Footsteps of Spiritual Progress

Without conscious attention to spiritual things, we are naturally at the bottom of the stairs shown above. When we become aware, interested, or mindful of a spiritual dimension in our lives, we come to the first step. This whole progression is described in two chapters of the book The Knowledge of Good and Evil. One chapter, Levels of Spiritual Action, describes the progression from awareness through obedience, belief, understanding, and knowledge. The other chapter, What about Evil? looks at explanations for the origin of evil that appear at each different level.

How high you go on the stairs is related to your desire and to the abstraction of your spiritual ideal. If your God is a stern lawgiver, you will have reason to go no further than the level of obedience and discipline. When your God is benevolent and is embodied in a personal savior, you will be drawn to the level of love, faith, and belief, but no higher. When your God is the divine Mind, or divine Principle, you will be drawn to the first of the 'scientific' or metaphysical religions, to demonstrate your reflection of God through spiritual understanding. When your God is pure spiritual goodness, for you to express as your own sense of being, you will move to what may be the final level of human belief. At this point, your sense of evil diminishes in mental aspect until it is only the absence of good. Then you are ready for hyperthot. Hyperthot takes the infinite presence of good and an infinite absence called evil and fits them together, so duality disappears and supersensible wholeness appears.

Incidently, the only possibly new thing here is the integration of infinite opposites in hyperthot. The other belief systems have been around in various religions at least since the last century. Hyperthot takes you to the next step and shows how the others need not be contending factions but parts of a larger whole. Once you get to the top of the stairs, you can go back down to employ the other levels of spiritual action. Your sense of spiritual being, spiritual understanding, faith, obedience, and mindfulness continue to be useful and necessary. When your thinking begins at the level of hyperthot, it strengthens all other efforts at spiritual action. For another look at these steps of spiritual action, consider the train.

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