shadows of the real things of life and the Awareness which will make senses unnecessary.
The Thinking Universe
Reason as Applied to the Manifestations of the Infinite
BY Edmund E. Sheppard [1915]
To every untiring seeker after Truth whose patient researches have brought World knowledge up to the high point from which I have been able to find the Infinite; to Clinton Ambrose Billig, M.A., Ph.D., D.D., whose loving ministrations through years of suffering have helped me find the Light, and to all lovers of Truth, I gratefully dedicate this book.
E. E. S.
SHEPPARD, EDMUND ERNEST, journalist and author; b. 29 Sept. 1855 in South Dorchester Township, Elgin County, Upper Canada, only son of Edmund Sheppard and Nancy Bently; m. 8 Oct. 1879 Melissa Culver in Mapleton, Ont., and they had one son and three daughters; d. 6 Nov. 1924 near San Diego, Calif. He apparently dropped out and headed down to Texas and Mexico, reportedly spending several years as a cowboy and stagecoach driver. After his return to Canada in 1878 he regularly affected the cowboy style: a slouch hat, fine Spanish leather riding boots, string tie, handlebar moustache, and goatee. His penchant for chewing tobacco and strong drink probably also dated from those years in the southwest.Back in Ontario, he turned to journalism, first in London and St Thomas and then with the Toronto Daily Mail. He was appointed editor-in-chief of Toronto Evening News in 1883. Saturday Night first appeared in Toronto on 3 December 1887 as a 15 x 20-inch weekly paper that sold for five cents, and had a healthy initial circulation of about 10,000. Editor Edmund E. Sheppard announced the broadsheet as a “paper of today” that would be devoted largely to literature and current topics, avoiding controversy except to “have its remarks to make about politics and politicians, and in a breezy yet thoughtful way” would “point out the follies and foibles of those who assume so much and do so little.”
Partial Ontario map showing A: Mapleton, London, St. Thomas
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