METAPHYSICIANS are frequently asked by students and patients, "What is thought?" This apparently simple question is now, as it has been through all the ages, the unanswered enigma. The ablest minds, the strongest individuals, the most religious men and women of the different stages of the world's civilization and unfoldment, have grappled with the problem of thought, and tried in some way, through reasoning, thinking, inspiration, deduction, induction, and the various methods employed by man in striving to comprehend a proposition, to reach a satisfactory solution of this greatest of all questions; to satisfy, or in some way appease the longing of the individual (even though the explanation were not sufficient for the world in general) for a partial answer, at least, of "What is thought?"
From the earliest periods of human existence, successively down through the more and more enlightened stratas of human social and mental growth and formation, eddying through such brains as Aristotle, Plato, and the greatest philosophers of the Roman and Greek supremacy; swirling here and there in the current of human unfoldment and enlightenment; retarded for a time by the greatest minds of Germany and France, who tried to stem the tide of the ever-increasing momentum of that unanswered question which seemed to men, at all times and periods, to shield from the race the discovery of the Absolute, it has been transmitted to us. The adepts of ancient India have been struggling with this all-absorbing question for thousands of years, teaching their pupils that thought is the cause of all things.
Over some of the temples of Egypt, now in ruins or buried by the sands of centuries, have been found the inscription, "Know thyself," which was considered the ultimate of all existence. Those fortunate enough to possess the means could, for an exorbitant sum, purchase a little book from the scribes, which merely contained the information that a knowledge of self, obtained through introspection, was all important for the future blessedness of the soul, and should be attained at any cost.
