(Source and method of knowing)
Thinking and Destiny was not developed as speculation, nor to repeat and synthesize the ideas of others. It was written as a way for Percival to make known what he learned after being conscious of Ultimate Reality.
“The question is: Are the statements in Thinking and Destiny given as revelation from Deity, or as the result of ecstatic states and visions, or have they been received while in trance, under control or other spiritistic influence, or have they been received and given as coming from some Master of Wisdom? To all of which, I answer, emphatically … No! “Then why, and on what authority, do I say they are true? The authority is in the reader. He should judge as to the truth of the statements herein by the truth that is in him. The information is what I have been conscious of in my body, independently of anything I have heard or read, and of any instruction I have received from any source other than what is herein recorded.”
A most difficult task was to get terms to express the recondite subject matter treated. My arduous effort has been to find words and phrases that will best convey the meaning and attributes of certain incorporeal realities, and to show their inseparable relation to the conscious selves in human bodies.
Many subjects are not made as clear as I would like them to be, but the changes made must suffice or be endless, because on each reading other changes seemed advisable. I do not presume to preach to anyone; I do not consider myself a preacher or a teacher. Were it not that I am responsible for the book, I would prefer that my personality be not named as its author. The greatness of the subjects about which I offer information, relieves and frees me from self-conceit and forbids the plea of modesty. I dare make strange and startling statements to the conscious and immortal self that is in every human body; and I take for granted that the individual will decide what he will or will not do with the information presented.
(The awakening experience in the center of the head)
Light, greater than that of myriads of suns opened in the center of my head. In that instant or point, eternities were apprehended.
The Lights were not of nature; they were Lights as Intelligences, Conscious Lights. Compared with the brightness or lightness of those Lights, the surrounding sunlight was a dense fog.
I was conscious of Consciousness as the Ultimate and Absolute Reality, and conscious of the relation of things. I experienced no thrills, emotions, or ecstasy. Words fail utterly to describe or explain CONSCIOUSNESS.
Being conscious of Consciousness reveals the “unknown” to the one who has been so conscious. Then it will be the duty of that one to make known what he can of being conscious of Consciousness. The great worth in being conscious of Consciousness is that it enables one to know about any subject, by thinking. Thinking is the steady holding of the Conscious Light within on the subject of the thinking. Briefly stated, thinking is of four stages: selecting the subject; holding the Conscious Light on that subject; focusing the Light; and, the focus of the Light. When the Light is focused, the subject is known. By this method, Thinking and Destiny has been written.
(The core cosmology: exile, sleep, and return)
The special purpose of this book is: To tell the conscious selves in human bodies that we are inseparable doer parts of consciously immortal individual trinities, Triune Selves, who, within and beyond time, lived with our great thinker and knower parts in perfect sexless bodies in the Realm of Permanence; that we, the conscious selves now in human bodies, failed in a crucial test, and thereby exiled ourselves from that Realm of Permanence into this temporal man and woman world of birth and death and re-existence; that we have no memory of this because we put ourselves into a self-hypnotic sleep, to dream; that we will continue to dream through life, through death and back again to life; that we must continue to do this until we de-hypnotize, wake, ourselves out of the hypnosis into which we put ourselves; that, however long it takes, we must awake from our dream, become conscious of ourselves as ourselves in our bodies, and then regenerate and restore our bodies to everlasting life in our home—The Realm of Permanence from which we came—which permeates this world of ours, but is not seen by mortal eyes. Then we will consciously take our places and continue our parts in the Eternal Order of Progression.
regeneration of the human physical body into a perfected, immortal physical body, and the Realm of Permanence,—which in the words of Jesus is the “Kingdom of God.”
Chapter I Introduction
The book explains the purpose of life. That purpose is not merely to find happiness, either here or hereafter. Neither is it to “save” one’s soul. The real purpose of life, the purpose that will satisfy both sense and reason, is this: that each one of us will be progressively conscious in ever higher degrees in being conscious; that is, conscious of nature, and in and through and beyond nature. By nature is meant all that one can be made conscious of through the senses.
(The distinction between self and body)
By force of habit you have spoken of your body as “I,” as “myself.” You are accustomed to use such expressions as “when I was born,” and “when I die”; and “I saw myself in the glass,” and “I rested myself,” “I cut myself,” and so on, when in reality it is your body that you speak of. To understand what you are you must first see clearly the distinction between yourself and the body you live in.
But throughout these changes you have remained you: that is, you have been conscious of yourself as being the same self, the identical I, all the while.
As you ponder these truths you find that, however you might try, you cannot think that you yourself will ever come to an end, any more than you can think that you yourself ever had a beginning. This is because your identity is beginningless and endless; the real I, the Self that you feel, is immortal and changeless, forever beyond the reach of the phenomena of change, of time, of death. But what this your mysterious identity is, you do not know.
this distinct I-ness and selfness that I clearly feel—does not change throughout my life, though everything else that I am conscious of seems to be in a state of constant change.”
conscious something that wills and impels this body to act, yet obviously is not the body. Clearly this conscious something, whatever it
is, is myself.”
You therefore will find it helpful, as you read the book, to think of yourself as an embodied doer; to look upon yourself as an immortal doer in a human body. As you learn to think of yourself as a doer, as the doer in your body, you will be taking an important step toward understanding the mystery of yourself and of others.
(The body as nature machine; the doer as operator)
Your body with its senses is the instrument, the mechanism, which is impelled by your feeling and desire; it is your individual nature machine. Your senses are living beings; invisible units of nature-matter; these start forces that permeate the entire structure of your body; they are entities which, though unintelligent, are conscious as their functions. Your senses serve as the centers, the transmitters of impressions between the objects of nature and the human machine that you are operating. The senses are nature’s ambassadors to your court. Your body and its senses have no power of voluntary functioning; no more than your glove through which you are able to feel and act. Rather, that power is you, the operator, the conscious self, the embodied doer.
Your body, whether awake or asleep, is not conscious of anything, ever. That which is conscious, that which thinks, is