The Gaelic Manuscripts
by Betty White
edited by Stewart Edward White

Quotes from the Gaelic Manuscripts

Lack of beauty, ugliness, evil, whatever you choose to call it, is perfection so fragmentary that the conception of the whole of which it is part has not yet been built by any creative intelligence. It is the task of intelligence to eliminate ugliness and evil. That elimination, in the long run, comes not from suppression nor destruction, but from utilization in a larger and more comprehensive pattern to be creatively conceived. Complete elimination can come only with ultimate rounding out of the whole scheme; but partial elimination accompanies each cast forward of perception.

In the contemplation of these things, the attitude of mind should be to attempt, as far as possible, at least to glimpse a larger whole to which they might belong. That is the basis of what we call tolerance. It is also what is meant when you are told to resist not evil.

Man has not, for example, reached the political integrity of a colony of ants.

The points of view, as to how much manifested character is determined by the physical vehicle, and how much the physical vehicle is molded by the character, are not antipathetic but are segments of one circle.

Now any group of people, no matter how large or how small, are a group because of a certain impetus in the world for the working out of which to its finish of dynamics the contribution of effort of a single individual is not sufficient. The impetus is at once a product of, and a responsibility of, a certain group type of entity. When that impetus is worked out, whether it be of constructive or deterrent or destructive nature, that group, whether it be of a single family, a nation, or a race, dissolves and comes to an end.

If a human being finds himself hampered and confined by accident of body, by bounds of temperament, limited by an overwhelming group tradition which has imposed itself in the plastically receptive period of life, all of which is outside of his own origination of impetus, he must reflect that this is the condition of his group problem – it is the field of his group activity; it is his opportunity of group contribution, quite aside from his intimate, entirely personal job. He must reflect that he is allied to this group and imposed upon by these conditions because, in a way too complicated to sketch here, his own problem, his own degree in development, fits him to it – just as his other characteristics drew him magnetically to clothe himself in those confining physical characteristics which we call heredity. And he must reflect, for his encouragement, that each hampering or confining group-characteristic which he succeeds in lifting from its lower turmoil through his personal development to conscious higher harmony, is that much done and finished with and put behind of the whole group problem.

That is one reason, merely by way of light aside, one reason why so many on this side are working so hard and so yearningly over those on that side; it is merely a matter of a group job.

A soul is born when of his own volition the individual looks with love, not only outside of, but above himself, we are told.

Haven't you noticed how universal and how strong is mankind's instinct for making pets, or domesticating? On the surface it seems like a play-instinct – a frill – something not serious – aside from serious life. As a matter of fact, it is extremely deep-seated; and lacking more promising material men have been known to expend infinite pains in the taming of spiders or crickets or other such things. It is the calling-out instinct; through it they evoke the very thing they bestow. Its base is the same base that you will find when you dig deep enough into any aspect of any subject anybody anywhere can propound – from communication to creation – SYMPATHY. If you dig deep enough you strike rock every time.

And the moment of the soul's birth so expands that circle that includes a knowledge and a choice of right and wrong, good and evil; together with a perception – at first very faint, and at best dim and wavering – of the difference between going in harmony and the dour despairful struggle against the rush of life. That is the real free will.

We must first of all keep steadily and clearly before us the realization that the Cosmos in its ultimate is inunderstandable by anything but Itself.

We are privileged to examine it however, in any of its finite aspects, because within us is the potential capability of understanding ultimately, as finite creatures, whatever is comprised within the finite.

Within the finite – for what reason, with what ultimate intent, with what relations to dimensions whose very existence we cannot even remotely conceive – within the finite, the intention of the All-Conscious is the same intention by which any of its creatures is actuated – the expansion of self-consciousness by means of increasing awareness.

Within the finite the All-Consciousness realizes its quality of I AM by awareness of itself through response-contacts. And that the growing number and complexity of these response-contacts – which are experience – with their accompanying memories, make that growth toward perfect self-awareness which seems to be the end of the Cosmos within finity.

The human being, considered solely as an awareness-mechanism of the All-Conscious is a delicate instrument of constantly increasing capability, and for an inscrutable reason of its own, the All-Conscious has chosen to become aware of itself as to its power of free will through that mechanism.

It is a singular arrogance to appropriate the word incarnate for your extremely straightened field of visibility and to throw into a discarnate discard all that you happen not to see or taste or touch or hear or smell or apprehend. You are completely discarnate yourselves to a great many things – like ants, unless you step on them.

Gaelic defined religion as that device by which people live with realities.

The difference between a religion and a superstition is in whether or not it conveys, not to the minds, of the believers necessarily, but to the inner sense-currents of their lives, any portion of the few simplicities we have called the inner essence.

The first of the Essential Simplicities, he began, is a faith in continuity, in a progressing, expanding and continuing personality.

The language one must speak in telling of the higher and spiritual essentials is made up not of words, but of those moving, ever-changing things known as actions. We have often told you in one way or another that mere intellectual formulation is nothing. It expresses nothing, and in final analysis it conveys nothing of value to the only true auditor of the deeper human life, which is man's real speech. It is because of this truth that we have in times past, bunglingly urged you to make it so, and have urged you to act more on impulse. Impulsive action is the instantaneous and directest expression of that which, when unperverted by false habit, comes to you from primal sources. It is then undiluted by passage through the fixed and stationary medium of words by which reflective wisdom formulates. One might almost say that the language we [on this side] hear from your side is the language not of this reflective deliberation, but of your actions.

Precipitation on the physical plane must come from those endowed with the physical faculties. It must be a living human being – living in your sense – who performs. No others but the great creative intelligences are able by the checking quality of their ideas actually to create on the physical plane. If we would effect an actual manifestation or clothing of any portion of reality in your sphere, we must not only work through the intermediation of one of yourselves, but we must do it indirectly, so to speak, by arousing you to make your own effort. We can direct you straight away to do a certain thing, simply by telling you to do it; and you will do it and will apparently gain to a certain effect. But in the result will be no iota of the substance of reality, nor permanence and in the inevitable readjustments it will be as if it never had been. Of what avail then to lead you on by direct advice? One blows downwind! What you want, what the flow of progress wants, what we want, is rather the single grain of sand than the oceans of drifting fog.

This book is copyright-free. In passing it on to you, we do so with the prayer that it will be treated with respect and used to further humanity more than self-interest.