Welcome to Our Sunday Talks, an exclusive series for the patrons of the inspirational living podcast.

Today's reading was edited and adapted from

Steps in Human Progress by Christian D. Larson, published in 1916.

The First Essential The first essential in giving scientific attention to the study of the spiritual world is to realize that what we speak of as the spiritual world is not necessarily synonymous with the invisible world.

And here we find one of the chief obstacles to spiritual advancement.

That is, that we have, in too many instances, made the terms spiritual and invisible synonymous, and accordingly have come to the conclusion

that an experience in the invisible is also a spiritual experience,

or that a gain made in our understanding of the invisible would also imply a gain in our understanding of the invisible would also imply again in our understanding of the spiritual.

The fact is, however, that these two terms are not synonymous. The invisible does not necessarily

contain any more of the spiritual than does the visible. But wherever we do proceed in the belief

that the invisible is synonymous with the spiritual, we are very liable to turn our attention away

from the spiritual, instead of entering into higher realizations of the spiritual.

We must begin our Sunday talk by understanding in the first place

that the invisible world so called is only an extension of the visible world,

and therefore what we speak of as the invisible universe

is simply elements and forces found in the physical universe manifesting in higher grades of

vibration. As an illustration we may take the force of light, which manifests in the visible through

certain grades of vibration, but manifests also in a number of higher grades of vibration

spoken of as the higher octaves of light. But the only difference between visible light and the higher octaves of light.

But the only difference between visible light and the higher octos of light is this,

that the vibrations in the latter are more rapid than in the former.

Therefore we cannot speak of the invisible rays of light as spiritual, any more than we can speak of the visible rays of light as spiritual. The only difference between the visible and the invisible is a matter of speed in the vibrations.

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