Every so often something comes into a person's life that offers a virtual gateway to a realm of thought and understanding. A realm of ideas that in many ways tends to provide answers to many questions previously considered, and a clarity of mental vison that almost lays the groundwork for the unravelling of all of one's questioning conjectures in the future. Speaking personally, and only for myself, I have to say that the door to such an unfolding experience was opened for me when I first read the book "
Thinking and Destiny."
This work, an obvious labor of love and dedication by its author Harold Waldwin Percival, is in effect a clarification and summation of all the essential themes and subjects of what might be termed "occult literature". But it is essentially the product of its author's personal lifelong study and understanding of what are perhaps the most significant questions regarding human existence that could be imagined.
Mr. Percival left this life about the middle of the century just passed. But he was wise to ensure that through The Word Foundation the organization and devoted people were in place to preserve his message and be sure that it would be available to those in search of breakthroughs regarding man's appearance, and purpose, in the world. Not that those who shouldered that task of preservation and presentation were many. But their devotion to what they saw as the nearest man has come to truth is commendable.
Perhaps one of the most important core elements of Thinking and Destiny is the idea that what is generally conceived of as "evolution" has led humanity off on a path regarding its origins that is not only hardly illuminating, but virtually demeaning as well. While the "non religious" view man's origin in what they consider to be "scientific" facts, the "other side of that coin" is represented by those who see a divine being as the essence behind the manifestation of all we can know and conceive. Percival presented an understanding of universal manifestation and what man has descended from that literally turns much of the world's "religious" and "spiritual" thought on its head!
Aside from dealing in no uncertain terms with humanity's origin and history, Percival as well presents descriptions, awareness, and understandings of things that for the longest time have been relegated to the "dark side" of human experience. Perhaps these things were shrouded in such mystery because people didn't quite know how and where they truly fit in with human existence. As well, Percival does a masterful job in explaining how and why all things that appear in human lives are what he terms "the exteriorization of thoughts", bringing the acts, objects and events of this existence to the people who have thought them. Indeed, it was Mr. Percival's contention that it is the eventual ultimate duty of all human beings to, as he puts it, "think without creating thoughts".
While at first this might seem to be a strange statement, what that means, and what it can lead to, is quite nicely developed in Thinking and Destiny.
Inasmuch as the human world is what he terms a "dropout" from "The Permanent Earth" - the eternal and perfectly balanced environment from which we have all fallen - Percival outlines the way to initiate reforming and "reformatting" one's thinking in order to begin preparing for an eventual return to the immortal state from which we have all fallen.
A multitude of factors that are so simply taken for granted by most of us are explained, in a manner that attempts to put names as well as functions on some of our most "other worldly" faculties. The mystery of the plan of construction for the human body, tied in with the virtually magical nature of the "memory" are unravelled. As amazing as these faculties we take so for granted are, they virtually pale in comparison to the things we could do as the formerly eternal and immortal beings we once were.
Be aware as well that this is NOT a "religion" book. Despite the clear fact that every one of the world's religions have attempted to deal, in one way or another, with man's origins, this book presents a view and conception that may emerge over time as clearly what they all intended to say, or, more likely, should have said. Doubtless much scriptural writing may have been born of thinking that developed from honest search for truth and attempts to conceive of man's origin. But unfortunately these pathways have not so much led to knowledge as they have to ritual and to a great degree the stifling of human creativity and inventiveness.
To put this work in such terms as I have here will certainly induce many to presume that this is "crazy, offbeat stuff" that makes no sense at all. I could only say to that approach that Thinking and Destiny is, to my mind, the most compelling presentation of where we individual human beings have truly come from and, given the proper progression of thought and action, where we might be headed.
Michael Sheller has earnestly travelled the path of personal growth all his life. He discovered the book "Thinking and Destiny" in a Manhattan bookshop a few decades ago. He and his wife had been very similar in their desire to think about and understand life's "mysteries." Regarding "life," they simply wanted to "know" what "this is all about!" Michael was an artist since childhood, and eventually made his living as a graphic designer and became the Creative Director of a New York advertising agency. You can get a taste of his earlier writings and graphic work at "The Astrological Investor" site.
