MAN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

Now in this situation, where the quality (at least) of what you see depends on how you look, it is not the least good trying to classify human conduct, and labelling the compartments, “good”, “bad”, or “indifferent”. There would be no agreement on the labelling. Theoretically, it would be more appropriate to classify the consciousnesses of the people doing the looking; because the consciousness through which a problem is viewed, or the co-ordinates within which a judgment is made, largely predetermines the judgment made in any given situation. The practical difficulty is to find a reliable yardstick, by which to measure. In theory the perfectly relaxed consciousness itself should be the yardstick; but in practice it is impossible for anybody to know that he has got it. In attempting to show the reader what things looked like through the eyes of such a consciousness, I had no alternative but to assume that I had got it, at least when I was writing this book; but it may not be true. Since hardening of the consciousness is such a strain when continued for more than a short period of time, almost inevitably any permanent hardening must be…