What is Conscience?

You are spirit and, therefore, survive death.

Your evolution proceeds in a cycle, for you come from the spiritual [indeed from God]—and however long it takes—work your way, creating your personality in your development through the physical and mental—back to the spiritual again.

You must counter selfishness—

Spirit Claude explains—

Until Man attains absolute self-control, and becomes really spiritual—

Until he acts—even unconsciously—under the direction of his spiritual nature—

He is liable to slip back at times to the last stage through which he has passed. 

This accounts for a highly mentally developed man, or a genius, acting at times in an immoral, or even criminal manner. 

When a man is really spiritual, he must have controlled and conquered these phases—

There is no question, therefore, of their recurring. 

When he attains the spiritual, it means he has linked on again to the divine source, and can draw all he needs from it. 

Though these stages are required for man's development, it is not necessary to spend many years in each stage. 

The quickest way is to learn to put self aside. 

If he is selfish in the first stage, he will only think of doing what is best for his physical self, but not for his soul, and may in consequence, carelessly, even if not deliberately, injure others. 

When he begins to consider if his actions will hurt others, he is progressing, and will find happiness in the sense of having done well. 

Man may go through a whole life in the physical stage only, but in the records of the ages, there are few people who have learnt nothing of good—even under these circumstances—

A man may appear a thoroughly bad man, and may have specialised in one form of vice, and the sense of the onlooker's perspective being blurred by its predominance, he may not realise that in spite of this, the sinner has learnt something—

He may be kind to the poor, or tender to children, and animals, for instance. 

A man like this, on passing out of his body, goes to the lowest Astral where he comes in time to a sense of his wrongdoing, for his mind carries the knowledge of all he has done—

He is among people like himself, and sees his own vices reflected in all around him—each one an object lesson. 

By consistently trying to live up to his higher self, a man solves the riddle of how to attain happiness, for he lays up for himself no regrets. and gathers to himself respect, love, sympathy, and a deep and lasting content.

As the personality grows, the spirit body grows in keeping—

The spirit body grows with and around the physical one, for the spirit attached to the body is providing for itself automatically, and as an act of self-preservation, with a shell or form to use when it is dissociated from the flesh. 

The atmosphere provides the minute and refined kind of material required. 

There is something in a spirit above consciousness, for it is a little bit of the divine itself, as it comes from the All-knowing Consciousness—the Universal Spirit. 

A babe is born with a brain of certain capacity—

The conscious mind is limited from the beginning by this. 

The origin of subconscious mind is that bit of God, which we call spirit—

It grows and only develops as subconscious mind by recording certain experiences of the physical body. 

The subconscious mind starts growing directly the spirit is attached to the body. 

As soon as the conscious mind begins to work, it registers on the subconscious.

As the subconscious is the spirit-mind, it is much less limited, and registers everything, even before the conscious mind can grasp it, for this operates through the brain.

Directly the conscious mind starts working, there is willpower, and the personality begins to develop—

It is largely influenced by early impressions. 

The subconscious mind knows its origin, and tries to safeguard and support the growing personality. 

It repeats continually—

I come from God—be God-like—

In its endeavour to influence it. 

This has been called conscience.

While developing through the body, the earth conditions may tempt the personality to express itself through its lower animal senses, the willpower is there, and the spirit calls, but the personality puts the willpower aside and shuts off the voice of the spirit-mind. 

A personality in a first incarnation is inclined to be animal, and rather brutish, for it has had no individual experience of spirit-life, and it is feeling the sense of novelty, and is living to the full the life of the physical to which it has first awakened. 

As the personality grows, the spirit body grows in keeping—in this case, it would be coarse, and the aura badly-shaped—a spirit body suited for the lowest Astral. 

God does not decide the quality of the spirit body—

Man himself does.

In the Astral, this personality is in a stupid state because it is undeveloped, except in a physical sense, so that when cut off from its earth-body, it feels lost. 

In a genuine haunting, the personality is so unused to anything, but the physical, and it hangs about in a blind unreasoning manner—

It cannot understand or think in its new state, and wants to move about in a mechanical way—in the old conditions, which it recognises. 

It can only do so for a time because that bit of God is tugging it, and it is bound to prevail in the end, however long it takes because the new body, the Astral, though still coarse, is more akin to the spirit than the old one, therefore, it will be drawn to the place to which it belongs eventually.