The Impersonal Life

by Joseph Sieber Benner

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soul_force_versus_spirit_force_aug36_3

The Inner Life

THE HERALD OF THE NEW AGE | AUGUST 1936

order that it may be projected upon Western nations, to undermine their power and prestige in the East. It is the greatest revolt known in history!

There is a passage in Pember’s “Earth’s Earliest Ages” which throws light upon this matter. He writes that the man who would generate “soul-force” must “so bring his body under the control of his own soul, that he can project his soul and spirit, and, while living on this earth, act as if he were a disembodied spirit.” The “man who attains to this power is called an ‘adept’ and … can consciously see the minds of others. He can act by his ‘soul-force’ on external spirits … He can subdue ferocious wild beasts and send his soul to a distance,” and he can “exhibit to his distant friends his spiritual body in the likeness of that of the flesh.” We read that the “development of these faculties can only be compassed by a long … training, the object of which is to break down the body to a complete subjection, and to produce apathy in regard to all the pleasures, pains and emotions of this life.”

The whole tenor of Indian religious life undoubtedly develops these soul-powers, for what can be the effect of intense prayer fixed on a given object by a hundred thousand men, who know not the Gospel of Christ, but the “projecting” of soul-forces, directed by the god of this world upon the object desired.

“SOUL-FORCE” versus “spirit-force.” What does this mean in England? Just this. That the same development of psychic power is taking place knowingly, and unknowingly, all around us, bringing into action forces which are at the disposal of the invisible powers of evil. The forces of psyche arrayed against the forces of “pneuma.” What are the “forces of psyche” but the “natural man” drawing out of his nature latent powers which are not of the Spirit of God. And the forces of “pneuma,” what are they? The power of God Himself as “Spirit” brought into action through the spiritual man, born of the Spirit, walking after the Spirit, and praying to God on the ground of the Blood of Calvary. (See Rev. viii. 3-5, as an example.)

How this ignorant bringing into action of psychic force can affect spiritual believers has come to me in a recent letter. The writer says: “I have just come through a terrible onslaught of the enemy. Hemorrhage, heart affection, panting and exhaustion.


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