THERE can be no hope of progress or freedom for the people without the un- restricted and complete enjoyment of the right of free speech, free press and peaceful assembly. Gift of IRA B. CROSS KJ GIFT OF r* Ti. Gross w I 7 "What is practical ? What is meant ?" Practicality, in its commonly accepted meaning, is associated with self-interest, the pursuit of happiness and self- advancement. Therein lies the value of being prac- tical in the worldly point of view, but when the soul has realized its existence, what higher practicality can there be than pursuit of its welfare ? If you are practical, the sage assures you that he also is practical. You find practicality where he cannot find it. You place emphasis on what he mercilessly discards. He finds value where you see vanity of effort. You set importance where he underestimates. The highest practicality attends to Self, and the highest interest of Self are spiritual. Sincere desire and its practical attitude are often confused. Spasmodic desire manifests in a haphaz- ard and short-lived manner. In illustration, when one is bereft of material advantages, or when the hand of death touches his life, he considers the things of earth unimportant, and turns his attention to relig- ion in the hope of finding consolation. For a time he holds fast to the spiritual ; then temporal joys and cares again absorb the mind and the material atti- tude prevails. This is not spiritual aspiration. "Conversion" is another mistaken aspiration. True, conversion may occur. The soul, overcome by a ray of light from the divine Self, may be spontaneously illumined. The ray pierces the darkness of ignor- ance and sense bondage, and the soul ascends to higher planes where the spirit is freer and its progress quick- ens. But such instances are rare. The average con- 38 Self and the Cosmos. version is psychological rather than religious. Sym- bolism, oratory, music and impressive ceremony influ- ence the mind until it reaches a susceptible point and falls in with the idea of conversion. Powerful ora- tory and transmitted vibratory influences have hyp- notic value, many times leading the convert to pros- trate himself at the feet of the minister, to declare that he is a "miserable sinner." Neither is this true conversion. It is psychopathic. It may have relative influence in exalting the mind for a time, but this state does not last. From within, alone from within, comes true conversion. It has no relation to exter- nals. It is the conversion of the lower self into higher expression and nobler ambition. It is a con- version of values, a transposition of ethical princi- ples, a conversion of the essential man, not of the outward shadow. True conversion distracts the mind from the momentary and ephemeral. It is the reali- zation of what is true and real ; it is the perception of the soul as the soul. Instead of making love the factor in conversion, the average revivalist makes fear the compelling force; instead of showing the ignorant the way of Self, revi- valism frequently casts them into deeper abysses of superstition. Instead of the soul being called by its true name, the name implying the free, the holy and the divine, it is cursed with the epithet of "sinner." Instead of being the conversion it is the perversion of the soul. The inner perception is truth-illuminating. The sense and the object come out of a single order. The Self and the Cosmos. 39 soul and the cosmos come out of the same order. Being and Non-Being are the same principle dually considered. Life and death are but different names for the same reality ; it is the soul which is the expe- riencer of life and death. Cause and effect are one ; Self and the cosmos are one. The cause is one; the effect may be manifold, but as the cause is the effect manifested, there is no essential distinction between the two. The cause has only clothed itself in form. The principle of universal life that evolved the cos- mos does not exist as separate from the cosmos. It is the cosmos. Life and intelligence are but the condi- tions of a higher order of existence in which they are included. This unknowable existence in evolving the universe materializes its nature, law and essence. It alone is the existent. It is the cause of this universe ; likewise, the differentiated effect. In expression, it appears as many; in the dissolution and the absorp- tion of the effect, it returns to its causal state, the syn- thetic unity of the undifferentiated. Self is the cause of the universe, and Self is the effect. Self is the cosmos ; Self is the reality beyond the cosmos. When reason is spiritualized, it possesses discrim- inating wisdom. It perceives that, in the phenom- enal, all is motion and change. Wearied of complexi- ties that only darken the mental vision, the soul relies upon spiritual elements to assist it in reaching purer regions of conscious discernment. This is the higher mental unfoldment; through it comes right under- standing of Self. 40 Self and the Cosmos. Science recognizes two underlying strata of all forms and forces. The first of these is universal sub- stance, the other universal force. All phenomena are reducible to these. It was a long and toilsome way ere this truth was discerned. Belief in the solid- ity of objects had to be eradicated. The reality of color, form, and innumerable objective qualities had to be viewed in different light. Their reality is now recognized to be purely mental. We are only con- scious of sensations, such as color, form, heat, cold, solidity, fluidity, and so forth. All that is known of the outer world is what is transmitted to the mind through external impression. Sensation is the only criterion of sense reality. "Matter is the permanent possibility of sensation," says John Stuart Mill. That is, matter is a condition of sensation existing through mental response to external impression. In this light, heat is a mental state. An impression passes along different nerve conduits of the body, reaches the brain and is there transmitted as the sensation of heat. It is the same with all sensations. They exist only as qualities of mind. Instead of realizing that nature is the product of sensation, conditioned b} 7 mental proc- esses, men transpose sensations upon external impres- sions and accord reality to phenomena, when it exists solely in the relations of the mind. As long as we call this world of change and mani- foldness of itself real, so long will we be subject to its laws. The recognition of reality solely in the exter- nal is the attitude taken by the lower self, which sees the effect alone and cannot distinguish the cause be- Self and the Cosmos. 41 yond the effect. It sees reality only in the dispen- sation of the temporal and seemingly concrete. Be- fore it can make any real progress it must discard this superstition. The highest knowledge is the great- est power. Learn to realize the external in the inter- nal, for there alone it has existence. Man is suscep- tible to error. About him he sees visible realities, tangible and concrete. The mind has habituated itself to view its relations with phenomena as the only and final evidence. Even the greatest thinkers, who know that the body is only an apparition, that it comes and goes, are influenced by it. The mind, after having lent meaning, color, form and light to outer impressions, after having clothed them with seeming reality by imparting its light upon their dark nature, forgets the task it has performed and falls before its mind-made idols. It worships and serves what should worship and serve it. The cre- ated rises above the creator. The soul cannot govern conditions until it realizes that it is above conditions, until it knows that nothing can bind it, that nothing can limit its activity, nor hin- der the greater expression of its divine nature. Prac- tical application manifests in daily assertion that the reality behind the soul and the reality behind nature is identical, not something different, as the senses imply. Unassisted sense experience is deceptive ; but, when educated in the knowledge of scientific laws, it assists mental discrimination. The soul should real- ize that each object of the senses is an image of the mind. It should meditate on that inner subjective 42 Self and the Cosmos. reality, in which both the pcrceiver and the perceived lose their separate reality and merge into all-permeat- ing and unqualified existence. There is a condition in which all substance and force find synthetic unity, and manifoldness disappears. The state is the static state, when nature is at a standstill. Nature rises in cycles, completes and draws them to a close. The time is when there is no manifestation ; time is when manifestation is ; again manifestation is not. Poten- tial existence is as real as manifested existence. Every thing is subject to change. The philosopher finds that his mind is a reflection of this outward order, where all is passing. He also discovers that the mind is the source and sustaining principle of all this activity. In sense perception the thing perceived and the perceiver are separate and distinct. The one is the knower, the other the known. One is life, the other is that upon which life is acting. The knower takes hold, so to speak, of an outer impression, covering it with its own essence, and identifying itself with the mind-covered impression. When a person is angry he identifies himself with the state called anger. Anger and he were at first different. Then a wave- form, conditioned by outer impress, crossed the mind. Through the reaction of the mind upon the impres- sion, anger arose. Something is brought to the atten- tion of consciousness ; consciousness considers it, and then passes judgment in the form of reaction. A stone thrown into the water disturbs it. The mind is like a clear lake. Outer impressions are like stones Self and the Cosmos. 43 which are being thrown into it. Wave-ripples follow. The ripples subside, but come again whenever the surface of the mind is disturbed. The mind is the receptacle into which sense impressions unceasingly flow. Whenever an impression is brought to the mind it pauses to understand the new condition. When it is acquainted with the nature of the impres- sion it reacts, either in the form of a mental attitude, or physical motion. This is continuously repeated and, finally, this process becomes automatic. Each separate activity of life was developed in this man- ner, but through repetition the triple process of re- ceiving, contemplating and reacting upon an impres- sion has become indistinguishable. They are never conterminous, however; they follow in consecutive progress. It is similar to the disturbance of water caused by throwing stones. First, is the disturbance of the water. Then, lapsing seconds occur during which the water seeks equilibrium. The result is wave-ripples. The water, so to speak, has received an impression, meditated upon it, and flashed the re- action across its surface. This metaphor illustrates the condition of the mind in relation to nature. In the beginning the mind was a clear crystal. Then arose innumerable impressions which registered themselves on its surface. The mind reacted. These reactions subsided, forming the basis of memory and the formation of character. No motion is lost. These reactions become fine, potential, and always have present value in influencing expression in ratio to their past number and force. Within the depths 44 Self and the Cosmos. of the mind are the reactions of innumerable lives. Science calls this heredity ; spiritual philosophy says this embodies the principle of reincarnation. Reflex and automatic movements of the body, over which consciousness has lost control, "were once in the con- scious spectrum, in lives long past, when conscious- ness manifested in other lives. These thoughts show the connection between the external and the internal; between the soul and na- ture. In reality unconditioned, the soul has woven the veil of ignorance through constant identification with phenomena. The soul alone is real, but its ex- istence is that of Self. It is the light of Self which illumines nature. It is Thou, O Self, shining in the land. Thou shinest in the stars. Thou art present in the light- ning, Thou in the flame. "Through Thy control the sky expands, through Thy control the air breathes, through Thy control the sun shines, all lives are." All this manifestation is worship to Thee ; evolution and dissolution but human terms for the absorp- tion of Thyself within Thyself, and for the manifes- tation of Thyself in Thine image. This apparent manifoldness of life and form is the myriad-fold vision of Thyself in the mirror of nature. Reach Thine image through and through its limited con- sciousness, and in Thy all-consciousness absorb it. The dream of the practical and of sense and separate existence vanishes when the shrine of the heart is opened to spiritual perception. There the Self is enthroned in garments of universal light and Self and the Cosmos. 45 life. In illumination the soul sits at the shore of infinite bliss content with the murmurs of its music. The dream is the dreamer, and the dreamer the dream. All is a vast illusion. Self alone is the life of dream and dreamer. The waves are only on the surface. The sigh of the restless sea of Being, and the sweeping of its endless tides are only on the sur- face. The value in the effort of realization is the consciousness that each struggle is a nearer approach to the totality of existence embodied in Self. It is not in announcing the little that the great is achieved, but in emphasizing the great and discarding the little. The whole universe throbs for man, not alone in the picturesqueness of symbology, but in the all- reality of fact. Philosophy begins with search after truth ; it ends in absolute union with truth. The inquirer, per- turbed in the beginning, reaches the heights where desire is spiritualized and philosophical conclusions become conscious facts. The sage, one with Self, sees no difference; he is the declarer of infinite unity. Instead of the cycle of rebirth, he witnesses only one absorbing principle of life, the source and the outlet of Being. The motion of the universe is a series of infinite rhythms. Confusion arises in man thinking of nature as self-illumined, when its qualities, apart from the vivifying principle of Spirit, are dark and insensate. Spirit alone possesses knowledge; there are no knowing qualities in nature. Spirit alone is the creator and preserver ; nature is chaos. The vari- 46 Self and the Cosmos. ableness and manifoldness of the external is the sym- bolism, the expression of the soul. To learn the meaning of its evolution is the edu- cation of the soul. The soul is conditioned in mani- festation, but, awakened to spiritual perception, it is assisted by nature in its effort at freedom and the realization of knowledge. The soul, enshrouded in limitation, forgets its omniscience and omnipotence, its birthright of divinity. Through the dual process of life and death, pleasure and pain, nature is teach- ing the soul that its yearning cannot be satisfied by the temporal and ephemeral. Nature is a judicious mother. When there is need for chastisement she ad- ministers it, inflicting pain upon the soul enslaved to sense-pleasures. This continues through lives and lives. Little by little the veil of ignorance is re- moved, and little by little the great light and glory of Self manifest. In the end the soul realizes that it is existence, knowledge and bliss absolute. Experi- ence is the greatest teacher. We are children, and experience the mother who gently takes us through this dark universe. If we stumble on the path she admonishes us to pay closer attention, for the path is narrow. "Long is the way, but the end is sure." RELATIVE TRUTHS. CHAPTER III. RELATIVE TRUTHS. The Infinite thought: "I AM," and the physical moved in the night of primeval darkness. The Infi- nite thought : "Let there be Light," and light flooded the cosmos. When light was, the magic wand of re- newed life touched the souls who breathed and moved in the spheres of the Past. Time dawned. The morning stars sang, and the souls of the morning stars are the archangels of the universe. The golden sun is the principle of physical expres- sion, the aeon-revolving orb whose light permeates all manifestation, whose life is boundless energy. There is another Sun, however, inimitably more glorious, the source, not only of the radiance of the Star guiding our solar system, but of the splendor of all the stars. Orion and Arcturus are its servants; Aldebardn and Sirius, dispensers of its magnitudin- ous force, inheritors of its infinite life. This is the Spiritual Sun from which originated the pristine meaning of form and the pristine symbol of life. The ancient Aryan, regarding the physical sun as its image, saluted Surya, the Sun God, each yellow morn with the solemn invocation: "We meditate on the glory of that Divine Being who has produced this universe; may He enlighten our minds." The phy- 50 Relative Truths. sical is symbolic of the soul of the physical. The sun is the symbol of the spiritual essence of self-illumin- ating and all-present Light. All breathing beings and moving bodies rank in the cyclings of spheres, and this cycling is more enduring than time and more inclusive than space. The cosmos is a sum-total in which rhythm and harmony develop from the seemingly discordant and contra- vibrant. Science teaches that manifested nature, suns, moons and stars spring from homogeneous mat- ter, developing form, size and orbit, and disintegrat- ing into the primal undifferentiated state, when uni- versal dissolution sounds the death-knell of the cos- mos. The source of differentiation is spiritual and intelligent. Minutest and largest combinations of matter are outer manifestations of souls. Undifferen- tiated matter is one in essence with undifferentiated intelligence. From the latter all finite minds de- velop, thus establishing the identity of origin and essence of mind in all creatures. Infinite Mind, soul of all intelligence, cognizes no distinctions ; neither does it think. Some philosophies doubt this on the grounds that, where there is no manifesta- tion of thought, there can be no intelligence. Men are anthropomorphic even in so-called unbi- ased reasoning. They would measure Infinite Mind by the psychometric standards of the brain. Self does not think, for nothing exists concerning which it should think. There is nothing unknown to Self. It does not think, for It manifests as thought. It does not think, for Its essence is eternal knowledge. The Relative Truths. 51 stone neither thinks nor reasons; neither does Infi- nite Mind. There is a profound difference, however, between the inability of a stone to think and the thoughtlessness of the Omniscient One. Thinking is a mode of activity, and all modes of activity suggest imperfection. Why should the Perfect One act? Activity presupposes desire. Self desires nothing, for Its existence includes all. Thinking is, again, in the highest sense imperfect, because what is thought has not been absolutely translated into consciousness. Consciousness must supersede thought, consciousness includes all that the mind can entertain, ere the state of unqualified perfection is reached. So long as the unknown exists, the mind manifests. In the realm of the knowable thought is ; in the realm of the Un- knowable, or rather, in the realm of All-Knowledge, thought is extinguished by Supreme Wisdom. Reason is labyrinthian. Unsatisfied with imme- diate truth and the revelations of relative knowledge, the mind asks the Why of things. The world has ever been asking, "Why ?" In the persistence of this question, philosophy had birth. The Whence of things, science has imperfectly answered in biology, geology and other departments. Science has guessed at the Whither of life and intelligence. Whence and Whither are less difficult than the Why. The Why includes the Whence and Whither. But the Why is above the cosmos, which is controlled by the Whence and the Whither. These questions, however, as the Buddha has told his followers, "belong to the desert of mere opinion." Arguments after arguments have 52 Kelative Truths. been proposed. Systems after systems of philosophy have swayed the minds of men, and have lost their sway. Philosophy, as all other things, changes with the changing experience of Man. It is more perti- nent to know the meaning of Self. "When that Self is known, all esle is known." The cause of the uni- verse and of the soul are both past analysis. The Self of creatures and the Self of the cosmos are be- yond time, space and causation. Man can never know the Why of these, for the mind, conditioned by nature, cannot rise above it, nor form any thesis con- cerning the ultimate of things. Self can only be dis- cerned by Self-realization. The Self of the universe and the inner Self of soul must become one. Knowing the source of intelligence as infinite in- telligence manifest in all beings, the mind must identify itself with it. It must realize reality in the source of intelligence. The central truth concerning the mind is: that within its depths exists the mine of all knowledge. The mind is a conduit into which omniscience flows. When it passes into and from the conduit it is finite intelligence. But the source is the eternal essence. Realized in consciousness, this truth is Self-knowledge. Conditioned existence, that is, the individual soul, is the conduit. When it has expressed the entire range of possibilities latent within its re-birth-compelling abyss, the conduit is closed, and the finite condition which was expressed through it is absorbed by the infilling of infinite ex- istence and knowledge. As it is, the soul, outwardly related to the source of its expression, occupied with Relative Truths. 53 the outflow of intelligence, fails to recognize that it is omniscience and omniexistence which give mani- festation to the soul. When certain progress is at- tained, however, the soul begins to understand that the inflow of intelligence, the principle of manifesta- tion is the important factor, without which the phe- nomena of life in the strictest sense, are non-existent. Less value is accorded the external ; value and reality are viewed solely as internal. In the pursuit and realization of Self, the soul views its existence in the mirror of divine knowl- edge ; instead of seeing finiteness, it perceives a shadow filling all space and time, the shadow of the infinite. It becomes passive to outward circumstance and hears the inner voice, which speaks in the lan- guage of symbol, of faith, of intuition and inspira- tion. In following that voice, the soul explores its profoundest depth. Realization comes when it emerges from the mazes of limitation and ignorance, perfected in spiritual discrimination and power. The sage controls personality, employing it in the service of those who need his assistance. Realization is con- trol of the mind and heart, is in passing the line of demarcation between conditioned and unconditioned intelligence. The methods of generalization in philosophy are products of the Orient. Western thought deals with particulars and specifications. The religious outlook of both the Orient and the Occident has been in keep- ing with their philosophies. The former, in contem- plating existence, has made it universal, and brought 54 Relative Truths. its manifold expression into one synthesizing unit; the latter, occupied with immediate truth, reasoning from the visible and concrete, little given to mysti- cism and speculation, has emphasized the inclusive- ness of existence in its visible manifestations. For this reason we find scarcely any practical relation of Western peoples, as a whole, to the invisible existence which mysticism and esotericism imply. Oriental philosophy has bequeathed to the Western intellect its conception of "planes or spheres of Being." Christianity and other religions which have found expression in Europe and America adhere to the truth of the immortality of the soul, but the practical bearing of Oriental philosophy explains the character and the abode of the existence of those who have gone before ; not alone that, it broadens its scope of thought and spiritual vision to the recognition of endless ex- istence and planes of experience, both below and above the plane of human expression. The difference between these views manifests in differences of relig- ious belief. Christianity teaches that animals, and forms of life beneath the animal, are soulless, that they are of no greater consequence in the general scheme of life than the dust under our feet. The Vedantism of East India and Buddhism distinguish not only the evolution of humanity, but of all life and form. The minutest microscopic life is the expres- sion of unmanifested divinity and, as such, its evolu- tionary aim is identical with that of the most exalted being, — the realization of the perfection within, the realization of the God within. Omnipresence ex- Relative Truths. 55 eludes the reality of the minutest life save through the Infinite. The God must manifest, whether po- tential in the lowest or highest form. "There is but one Self which must be perceived and known." The philosophers of the Platonic and Socratic schools were pantheists in their conception of the cosmos, holding to the belief that, if an atom of life is sacred, all life is sacred. They not only accorded divinity to the human soul, but to each individual soul, irrespective of the form it inhabited, whether it was vegetal, mineral, animal, or otherwise. They recognized but one absolute, universally-immanent divine presence. Had Christianity paused to reflect upon the abso- lute significance of its dogma of omnipresence, the dogma of the redemption would never have been formulated. Where only one identity exists, there is no degree of highness or lowness. It is one presence. The divine within cannot sin. Conditioned soul, of course, errs; it is clothed with ignorance, but the redemption of soul is realized through individual effort, never through the gratuitous sacrifice of a savior. There is but one "Son of God." He is resi- dent in every soul. He alone can redeem the sin and falseness of fleeting personality by reincarnating the immortal principle of personality. Through end- less experience between the dualities of relative knowledge and ignorance, misery and joy, pleasure and pain, the individual grows into self-redeeming wisdom and discrimination between the real and the unreal. This is the cross which individualized exist- 56 Kelative Truths. ence must bear, the cross of repeated lives and innu- merable experiences. These thoughts suggest others. If all life is sacred and of divine origin, all life is immortal. From the animal expression the human developed. Animal life, likewise subject to evolu- tion, equally progresses. Dreaming humanity sleeps within the animal soul. Man, too, progresses. Infi- nite distinction of life and fitness exists in the human order. The potential god seeks expression in the evo- lution of man. The tide of life is unthinkable. Philosophers at variance with these truths present the argument that animals have no souls, because they do not possess the rational instinct ; in this, they say, lies the difference between the human and animal species. If intelligence is present in the universe it is present everywhere. The only difference is in the degree of expression. Human beings partake of this intelligence in a degree ; but they by no means absorb all degrees. The human race expresses but a very small part of universal intelligence. What is reason ? What does rational instinct mean ? Instinctive life has much greater influence and area of expression in human life than is imagined. The human body has developed through instinctive life and expression. Every motion of the body is directly or indirectly instinctive. Part of mental life is also instinctive. Instinct is only involved reason, or reason automatically expressed. When the mind is brought in relation to new experience, new grooves are made in the brain. The mind recognizes, studies and, finally, understands it. The next occasion, the Relative Truths. 57 mind readily classifies the fact. As this knowledge is repeated, it is better established. Finally, what, in the beginning, required time and thought, is instan- taneously, automatically performed. Conscious men- tality is no longer associated with the performance. It is now under the action of the subconscious mind. In the first fingering of keys and reading of notes, the pianist has considerable trouble. When he has become perfect he may converse while playing diffi- cult selections. This is because the playing, in greater part, has become automatized. Attentive states of consciousness, employed in the study of fin- gering and reading of notes, have been translated into subconsciousness. In other words, previous rational acts have become instinctive. Thus instinct is reason inverted. The difference between human and animal intelligence is alone in the fact that animals and lower forms of existence apply reason to physical re- quirements and contingencies, while man applies rea- son to broader circumstances of life and thought. The difference in expression is appreciable, drawing a distinct line of demarcation between human and animal life, but it is only a difference in degree, not difference in essence. Philology often assists philosophy. In a word lies the distinction between the human and animal mind. The word "man" is derived from the Sanscrit root- verb "man," meaning "to think." Animals follow the reflex line of conscious activity. They apply thought without any causal connection between them- selves and the condition perceived. Man is the con- 58 Relative Truths. scious thinker. He discriminates between given cir- cumstances and objects; he chooses, judges, com- pares ; he determines, considers, and, particularly, he is self-conscious. The animal is entirely reflex, pas- sive, receptive ; the reason of man is positive, active, anticipant. He is possessed of rational memory ; the animal, of instinctive memory. The animal is gen- eric in consciousness ; man, individual. Man is an undetached spark of that Spiritual Sun whose action sustains the life and motion of the uni- verse. To the limited vision of man the lower orders are engulfed in darkness, but the nether is the other pole of conscious perception. He fails to see the light shining at one extremity, because of the exceed- ing brilliance of the light at another extremity. Lo- calized perception must extend beyond the local. When it considers and embraces all, it is universal. True perception can be obtained when the soul is aware of the universality of That Presence which sustains all within Its intelligence-fraught life. Conceive one vast ocean of light. Wherever the vision is directed, there is light. Above, below, and on all sides, there is light, endless in shade and bril- liance. Consider mind, heart, consciousness, person- ality as formed from and existing through that light. Let even the idea of light be merged into the sea of light. The soul then realizes nothing but light. In that moment of spiritual illumination, the universe has vanished. The visible and numberless objects of manifestation lose life and form, merging in the omnipresence where form is unknown; where reigns Relative Truths. 59 the Unthinkable Mind. This concentration leads to purity and truth of vision. It is symbolic of the mys- tic union of the finite with the Infinite Self. In the development of universal concepts and cor- responding mystic and emotional states, no psycho- logical suicide is committed, in which personality is martyred in the cause of superconscious perception. The meaning of the personal is in the superpersonal. Omnipresent divinity is the essence of the soul. In realizing its essence the soul realizes the true Self, of which personality is an ephemeral shadow. Union with universal intelligence is often con- strued as the death of individual intelligence; but religion says that the original state from which man evolved was perfect. It teaches that the aim of life is to return to that initial state. Spiritual intelli- gence is the background and working force of all knowledge. Instead of tediously laboring to acquire relative knowledge, religion admonishes the soul to seek that spiritual intelligence which is infused into the soul by the Infinite Mind, the Self, Dispenser of all wisdom and power. The origin of things is superior to their highest evolutionary development ; the latter cannot last, for, by disintegration and involution, it returns to the causal, original state. Man has developed from a condition greater than the present. The unmani- fested includes both the potential and manifested. The unmanifested stands in relation to the mani- fested as the definite to the indefinite. The causal state of man is definite. The manifested state, '60 Relative Truths. subject to change and disintegration, is indefinite. In the unmanifested there is infinite potentiality which the manifested can never express. The essence of the soul is greater than its expression. Expression can never be absolute ; the inner essence of the soul is absolute. States of expression are always relatively imperfect. Man is a counterfeit of his divinity. No matter how complete expression is, it is bound by time and form, and the essence of the soul is form- less and eternal. There can only be a constant amelioration of the radically imperfect. Man, identified with this im- perfect existence, can never realize the essence of his nature within its limitation. He must consider Self as the sole truth and deny the bondage of imperfect existence. However alluring and seemingly real, there is no truth, nor reality apart from the indwell- ing Spirit. The sage, truly appreciating the evan- escence of all things, exclaims with Solomon: "Van- ity of vanities. All is vanity and vexation of Spirit." Man meets with varied emotional experiences, but emotional fervor passes. The thirsty traveller on the desert sees sparkling streams and wooded lands. It is a mirage. He must have the water of life for which he is famishing. Man wanders through the desert of life, deluded with mirages. He colors them with the magic of a great desire, but the mirages of life are as evanescent as desert mirages. They further sorrow and renew the fever of desire. Life is a pro- tracted dream in which we imagine ourselves now possessed of wealth, power, fame and numerous sense Kelative Truths. 61 enjoyments, then afflicted with want, poverty, misery and physical discomfort. When the day of spiritual discrimination dawns, and the morning sun of spir- itual intelligence rises, this dreaming will cease. The soul will awaken with knowledge of its true nature, which is eternal, unconditioned Godhead. Human nature is childlike, ever in a state of want. To keep the child from crying, its parents give it what it wishes. After a short time the ardently desired object lies in some corner, mutilated and unrecogniz- able. Often the child wants something dangerous to handle, gets it, and is hurt. The soul is like a child. It desires object after object. Many of the things the soul desired in the past are now cast aside and for- gotten. Men constantly consign the realizations of desire into the garret of life. They continue and continue to desire and the curse of desire is the neces- sity for its realization. Life after life we reap the fruits of desire, and as long as desire continues life also continues. Often we wish for things which we think will please us, but we mistake the nature of the thing desired, and the fruit is pain. To rid him- self of the tyranny of desire over reason, Socrates was wont to pass the shops in Athens and say to his followers : "Behold ! how many things there are of which man has no need." He spoke thus, not alone of physical good, but of the objects of emotion and passion. All conditions of life are born of desire. Desire, charmed with the things it observes, clasps them to its heart. In that embrace the mind is born a slave. 62 Kelative Truths. This birth is endlessly recurrent so that the mind is slave to innumerable conditions. Through uncon- trolled desire the soul is shorn of its inner greatness and power. Desire is often palliated through the idealization of its object. It is criticized in its pur- poses. When it has possession as its end it is un- worthy. Self-knowledge and the perfection which it involves is alone worthy. There are desires "to be," and they are the desires of the gods. Where material desire manifests, there is little room for spiritual evo- lution. "Where desire is, there is no room for Kama." One cannot serve both God and Mammon. Desire reaches perfection when it ceases its material direction and purpose and centres on the development of mind, heart, and soul. This desire perfects char- acter. It is desire without its scarlet color; desire clad in the purity of truth. It is the inversion of desire which is alone criticizable. Man must have desires. Desire is growth, but only desires having the realization of the best within as their goal. The body is the principle of which the soul seems most cognizant, yet it is not the body but the "desire self" which conditions the wants of the body. The body is only an instrument. Desire is an enlivening force, propelling the body, a principle through which consciousness manifests on the physical plane. All physical sensation as hunger, thirst, and other physi- cal needs belong to this principle ; also all forms of emotions as hatred, love, and the many manifold feelings, which sway the soul. Sensations and emo- tions do not, in strictest reality, belong to the mental Eelative Truths. G3 realm. The mind is a principle through which con- sciousness manifests on the plane of thought. These fine distinctions between planes of thought and sensa- tion and emotion must be made. Esotericism insists on them, and teaches that both the principle of desire and that of mind are possessed of instruments and bodies. Desire and its instrument must not be con- fused with consciousness. Desire is only a force pos- sessed of a desire body. The mind is only a princi- ple possessed of force and a mental body. The phy- sical body is only a form developed from the principle of physical force. It is consciousness alone which exists, manifesting through the principles of mind and desire, and reaches the planes of expression of mind and desire through the instrumentality of re- spective bodies. The desire body is composed of finer particles of matter than the physical body, and the mental body of still rarer matter. This desire body is subject to change and disintegration, just as the physical instru- ment. In each incarnation, the desire body is re- formed, even as the general status of personality is changed. The reason is that desire changes in de- gree of expression. It is subject to growth. As the individual clothes himself in different garments as he passes through infancy, youth and manhood, so, in the evolutionary course, the individual clothes him- self in various bodies accordingly as consciousness has manifested in the life past. The principle of desire, purified and directed to higher ideals, ex- presses itself in a higher form. And the converse 13 64 Relative Truths. true. The soul may lapse into previous conditions, and find itself in a coarser physical body, the result of the coarsening the desire body has undergone. Each of the bodies is influenced by the condition of the others. If the mentality is imperfectly educated, desire has greater scope. If the mind is perfectly balanced, desire has less influence. If the health of the body is maintained, both the desire and mental bodies are unobstructed in relation to physical expres- sion. The influence of desire in changing physical vibrations is noticed in life. If one who has lived the spiritual or philosophical life falls prey to sense se- ductions, his facial expression will change. That limpidness of eye, grace of carriage, and loftiness of countenance vanishes; in its place are coarseness of features and expression. The body is under the im- mediate formative influence of the desire-body. In this sense, too much stress cannot be placed on the purification of desire, its refinement and relation to high ideals. When desire has become artistic in mani- festation, its coarseness and putrescence vanishes and, instead of coarseness, it will give the body artistic polish, refinement of lineament and bodily deport- ment. True refinement of desire expresses itself when the mind sheds its discriminating influence over ideals of desire. Then passion is transposed into artistic and higher emotional feeling. In coarser phases of manifestation, feeling is ephemeral and purely instinctive. It is the sudden effervescence and alienation of feeling. This is the action of mere physical desires. In the development and the special- Relative Truths. 65 ization of its activity, feeling is more continuous and differs widely from mere sensuousness. Love and passion arouse distinct sets of emotion. In love, re- finement and high ideals translate animal tendencies into lofty emotional and spiritual tendencies. Pas- sion has no stable qualities, and is short-lived. The principle of desire is working on a low basis of ex- pression. The evolution of feeling brings desire into purer realms ; it is the basis of conjugal love. The real seat of all sensation is the desire body. Psychology says the same thing. In spiritual philos- ophy, psychology has greater importance than physi- ology, because the principles of the former determine the qualities and activities of the physical body. Desire changes and passes. Firmly established is the mind which correlates the experiences of desire into the appreciation of right and wrong. Mind and desire compose personality. The spiritual principle has relation, but only through the purification of both mind and desire. Personality is the synthesis of sensations, emotions and thoughts. It is the tem- poral manifestation of individuality. Personality is made of the conscious activities of earth life. Indi- viduality, the individualized undetached spark of spiritual intelligence, is the absorbing essence of per- sonality. As the personality is the same, though un- dergoing the innumerable experiences of life, as it is the same, though in different places and under differ- ent surroundings, so the individual, author of per- sonality, is the same, though experiencing repeated births and various evolutionary stages. 66 Relative Truths. It is written in "The Voice of the Silence" : "Have perseverance as one who doth for evermore endure. Thy shadows (personalities) live and vanish; that which in thee shall live for ever, that which in thee knows, for it is knowledge, is not of fleeting life; it is the man that was, that is, and will be, for whom the hour shall never strike." Personality is a myth, a fleeting shadow, an unreality, a thing which passes. Individuality never passes, is free from limitations. The growth and expansion of individuality is the aim of evolutionary progress. Certainly, nature, with all the indefinite development of the past, all the evolving influences of the present, is not busied with transiency, and personality is transient. The source of personality is individuality. Through the experiences of numberless personalities this individu- ality progresses in manifestation. Evolution has im- portance and significance in this light. The end of nature is to reveal the nature of the soul, which is "the secret of all wisdom and the soul of all knowledge." This assurance is personalized in the wonderful char- acters, whose will and command have steered the course of civilization into progressive channels. These characters have realized Self. They are the radiant sons of light who come as Sri Krishna says: "when viciousness is prevalent and good principles need invigoration." The individual is the eternal thinker, apart from the physical, uncontrolled by any force, free, ever blissful, and all perfect. Though pure and free, the individual is not at oneness with the Infinite of Kelatne Truths. 67 which it is a ray. The object of evolution is the union of the individual ray with the ocean of endless light. At each incarnation, the individual radiates a portion of its substance which becomes a separate being, a personality. The personality finds itself within the possibilities of a respective epoch, and has the responsibility of reaping experience con- ducive to its education. The goal of human birth is enrichment of personality, the broadening of vision and activity of the lower, so that the higher may manifest. Man is like a traveller in a new land. Unac- quainted with the topography of the country, the ex- plorer often experiences sad mishaps. Frequently he meets with dire misfortune. But with hardship and struggle the land is explored, and through this advantages are open to newcomers. The difficulty and the mistakes have been a part of the final tri- umph, for experience and knowledge developed with trial and failing. Where one would have avoided mistake, another would have failed. Some one must err, and others profit by the experience. In the great wilderness of human life, the soul is ever confronted with the unknown. Mistakes are largely the result of inexperience, of weakness and of difficulty of progress. Most of the infringements of moral law are not through viciousness, and, therefore, retribu- tion is rather in ratio to knowledge of right and wrong, than to the fulness of the error. Man is on the ascending path to the realization of his nature. The individual can accelerate natural G8 Relative Truths. evolution by directing consciousness to high purpose. He is not bound to follow in the wake of the average. Filled with the burning desire to sound the depths of the soul, filled with the desire to break the barriers of material imperfection and of ignorance, the soul progresses by leaps and bounds. In the fulness of desire is the perfection of knowl- edge, for desire related to the ideal of Self-knowledge opens the doorway to spiritual truth and conscious- MAN AND HIS SHADOW. CHAPTER IV. MAN AND HIS SHADOW. Who is the real man 1 It is he who feels through the senses, perceives through the mind, and discrim- inates through the intellect. The real man is the experiencer, developing in knowledge and expression through changing states of existence. The real man is neither the body, nor mind, but the soul, utilizing these only as instruments to relate it to spheres of mental and physical experience. Man is the creator, the sustaining force, and the dissolver of his own world, and the world of each is widely different form the world of another. Each individual is isolated from the rest of life, for each life has its separate course, its own path to make, its individual destiny, and its particular mode of expression. Though divergent in manifestation, every being has the same origin and ultimate unity as all others. Truly, each man is a vessel, self-manned and self- propelled, afloat on the shoreless ocean of existence. Each soul is the pilot of its own expression ; each in- dividual fate the pathway of a single vessel. Men are "ships that pass in the night." They meet; their destinies may cross; their interests blend, but each person is to himself. None can help ; none can save. 72 Man and His Shadow. The individual is his own helper and his own savior. Now and then the path of two seem to blend into a single way. The line of distinction, however, is dreadfully separate. What appears as external is really internal. What appears as without is the circling of the vibrations within. Each person is a potential god. The Self of each individual is the Self of all men, gods and breathing beings. Each is the teacher and student of his individual existence. Each soul is its problem- maker and problem-solver. The thought of this sep- arateness is awesome. Great teachers, emphasizing this separateness, have said : "The wise are only great preachers. You yourselves must make an effort." Saviors incarnate give spiritual motive-force, but the individual soul must keep the divine spark alive with the breath of spiritual resolution. The soul must save and redeem itself from the curse of superstition and the thralldom of ignorance. Each is free to pur- sue whatever course is desired. It is the privilege of the soul to express freedom of thought and expres- sion. The Law, however, is a part of the soul's nature, and follows every expression, whether high or low, good or evil. The sages who have transmitted their knowledge to the race climbed the upward path in the solitude of individual effort. The struggle for, and the experience of realization is individual. Alien in nature, man traverses the cycle of time with the veil of illusion covering true perception. In his spiritual unf oldment man passes through stages of doubt. Materialism points body ward, idealism, Man and His Shadow. 73 mindward. Moments come when both materialism and idealism prove insufficient, and the soul merges into agnosticism. Every soul of spiritual develop- ment has passed through these stages into a broader outlook on life where differences consistently meet and their divergent qualities unite through the dis- crimination of spirit. Much depends on the truth that there is no limit to perception and understand- ing; that each effort to perceive substantial values of life is followed by gain. No one can knock at the door of life without being answered. The answer may come as a mystical assurance that the soul is at union with the life and reality behind universal expression. It may come as intuitive solutions in the philosophical field. An emotion presupposes the existence of its object. It is unreasonable that the soul could relate its desire and effort to the non-existent. The soul could not con- ceive Self unless It were. Reason is conditioned by sense experience. Religion, Self - knowledge and spiritual consciousness are beyond the senses and the mind. The highest truth could not be, were it com- prehensible to sense-nourished reason. When the soul comes face to face with the essence of its nature, it does not reason, for it directly perceives. There is never argument concerning the existence and real- ity of visible and tangible objects. The sage is cog- nizant of spiritual facts even more than men are of their bodily surroundings. Realization has little to do with the intellectual perception of truth. The soul can never be satisfied until, as the Vedas say, it 7-i Man and His Shadow. "sees, hears, perceives and knows that Self." Those who arrive at this vision of truth are of few words. They do not convince by argument, but impart their knowledge as a friend imparts a flower. Religion is a live force. A great teacher, who aroused Europe and America with his masterly eloquence, said that if he had religion, spiritual insight and knowledge, it was due to one, so inspired with spiritual vision and truth, that his very presence radiated divine insight. Everything has its aura. Everything is permeated with its life-force. This life-force has influence and color. Clairvoyantly it can be seen. The existence and condition of auras explain sudden and peculiar attachments and aversions. The aura of a god-like character vibrates with tremendous influence, for his personality is illuminated with greatest spiritual knowledge and feeling. Contact with such a char- acter inspires spirituality. The truth of his words is self-evident. His enthusiasm is contagious. This explains the authoritive influence of religious teach- ers. Their personality is so rich that all who come into their presence are devoted to them. The reason is that they touch the soul. They awaken deepest im- pulses and purest emotions. As the sensuous emo- tions cannot be compared with the dull motions of material forces, so spiritual emotions are not com- parable with the insentience of sensuous emotions. "In this world of insentience he who sees that One Who is the vivifying light of all, unto him comes eternal peace, unto none else, unto none else." That One is the Soul of all souls. That One is the Self, Man and His Shadow. 75 the truly Immortal, Whom the gods worship and Whom all knowers of Self adore. One of the fruits of spiritual worthiness is that through the Law the soul is granted the realization of desires consistent with true welfare. All things are added to those who strive. The important attitude in the materialization of desire is patience. Nothing can be accomplished by impatience and worry. Nerv- ousness is the result of fretfulness and is, in turn, the origin of functional disorders. Nervousness is de- structive to the realization of any purpose, for it dis- turbs harmony of mind, a necessary condition for concentration. Mental activity is directly or indi- rectly associated with the action of the nerve system. If the nerve be disturbed, the consequence is mental indecision and emotional uncertainty. No person can think or work to the best advantage under nerve pres- sure. Best results are forthcoming only when the physical is in proper vibration. The seeker after truth must have perfect control over the physical, avoiding anything conducive to nervousness. He should abstain from associations causing mental or spiritual inharmony, nervous irritation, or morbid- ness. Associations have great influence through their vibrations. Suggestion through expression and con- duct awakens the imitative impulse. There is nothing more efficacious in the riddance of nervousness than concentration. Apart from intri- cate psychological definitions, concentration is placid- ity of temper, harmony of thought, patience in cir- cumstances, spiritual -mindedness and other qualities 76 Man and His Shadow. which allow even expression of the mind in its service to the soul. The mind depends on the body ; the body, on the mind. Nervous prostration is largely due to inharmonious thought and inverted emotions. "Worry is the disease of the age. If the soul is in true rela- tion to Self, nothing can harm the body. The bird of the air is supported by the providence of Self. It is the duty of a father to provide for his children. It is the nature of Self to meet the needs of those who are mindful of Self. The most beautiful feature in spir- itual knowledge is the confidence it gives and encour- ages. Trust, implicit and never-failing, is character- istic of the spiritually awakened. Things come to them because of their unquestioning trust. The sage experiences the beneficent results of such trust in its psychic connection. Trust is passive desire, most potent of all desires. The spiritually informed appreciate the usefulness of non-resistance. Struggling with conditions is often a waste of energy. Resistance frequently increases unpleasantness. Discrimination imparts that spirit of resignation which is not self-pity in disguise, but stalwart resignation. Many allege that non-resistance to evil and resignation weaken the soul, unfiting it in the battle of life, but history attests the contrary. The greatest persons of all times possess these quali- ties. The practical application of non-resistance is exemplified in the jiu-jitsu of the Japanese. The antagonist wastes his strength in futile effort, while his opponent is passive, interested only in warding off blows. The psychological moment arrives when the Man and His Shadow. 77 antagonist, weakened by his own effort, is overcome. Resignation becomes the mightiest of men. If great generals were despondant over losses, their successes would be few. They are resigned to the tide of for- tune and await the odds of opportunity. The busi- ness man has no time for useless worry; he is too busy ameliorating conditions. These qualities, spir- itually translated, have deeper meaning and char- acter. They render the soul passive to harmful ma- terial conditions and give it stamina in the hour of great struggle. ^Non-resistance and resignation are positive factors in the realization of moral and spir- itual values- Realization is for the strong in character, the coura- geous of heart; it is for those who will and do. A cheerful mind is necessary in the struggle, for the mind, fortified with cheerfulness, does not lose the vision of its purpose, whenever obstruction intervenes. There is a common sense point of view in every affair, whether it be religious, philosophical, commercial, or domestic. Sane attitudes must be had with regard to religion. Religion must change its commonly ac- cepted understanding and come into the daylight of intelligence. It must rid itself of the dogmatic idea of punishment, and teach that all punishment is from within. It must change the attitude in prayer. There is no god who will stop the wheel of the Law in an- swer to prayer. Prayers are generally selfish. Prayer should have no other motive nor aim than knowledge, light, sympathy and strength. Those prayers are alone worthy prayers ; others are the cries of children 78 Man and His Shadow. who do not know what is best to desire. Men are not the impartial judges of their needs. Selfishness blinds the vision. The Spirit provides for Its devotees. The sage understands the principle of the command : "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all things shall be added unto you." First seek the higher, and the lower will naturally and plentifully follow. The cause of selfishness is a false view of the es- sential reality of the individual soul. The fleeting personality receives undivided attention; reality is accredited to it, when that quality is only identified with the Self within. In this misconception misery and ignorance develop. In this misconception sense attachment and its bondage control the mind. The only error is the wrong view of Self, but the error includes all others; it is primary and capital. The soul wanders through re-birth until it discovers its nature. Expression is more than thought. It is the descrip- tion and manifestation of thought. The meaning of thought is realized through its manifestation, and its manifestation is conduct. Religious teachers are practitioners of belief, rather than verbal exponents. Argument obtains in the first stages of spiritual de- velopment. The intellect must be satisfied, and has a right to be convinced. The way which has been travelled should be clear and unbroken. The mists of doubt should have been dispersed. Let any one principle be incompletely developed and other prin- ciples are one-sided. As far as the soul has perfected its unfoldment, the whole man must be educated, con- Man and His Shadow. 79 trolled, purged of inverted beliefs and desires. The machine of principles through which man manifests must be delicately balanced, else disturbance sets in. The decay of religions is through the maladjustment between the intellect and the soul. A religion is the outward presentation of inner mental and emotional relations of the individual soul to the Supreme. Efficient religions respond to both the intellectual and emotional need. These religions have outlived the centuries. They are rich in symbolism and color, but the ceremonial is in keeping with developed the- ological eclecticism. The mind is dependent on the imagination. The imagination is supported by reason and, in turn, supports reason. All knowledge is symbolic and can never be ultimately real, for no system of thought, however inclusive, can ever fully answer the query of the soul with regard to its nature. "Self is perceived alone by Self." Music is never fully comprehended. There is so much beyond external concordances of sound, so much beyond harmony which is of the soul. The relation between sound and hearing is psychological. The vibrations of the soul and of music are coextensive in influence. Everything is vibration; when vibra- tions between the soul and on what it is centered are equal, the soul understands. If the vibrations differ in character and modification from those of the soul, it does not understand. Understanding is a matter of vibration ; vibration, another word for feeling, and feeling expresses the activity of consciousness. Soul alone can impress conscious values on the 80 Man and His Shadow. many dualities of emotion, attachment, aversion and so on. It is rather advanced to state that music has soul, that each expression of sound is soul. If it were not true, however, how could the inert call forth the activity of sensitive and specialized conscious- ness ? Nothing can arouse the soul save what pos- sesses the essence of soul. Music is symbolic ; knowl- edge is symbolic. They have power in stimulating the spiritual essence of man. In every religion music is embodied in liturgy, and knowledge in theology and esoteric philosophy. Through their activity the vibrations of spiritual truth affect the soul. One-sixteenth portion of effort widens the avenues of spiritual understanding, accelerates the manifes- tation of the intuitive, increases mental possibili- ties, strengthens the physical and develops spiritual power and control. The mind must affiliate itself with the necessary surroundings. It must develop the staying support of the imaginative. It must bring itself into harmony with the richness of symbolism. It must increase the emotional suscepti- bilities through the contemplation of sorrow, through the contemplation of joy, through passiveness to musical harmonies of sacred character. It must learn to sense the divine in all things. It must discover the methods of proper relation to the source of all per- ception and power, the infinite energy behind nature and consciousness. It must consciously perceive through the soul the essential illuminating Spirit. It must repeat the assertion: "Self is not mind, nor anything identified with mind. Self is not body, nor Man and His Shadow. 81 anything identified with body." In the ultimate, Spirit alone exists and, if reality and existence are to be accorded to aught else, it can only be through the everlasting Spirit. All these visions, fleeting and characterless, except through the understanding of soul, must be transposed. The mind must review it- self, not through a process of logical analysis, but through direct sight and discrimination of soul. It must realize that this manifold universe is a figment of the mind, that mind and matter have, by some unknowable process, become intermingled, and that through this mixture all these phantasms of relative existence and relative truth have meaning and char- acter. This line of thought is, to all appearances, outclassed by the question: "How did mind become mixed with nature ? How did the ever perfect soul become imperfect?" The only and final answer which can be given is the answer of unanswerable logic. A proposition beyond time, space and causa- tion cannot be formulated. Soul cannot deny the existence of soul. It asserts: "I am." Conscious- ness cannot analize consciousness because it is con- sciousness which is analyizing itself and subjective consciousness is eternally unanalizable. The un- analizable is one with the unanswerable question: "How did the universe originate? How did mind become mixed with matter ?" The proper question to ask is : "What is the soul ?" That, too, is unknow- able, because the finite expression of the soul is within the laws of space, time and causation. "How should this finite self know the Infinite Knower?" How, 82 Man and His Shadow. too, should the Infinite Knower, know the finite self? Busied with the endless procession of temporal wants and fleeting satisfactions, this lower self, caught within the cyclings of life and death, is too imperfect to comprehend the essence of the soul. The Infinite, the Holy and Perfect One is conscious only of Him- self, and in that consciousness is: "Existence Abso- lute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute." He is the Blissful One, the Omniscient One, He the Ancient, Unborn, Everlasting. This body comes, this mind goes, this personality changes, this individuality, to become perfect, must also go. All must be merged within the infinite ocean of pure existence and pure knowledge. All other aspiration is of the false ego, all other desire, the desire of selfishness, all other activity, the activity of the unworthy. The highest psychic power is passiveness to all power ; the highest knowledge, the passive knowledge of everlasting con- sciousness ; the highest joy, the bliss of the eternal. How weak is reason ! Kant has told us that there is a wall which conditions the ultimate activity of reason, preventing it from ever reaching beyond the perception and inference of the sensuous. Kant has told of transcendental values; of values beyond the senses; yea, even beyond the mind. In his exalted philosophy he has reunited reason and truth; reason and the meaning of the ethical ; reason and the use- fulness and gain of self -contemplation ; reason and the religious instinct; reason and the reality of the divine. But that fundamental system of thought which developed into the Vedas, which developed into Man and His Shadow. 83 the Zarathustrian Gathas, that system of thought which traversed the Orient into Greece and Rome, went farther even than Kant, for it developed the system of introspection to which Kant referred. If there are things beyond reason they must be sought out; if there are truths beyond sensuous perception, those truths must be learned; if there is the real man above this limited manifestaiion, then that man must be born to consciousness. If there is the divine, the depths of the soul must cry unto the depths of the divine for illumination and realization. How limited, how infantile, how utterly beneath are we ! Our true nature is the cosmic divine, the transcendent divine, the eternal, the beginningless and endless. Whipped as a dog, treated with contempt, the slave has only the consciousness of the slave, of his miserable lot, of his limited condition, of his weakness and disgrace, of his low place in the vast order of life. But when the slave gains his freedom, when his shackles are re- moved, then he no longer obeys the whims of a mas- ter ; the slave is transformed into a man, free to come and go as he will, free to do as he chooses. He may become successful in his business pursuit. He may acquire wealth. He may develop his intelligence through proper association and surrounding. In a short time what difference manifests in that man! All the difference in the world. That is just the case with each and every soul. Men are bound hand and foot, thrown, as it were, into this condition of imper- fect existence. They have lost sight of their true nature and grovel in the dust of desires incomparably 84 Man and His Shadow. beneath the nature of the pure and divine. Limita- tion upon limitation! This entire universe is a lim- itation which has been superimposed upon the soul. In what respect is the soul free ? Only as it associates the activity of the lower self with the activity of the law. In the law there is illimitable freedom. With- out the pale of the law is bondage, slavery, pain. The nature of the soul is law. The essence of the soul is law. When men blaspheme their natures they bear the curse, and that curse is the sad and miser- able side of life. Nature leads us through this in- definiteness of phenomenal life, showing us the un- worthiness, the nothingness, the emptiness of every- thing. She forms the material environment and cir- cumstances so the soul can transcend these shadows and falseness. She unfastens the chain of material bondage. When the soul has become worthy of such reward, she gives it command over the material and the lower phases of material life; she reveals the indescribable nature and power of the inner life, the life which is the true support of material life. From control of the material, she leads the soul to the understanding and control of the inner life. She shows the soul of what substance the mind is com- posed. She leads it to the understanding of the existential conditions of thought. She tells it the nat- ure of thought, the conditions of its activity, its in- fluence and its power. When the mind becomes ac- quainted with anything it controls it. After having come to a complete understanding of limited manifes- Man and His Shadow. 85 tation, after having gained control over it, after hav- ing absorbed that knowledge so that it is ever at our disposal, the soul attains to that superior understand- ing absorbed that knowledge so that it is ever at its glimpse of the beyond. The material sciences gain control over material energy by the force of persistent investigation. Persistent investigation and the discovery of tran- scendent life are not external, but introspective. All the knowledge of existence outside of the mind is of no avail. It may lead to some important inference, but it cannot explain the entire truth. For illumina- tion is not a matter of rational perception, but of intu- itive discrimination. The mind must see itself, the mind must explain itself. The Law takes the soul into familiar relationship, explaining all things and intro- ducing its perception in all the avenues of life and death. The Law is one ; the Law is truth ; the Law is life; the Law is Alpha and Omega. Within the boundaries of its activity all relative existence is con- trolled. Beyond the Law is the Unconditioned, the Perfect. Only those within the wheel are bound. Taking the axe of spiritual understanding, split the pole which holds and conditions the activity of the two wheels of duality. When the pole is split, the wheels circle a moment or so longer, and finally both cease. Then the soul has passed into that indiscern- ible of states, which cannot be described either by "Yes" or "No." In the realm of the finite everything is conditioned. Name is conditioned, form is conditioned, life is con- 86 Man and His Shadow. ditioncd. Names arc deceptive, in so far as they never fully convey the meaning of thought. There are thoughts which no words can adequately express. They are beyond the conscious mind, but the con- scious mind has a premonition of their character and import. Just as in certain efforts at memory the mind must become silent before it can remember, so many thoughts must be allowed to form in the sub- conscious mind. Trying to develop their character is equal to destroying them. Many take life in its surface appearance. But the surface appearance is conditioned through the subconscious element. All discovery, all invention, all genius, all revelation comes through the avenue of the subconscious and intuitive. Thoughts form beneath the surface of con- sciousness and then flash across the mind as a new truth, or as some material discovery. The intuitive or supernormal mind is the storehouse of all knowl- edge. When the soul enters into the superconscious realm, it is in relationship with the origin and forma- tion of objective knowledge. All knowledge has its source in the intuitive. Intuitive knowledge is potential. It is now involved. The aim is to get that knowledge evolved into personal perception, and into conscious understanding. This storehouse of endless knowledge must be opened. Consciousness must enter and discern truth. The mind proceeds to conquer the external by knowledge. With every acquisition, con- sciousness grows larger and the external smaller. After a great part of the way has been travelled, con- sciousness is the central fact, while the phenomenal Man and His Shadow. 87 constantly loses reality. Consciousness lias absorbed the phenomenal, proving that all things proceed from consciousness, that all things have significance only as interpreted through consciousness. If a man is physically separated from a portion of his property he would not, under any circumstance, claim that the property was not his. A portion of infinite conscious- ness is separated from the central consciousness, and regarded as individual. The severed portion is called the world of phenomena. As it grows in knowledge the soul discovers that the universe is within itself. The greatness of the lower self is in the existence of the higher Self, and that Self is beyond duality. Through the manifestation of that Self Its images are reckoned as many, when Self alone is. The mind, in its normal phases, is conditioned under the laws of time, space and causation as they affect this plane of life. But the mind is not exclus- ively conditioned by the activity of these laws. It can rise above them by concentration. In ordinary concentration when the mind pays attention to the things in which it is interested, time quickly flies. Surroundings are forgotten. The mind, absorbed, is unaware of other things. Conditioned into one wave- form, the mind suppresses the many other wave forms which flood it, when it is not strictly concentrated upon one given strain of thought. Time is conditioned through the meaning given it by consciousness. Its phases of duration and conscious value entirely de- pend on the significance which consciousness attaches. In the dream state a series of experiences may occur 88 Man and His Shadow. within the shortest space of time. Men have dreamed that they were soldiers on battlefields of long-pro- tracted wars. Men have dreamed they rose from obscurity to fame in time which would in reality require years, the dream occupying only a few seconds. This illustrates that for consciousness to appreciate realities needs but a flash of time. It explains how consciousness, independent of body, can travel to the most distant places, and become aware of experiences remote in time and distance. Thought is not bound by obstructions of the physical. Thought, composed of rarer material particles, is unmixed with the variations of the physical, surpasses them, con- trols and determines their activity. The thinker is the real man. Because of the desire of the real man to experience the sensuous existence of physical environment and relationship, he is placed in causal connection with the material plane through the instrumentality of physical and ethereal vibrations. But when the thinker grows into the knowledge that, in reality, he is free from the thraldom of the phys- ical, when he realizes that he is above it, if he so wishes to be, when he understands that all material vibrations are created by his wishes, that the thinker can regulate and distribute them to the best advan- tage, he can go beyond this particular plane of time, space and causation. He can divert consciousness to any condition desired. A person thinks of childhood days, of his home, and so on. Where is his con- sciousness ? It is where his memory is. Memory is not something separate from consciousness. It is Man and His Shadow. 89 an adaptation of consciousness to the past. In ratio to the quality and area of embraciveness of the memory is consciousness enabled to transpose it- self in the degree. Supposing that memory is perfect, then the entire consciousness can be rele- gated to the past. Distinctions between memory and consciousness are made, because as yet man is not conscious of the methods for perfecting the quali- ties of memory. Everything is consciousness, only there are different modes of its expression. When consciousness is in activity, it manifests as will. But the will is in no wise separate from consciousness. As all variations of consciousness are the same in essence, the development of any separate activity such as memory or intellect will have its general in- fluence. Consciousness is developed in its area of perception and in its expression. Through the unintermittent association of mind with body, con- sciousness is almost entirely concerned with phys- ical life and expression. When the mind ap- preciates the body in its proper relation to conscious- ness it transcends the limitations of the body and perceives facts and truths beyond the isolated phys- ical. It will perceive the all-important existence of the soul. The thinker will discover himself. He will come to appreciate that time, space and causation are conditioned by the largeness of perception of the ever sentient ego, that the ever sentient ego is alone the criterion of reality. In the struggle for those things which count in the summing up of perfection of character and the 90 Man aud His Shadow. development of consciousness, the soul ever has super- abundant help. The feet of the traveller are not likely to stray into the pathway of the erroneous, for his hands are held by the Lords of Being and his stay- ing support is the all-containing energy and fulness of intelligence behind nature which also form the essential and everlasting background of the soul. Though no one lent the soul support in the indivi- dual search after truth, there is always the Teacher within, ever ready to assist it in the hour of need. In its effort, the soul must be sincere, worthy in aspiration, determined in purpose, ever mindful of the larger truth. It must accentuate the higher, curb the lower, ultimately transforming it into the higher through proper association and environment. No man is alone in the highest sense. It is wicked to speak of weakness when infinite strength is our in- heritance. The soul relates itself to the highest, and the highest, in turn, reacts on the soul. When the emotions of man cry out, their objects are attracted and manifest. This is particularly true concerning the highest ideals, the soul and Spirit, It is all in ratio to the depth of desire and the development of consciousness, also to the depth of character and to the quality and activity of character. Man should be taught and know that he is superior to these many limitations. He must know that, instead of being slave to nature, he is lord and master. Conscious- ness cannot be limited. That is sufficient knowledge and truth. With the unfoldment of that knowledge and truth, man grows out of the man into the super- Man and His Shadow. 91 man ; from the superman he progresses into the nature of the godlike and the divine, and beyond that, beyond and beyond into that glory and sublimity which more and more brings into light the true nature and essence of man, and that is "Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute." STAGES OF PSYCHIC PROGRESS. CHAPTER V. STAGES OF PSYCHIC PROGRESS. Form of itself is nothing. Character, mind, soul, mental tendencies and inequalities are of sole im- portance. All that survives bodily disintegration is character; and the sum-total of any character is the sum-total of the consciousness which has given it expression. The mental element alone endures. All the lower principles of man disintegrate. The body decays after the accomplishment of the purpose of its manifestation. The desire element, together with the lower mind, are subject to change. The life of man is formed of mental conditions, and all mental con- ditions are equal to so many states of consciousness. Mental states and state of consciousness being equal their claim to immortality are equal. At death the mental status passes into the psychic plane. The prevalent idea is that death makes an important change in personality. That idea comes through wrong interpretation of after-death states. Orthodox religions have for centuries encouraged the idea of heaven and hell. Expressed in other words, they say that death takes changing personality and forever determines its after-death expression. Anything that continually changes in expression cannot become changeless. This idea is as erroneous as the accepted 96 Stages of Psychic Progress. idea of the origin of the soul. According to the ortho- dox conception, each soul has been specially created, that is, it had a beginning in time. It follows that each soul will have an end. But if the soul is above beginning and end, then only is it absolutely im- mortal ; it is eternal. Similarly, if the usually inter- preted idea of heaven and hell is illusionary, death finds the soul just as it was previous to death. Char- acter is the same immediately after death as before. It is in the persistence of consciousness that similar- ity and identity continue after death. There are no abrupt dividing lines in nature. Everything proceeds in natural order. The transition of physical into subjective life is not a sudden break. It is consistent with the laws of nature. Death is as natural as birth. Man comes into this world unconscious, he leaves it unconscious. When the final lease on life has ex- pired, the soul passes beyond in a comatose state. It awakens, sometimes aware of its condition and sur- roundings, sometimes not. If the spiritual faculties and intuitions are developed, the soul finds itself in the daylight of perception. If not, it is surrounded with the night of undeveloped perception. On the psychic plane consciousness manifests in the psychic order. The psychic order is more extensive than the physical, for it includes the latter. Those who have passed beyond still perceive the phenomena on the earth plane, just as the psychically evolved of the earth plane perceive conditions and phases of life on the psychic plane. The aim of psychic unfoldment is direct vision of truth. Spiritual unfoldment is the Stages of Psychic Progress. 97 evolution of consciousness from the plane of belief to the plane of knowledge. It is a state every soul must realize before it can truly say: "I have per- ceived the truth. I am one with the truth." As long as this unfoldment is potential, so long is truth only potential, and so long is the open vision closed. The soul must learn that the secret of knowledge is in the superior elements of its nature. The greatest service the soul can render itself is the transmission of spiritual knowledge in which the mystic name is communicated, in which the potential is manifested. This service was accorded the neophytes of old in sacred rites. It was the symbolism of Mithraic wor- ship, the symbolism of the Samothracian, Elusinian and Dodonian mysteries. This service is the full accomplishment of finite life, because it points to and finally reaches the goal of infinite life. It is the key to the mystic door of life and death, the significance and the explanation of the apparent perpetuity of the round of existences. It embodies severest discipline, deepest investigation, the most exalted of purposes, the finale of all effort. This service is work for the work's own sake. Passionless, patient, divine work is true work. "When persons are enthusiatic and over- whelmed with emotion, much energy is misdirected and lost. The highest enthusiasm is loftiness and determination of purpose and is born of exalted ideas and sympathies. The motive principle of all work is sincerity of ideas and feelings. The highest ideal is knowingly or unknowingly the ideal of each and every soul. Self is the embodiment of all idealism. The 98 Stages of Psychic Progress. sensitive soul is fully aware, however, that the ideal is far above rational consciousness. The mind, bur- dened with coarser material, cannot soar into the empyrean of ideals. All ideals, converge to one point. Unity is the soul of variety. Prom unity all things proceed ; into unity all things ultimately merge. The background of all separate ideals is the supreme ideal, and that supreme ideal is Self. This means that the ideal of all is one, having the same origin and the same goal of realization. When work is performed through desire to benefit, the benefit will come. If the soul relates itself to higher lives, it partakes of such union. If one worships, the True, the Good and the Beautiful, he gains in ratio to the strength and the lasting qualities of the motive principles which in- spire worship. But all this worship and effort of realizing lower ideals is vain in the light of the supreme ideal which can alone inspire the soul with true bliss. Philosophy, in its continuing develop- ment, has risen from primitive conceptions of many and varied ideals to the all-embraciveness of one ideal. That ideal has been variously named and variously appropriated. Different values have been placed on ideals as different phases of philosophy drew different ideals from the spiritual storehouse. Now this value has been superposed, now that. The ideal formerly cherished gives way to better and later conception. In its highest flights the mind discovers that all ideals are only variations of one ideal; that one ideal em- braces and explains all others. Stages of Psychic Progress. 99 The lower mind can never express the higher mind because, if such could be, the higher would come to the level of the lower, for things of equal character and import are expressed on the same plane of mani- festation. The supreme ideal can never be brought to the plane of the merely rational. Keason has its value, but not in proportion to the spir- itual object of reason. Before the mind can reach within its depths and perceive truth it must be in- spired by the highest of ideals, otherwise its work is relative and its gain will be relative. The idea is to transcend this relatively, to go direct to the meaning and light and life of all relativity, and that life and light and meaning can be had only by converting lower principles into their co-ordinating position so that their relative value is estimated. Separately taken, lower ideals can realize only the lower, and the lower shifts from the lower to the lower. It is a circle, and the circle is continuously expressing the nature of the circle and of the phenomenal. The inner value must be sought and adjusted to the intel- lect and consciousness. That is the real, passionless, pure, work which leads the soul to Self. The mind, to be single and simple, must become ad- justed to the highest wave-form. It must think of» one idea and desire the attainment of one specific ideal. The surface expression of the mind is indef- inite in variety, complex in nature, uneven in char- acter, uncontrolled in disposition, and influenced by fluctuations of desire. Thus the voice of the passion- less, supereminent Self is not quickly heard. To 100 Stages of Psychic Progress. center the mind and bring it under control of the soul, the latter must be inspired by spiritual insight and intelligence. Variety and unevenness of the mind is the source of unevenness of impulse and con- duct. Everything is the result of mind, everything the result of what we have thought, and what we will be is determined by the result of what we shall in the future think. Over the future we have perfect control, apart from the momentum of past influences. But will is superior to the binding force of all influence. Indeed, it is the will which controls the binding force of past deeds. Just as the will has imparted its strength to past acts, thus giving them form and char- acter , so the will can dispose of that strength by changing its current of expression. The will has made the soul what it is. The will is the condensa- tion and the specialization of the activity of con- sciousness into a given direction and area of prupose. There are various stages in the evolution of the will and in the attainment of singleness and simplicity of mind. There are various stages in the accomplish- ment of harmonious activity of the mind. The lofti- est height cannot be climbed in a single effort. It takes many efforts, but each ascent affords a new and more general view. Each effort enlarges the per- spective of the soul. The first of these developing stages is the satisfaction with regard to the existence of truth and the reality of the soul. Much is gained when the questionings of the mind have been silenced, when all doubts have vanished and the soul is estab- lished in its own light. Those things which come Stages of Psychic Progress. 101 under immediate sense perception we choose to call real. In the first stage of psychic unfoldment there is the actual sight, the actual hearing and actual feel- ing of supersensuous and superconscious realities. Peace, too, has taken its abode within the soul. The argumentative stage has vanished and spiritual qui- escense possesses the soul. No more reasoning now. The time has come for knowledge beyond reason. The soul has passed beyond the surface truth into full consciousness of realities that make belief worthy. When this first stage is reached the soul knows that the spiritual sun has risen and that the horizon of vision shall be increased by its gradual course. The second of these transcendent stages is that anything of a painful nature has lost its influ- ence. Pain comes through the association and iden- tification of the mind with the body. When the mind is abstracted from the body, by reason of intense interest or concentration, the body may be pricked with a needle and no sensation of pain follows. In concentration on higher orders of thought, expressing control and adjustment of physical and mental in- harmonies, the mind becomes indifferent to what may befall the physical. Truth has taken its abode in the body, and the vibrations of the physical harmonize with the vibrations of the spiritual. Spiritual vibra- tions have sanative values. Being in accordance with the highest interpretation of universal law their in- fluence is highly beneficial. The superior influence and conditions of the spiritual control the inequali- ties of bodily motions. This is manifest in Christian 102 Stages of Psychic Progress. Science, New Thought and in the Emanuel Move- ment. The psychological character of this influence is shown in the case of hypnotized persons diagnosing their diseases, and prescribing remedies. In hypnosis, the patient is brought to a consciousness of inner mental and bodily states through external suggestion. In spiritual unfoldment this introspection comes with advanced stages of individual control. The third stage in rendering the mind simple and single exists when it has recourse to the infinite energy and knowledge at its disposal, and is thus exalted above ordinary human nature. Ordinarily, man re- ceives knowledge through external investigation. In the stages of psychic control, there is no longer need for external investigation. There is but one fact necessary to investigate, the mind itself. In the lowest physical arrangement the instinctive, the conscious, the self-conscious, the mentality are only potential, but they are nevertheless existential. The divine is within everything. Omniscience re- sides in everything. These manifest, but the mani- festation is gradual in development. The spiritually developed have a mental consciousness of objects, whereas the average person has only a physical con- sciousness of them. As the soul grows apart from the physical it perceives the mental element of phenom- ena. I know a thing only when I have certain mental states concerning it. I know its qualities, and knowl- edge of qualities is purely mental. What, in fact, does the soul know of nature, as such ? Only its own mental consciousness. Instead of allowing an object Stages of Psychic Progress. 103 to stimulate mental consciouness through the me- dium of the physical, consciousness may approach its mental phases. Instead of being passive to the influence of external vibrations, the mind may become positive, and in this positiveness the con- sciousness of the object, its mental meaning and sym- bolism are perceived without the medium of the phys- ical. The mind knows a thing only when it has con- sciousness of its qualities. This consciousness is alone true. It is alone the meaning, the existence of the object, so far as the soul is concerned. Consciousness is informed of the qualities of an object through the activity of the nerve system. But the soul, above this universe of time, space and causation, is not limited to any separate portion of it or to only one medium of experience. The plane of the physical is not the boundary of the activity of the soul. The soul has no boundary. Why should it be limited to but one mode of perception? Why should this soul, which has manufactured this body and nerve system, be solely dependent on them for its relation to physical vibrations ? All physical vibrations have their ethereal, astral and mental counterparts. Why con- fine the attention of the mind to but one phase of this quadruple character of objective existence ? Psychic unfoldment brings the mind into cognizance of many things to which ordinary vision is blind. It teaches that this immense universe is only mental. For, out- side of the reflex activity of the mind to outer im- pulse, nothing concerning the universe is known. Something arouses the activity of the mind and 104: Stages of Psychic Progress. in this activity the mental consciousness of objective life is born. Busied with this reflex activity of the mind, the soul forgets its many other potential phases of activity. Men constantly limit their vision. It is we who have builded these bodies. How could it be otherwise ? We control the voluntary muscles of the body. The mind has influence not only over the voluntary muscles and vibrations, but also over the involuntary muscles. The involuntary muscles and vibrations were previously under conscious direction ; through habit they have become self-active and self- regulative. Nature is wasteful of no activity and therefore does not associate conscious activity over muscles and vibrations self-regulated, self-moving and self-controlled. Phases of consciousness, previously adapted to the control of involuntary muscles, now control voluntary muscles. With the evolution of psychic faculties, the scope of perception will be immeasurably increased. The psychic sight can be used, and its vision is penetrat- ing, and true. But as long as man is on the earth plane he must follow the law of the earth plane. It does not, however, hinder development of psychic sight, for psychic sight is not distinct from normal sight; it is simply the evolution and perfection of normal sight. The adept can, whenever he chooses, employ the psychic senses in better discrimination of physical relationships. The interests of the adept are purely spiritual, and his mental and psychical activi- ties in keeping with the exalted character of his pur- pose. That purpose is not the display of power or Stages of Psychic Progress. 105 the working of miracles, but realization of Self- knowledge and Self-consciousness. Psychic activity is of no more miraculous an order, or of mysterious origin than the activity of the physical. The only marvelousness is the marvelousness of soul. The second stage is the education of the lower principles, for then they are controlled, perfectly developed, and perfectly expressed. The third is the ultimate per- fection of this advanced evolution. Physical control is achieved; the mentality is passive to the whisper- ings of the intuitive and is spiritually related to omnis- cience. Intellectual assent and dissent are substituted by perfect perception. Objects are no longer investi- gated. Their mental and psychic essences are under- stood by the mind, now resident and active on the higher planes. The soul approximates the plane of true individuality. This is the natural state of the truly spiritually evolved. Whatever the mind approaches, with that it be- comes identified. The mind penetrates its surface and beneath the surface into its very depths, and therein finds its universe. It discovers that all mental conditions are variations of the same mental sub- stance, that manifoldness has orgin in the motions of one ultimate force. Through this discrimination the perception of ultimate mental unity develops. Even as varied states of mind are controlled, so the motions of the mental substance itself can be con- trolled. The soul commences to realize that the men- tal substance is the foundation of the activity of the mind, that all perception has its expression in and 106 Stages of Psychic Progress. through the motions of one condition. Explicitly stated, all phenomena have their origin in the mind, for perception is existentially an expression of con- sciousness. Clothed with mind, consciousness identi- fies itself with mind. It considers mind substance its essence when the mind is far from so being. Through this mode of investigation, the soul comes to the knowledge that it is free from the bond- age of the mind ; that it is self expressive ; that con- sciousness is its essence and not the essence of the mind; for all mental states are of the primal sub- stance. The mind, in seeking to control this sub- stance, becomes the lord of its desires and their ex- pression. Desires are normally formed through in- stinctive activity and are tributary to the mind. The mind, slave to desires, is incapable of formulating them for its best welfare, because past conditions and impressions cause it to flow into one specific mode. When the soul learns that all variations are in them- selves nothing, and that the true binding force is existential bondage of mind, it will place value and character only on the fundamental substance of the mind. The control of this substance will come ; when that comes all relativity vanishes. The soul comes into its own. It realizes Self. It understands that it alone is the true, it alone the beautiful, it alone the good. It will know that all else is falseness, that all else is illusion, that all else is ignorance. This state is the fourth state of spiritual attainment and is the supreme result of spiritual effort. Beyond this it is impossible to go. Infinity is beyond and Stages of Psychic Progress. 107 through all things, and this infinity of consciousness and of knowledge is reached when the soul throws off all mental shackles, when it unearths and destroys the very foundation of the mind. The mind is the sustaining element in all this illusion and indefinite series of birth and death. To it all the convolutions of relativity are to be as- cribed. To it are tributary all conditioned existence, all imperfection of manifestation, all exteriorisation of the soul, all apparent manifoldness, all lowness and all highness, all good and all evil, all light and all darkness. Beyond the mind is the eternal, un- changing and unchangeable essence of the soul. Be- yond all this is the ever free, the everlasting, un- qualified and unqualifying Self. It is the reality, the ever-knowing, the essence of bliss, the essence of truth, the essence of life and light. Perception of unassisted reason is confined with- in the limitations of sensuous existence. Mind, of itself, cannot even explain mind. Its lower phases are warped in the shadows of material density. They act on planes of inferior expression, conditioning in- ferior expression of character. Their power of re- sistance to lower vibrations is weak. That is why the mental is largely expressed through physical inter- relations. That is why the mind is related with the coarse movements of physical influences. There is no hope for the mind but in introspection. Intro- spection is the secret of this profound control of mind and body advancement, enlightment, inspira- tion, nameless width of consciousness and height of 108 Stages of Psychic Progress. Self-realization. By giving up phenomenal reality of mind, the soul is omniscient. By giving up finite existence, it becomes omniexistent. By relinquishing the things which seem, it realizes the things which are, and these things confirm the soul in that incon- ceivable peace of which it is written : "Beyond name and beyond form, beyond conception and beyond life and death am I. For I am Memnon. For I am Memnon. I am He that calleth upon the Dawn. Peace. Peace. Peace." From the fourth the soul proceeds to the fifth stage of spiritual progress. The fifth stage is freedom from all impediments, all vacillations of the mind, all mental struggles and difficulties. As the mental is in final control of physical expression this stage also implies that the soul is free from physical inequali- ties. It is above pain and danger. Mental and physical vibrations now move in rhythm; there is nothing discordant, nothing eccentric, nothing contra- vibrant. All the motions of the mind and of the body labor for the best possible expression of the entire personality. When such personalities come into the world, they embody the perfection of psychic control and spiritual harmony. The soul is limited only as its understanding is limited. It falls prey to various influences only as its imperfect development renders it inappreciative of the working factors of different inharmonies, only as it is incapable of regulating itself to the currents of respective vibrations. When it comes into knowl- edge of truth, it is free; when it appreciates things Stages of Psychic Progress. 109 at their true value, it can regulate their course of expression. That gives freedom from harmful in- fluences and changes the useless into the serviceable. That is the aim of psychic control, the perfect adapta- tion of influences to individual need. Pain can only crme through ignorance, for they are co-existent. Ignorance is the mother of all the shadows of life, all its vagaries and sorrows. Ignorance is the curse which can alone affect the soul, because the soul draws the veil of material darkness before Self. With the development of knowledge and its practical relation to exigencies of the soul, all ignorance dis- appears. Experience is for the aggrandizement of knowledge. Knowledge is serviceable only as it widens the emotional and sympathetic area. There is no better way of gaining health than in wishing health to others. There is no better way of becoming quiet than in wishing peace to others. What we give, we keep. What we hold fast, we lose. This paradox finds its truth in the fact that all things move in circles. What has a beginning returns to that be- ginning. It radiates its influence and then returns to the source. The source is the mind. The mind radiates peace, strength, joy to all life, and the response is according. The calm with which the mind sends the thought of calm into the universe, returns with added force and influence. This is the manner of harmonizing personal vibrations. The effort proceeds from the personality ; the result of the effort returns to the personality. For this reason many of the world's sages have daily repeated: 110 Stages of Psychic Progress. "Peace be unto all things. Let all beings be happy; let all beings be peacful ; let all beings be blissful." In saying this they turn to the four quarters of space. The influence of their holy desire is sent forth to all the planes of being and into all the different phases of life. The sixth accomplishment of psychic effort is deep- est penetration into the nature of the mind. All other accomplishments are less and have served only as leading to this supreme attainment. The mind is solvable into its casual elements; the instrument through which consciousness expresses itself is capa- ble of a disintegration. The mind has been the lamp apportioning the light of consciousness and reflecting its rays in the world of phenomena. The mind has been the conditioning factor through which objective life manifested. When the mind returns to its causal nature, all manifested life vanishes. The mind is the highest conduit for the manifestation of the soul. Yet the mind is formed out of the universal material constituting the background of all phenomena. The only difference is that the mind, composed of rarest conceivable material particles, is more durable than mightiest physical aggregations. The body is subject to destruction at each passing of the soul from life to life, but the mind is not. It changes and changes, and the various changes which it experiences reha- bilitates its essence and activity so that it is not destroyed when the body is destroyed. The same mind substance accompanies the soul through its many lives. The truth concerning the mind is easily Stages of Psychic Progress. Ill perceived when the soul realizes that the mind is not consciousness. That is the elementary fact in the education of psychic consciousness. Without it no great achievement is possible. Consciousness has rid itself of the notion that it is the body; it has also rid itself of the idea that it is the desire element. It is more difficult for consciousness to rid itself of the notion that it is not the mind, for consciousness is absorbed in mental activity. It requires deep philo- sophical concentration, deep psychic introspection, to arrive at a contrary understanding. Consciousness, in its final meaning, cannot be identified with the states of relative existence. The nature of conscious- ness is immeasurably superior to the nature of the mind. Just as the Infinite Being is none of the single states of relative mind, so no indefinite aggre- gation of such states could complete His infinite con- sciousness. The purpose of psychic effort is to know that the soul has nothing to do with these little claims of relative life. It is above them. To identify con- sciousness with separate mental states would mean that consciousness is on their level, that it is existen- tially imperfect and that is the greatest of untruths. At the bottom of this relative life stands the mind. By the mind is meant not only that relative mind which constitutes the working factor of normal brain consciousness, but also that indefiniteness of mental existence beyond and beneath normal brain conscious- ness. There are also those numberless phases of mind which give the necessary stimulus to the totality of potential existence reaching beyond this present mani- 112 Stages of Psychic Progress. festation into other manifestations beneath the sur- face and beyond any memory of the present. Even as the individual is working through the body, even as he digests his food, pumps the blood through the circulatory system and works the respiratory and other functional systems, even as he controls all the voluntary movements of the body, so the individual is also the author and dispenser of his mental ex- pression. Some speak of nature, but nature is a far- fetched word. One thing is certain; the mind has an all-potent influence on the body ; consciousness in- fluences the body. The mind may disturb the di- gestive system; it may even shatter the brain and kill the body. Mind-power is the radiation of the most forcibly expressive substance in the universe and mind is the instrument of consciousness. It ie consciousness which, through aeons of evolutionary progression, has built up this body and this bundle of nerves. It is consciousness which has built up this mind, allowing it fulness and variety of expression. In the beginning the mental substance existed in an homogenous manner. Each individual soul has ab- sorbed its respective portion of this substance, and in this absorption the homogenous mental substance became heterogenous. The mind is of itself non- existent. Its phenomenal existence is due to the con- ditioning of consciousness. Consciousness, as it were, externalizes itself. Through this externalisation the phenomenal world is born. As consciousness is ever free and unconditioned, so the separate expressions of consciousness enjoy a nominal independence from Stages of Psychic Progress. 113 other portions of consciousness and from the entirety of consciousness as such. But this independence is only seeming. When the mind finally understands that there is something superior to mind to which it is tributary, all these separate states lose their ap- parent individuality, fading into the uncncompassable and all-containing fulness of everlasting conscious- ness. The mind is the instrument of all mental expres- sion. It is the source of language and of thought. Yet each and every object, each and every thought, each and every mental expression, besides its mental meaning possesses a value in consciousness. This is what is meant in the statement that the soul is the essence of knowledge. The soul does not think. When it has attained to realization, it knows that it is the essence of thought. Being the essence of thought, it is equally the undivided essence of all things which come under the investigation of thought, and that is this entire universe. This thought leads to seventh and final and highest phase of psychic effort. Glory and power to him who is master of his nature, who is master of his mind, who is the master of the Law. Peace to him who has come out of the nature of man and in and out of the nature of the god into the consciousness of universal life and light. Such is the inconceivable state of the world-honored ones. They who have passed into and beyond Self are in essence nameless, blessed and formless. All this psychic effort has been for the purpose of show- 114 Stages of Psychic Progress. ing the soul its true nature. Nature has taught that body is not soul, that mind is not soul and that alone is soul which gives character and life and meaning to relative life. Nature has taught that thought is matter, that everything from thought down is con- ditioned. He who has seen the truth is free. He who has realized truth, is blessed. He who merges his nature into the nature of truth, is the truth, the way and the life. The goal of life is eternal life ; the result of all effort, the fruition of eternal peace and bliss. Beyond all relativity, beyond the largest and the smallest, consciousness is transcendent. It no longer identifies itself with mind or body. It is alone concerned with the enjoyment of eternal beati- tude. But this beatitude must not be construed as being the reward of finite effort. That is impossible. There is no eternal heaven for temporal effort. The soul is only relatively free, even in the abodes of merit whither the disincarnate go. The heavens of merit are passing. The Christ said: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." Truth is unchangeable and everlasting. Truth must flood the soul with its all-saving power before the soul can call itself divine. Science and reason have corrected endless errors in sense per- ception. Unassisted by the light of science, men would still be calling the earth flat, the moon self- luminating, the sky a solid vault, the stars, small points of light. The mind, to accomplish the best results and to understand the nature of the senses, should concentrate upon these errors, for thereby a Stages of Psychic Progress. 115 proper value of sense life is had. "A wise man sees so many false things in those which are called true; so many disgusting things in those which are called pleasant ; and so much misery in what is called happi- ness, that he turns away with disgust." In the high- est of positions, in the most exalted phases of being, the soul sees nothing but transiency and misery. Misery is the shadow which pursues pleasure. Pleas- ure is ephemeral and desire is ever born anew. Nothing , indeed, can satisfy the everlasting soul but the revelation of its own nature. The soul goes through all the infinite variations of relative life in its search after happiness and realizes that happiness is not to be found anywhere save in its innermost nature. Desire is expressed in, "May this be mine" in, "May I not be this." In this expression the mind is enslaved. The soul is essentially above all wants. It is self-sufficient because it is all-pervading and all- containing. The soul does not cry for anything. Being all in all it wishes nothing of separate char- acter or condition. To rid itself of these vagaries, these airy nothings of the senses, the soul must apply the method of discrimination. Then it knows that it is existentially different from the objects of the senses and that it is their conditioning factor. In all the categories of sensuous existence the soul realizes that Spirit, the soul of the soul, is not to be classified. The soul, entranced by the vision of Self, can say, "This is Spirit." Otherwise it cannot say that anything is Spirit, for Spirit is above all finite things. In realiz- ation the soul knows : "I am that which manifests the 116 Stages of Psychic Progress. operations of the understanding. I am the eye-wit- ness of the understanding. Yet am I different from the understanding. I am the all-pervading. I am the unchangeable. I am the ever-living." There are many ways of conceiving the conditions of the finite in its relations to the Infinite and the relations of the Infinite to the finite. One of the most lucid interpretations is the symbolism of the jar. The jar of the soul has form through Spirit which faces to all the quarters of space. The vacuum in the jar is the vacuum of Spirit. Truly the relations be- tween Spirit and the universe are subtile. The source and the sustaining element of the jar is Spirit. At dissolution the jar resolves into its causal elements. Thus the abiding and ultimate reality of sub- stance is Spirit. As the spider weaves its web from the very substance of its body, so Spirit, from Its own substance, has spun this universe. "In Him we live and move and have our being." Spirit of itself neither moves nor changes. All these external motions, so seemingly real, come under the heading of the operations of the understanding. Reality im- plies unchangeableness. This cannot be said of the world of phenomena. Consequently the soul alone is to be meditated upon, its realization to be desired, its light alone to shine forth. "He shining, every- thing else shines." In separation is misery; in separation, separate existence. The identification of soul with the various adjectives of relative manifestation is the cause of bondage. Such adjectives are expressive of joy, grief, Stages of Psychic Progress. 117 anger, desire, infatuation, inebriation, envy, self-im- portance, covetousness, sleep, indolence, lust and other passions. As stated in the Sankhya Sara, Sec. 9, soul must affirm: "I am all-pervading, pacific, the total of pure spirit, pure, the inconceivable, simple life, pure vacuum, undecayable, unmixed, boundless, without qualities, untroubled, unchangeable, the mir- ror in which all is seen,* and through my union to all souls, the displayer of all things. Not being different in nature, I am every living creature, from Brahma, Vishnu, and Maheswara, down to inanimate matter. I and all living creatures are one (in essence) ; like the vacuum we are life ; therefore we are taught to medi- tate on spirit as one." All these qualities of Spirit have each a boundless significance. The qualities in the operations of the understanding also have their appropriate significance, for herein are expressed the wide latitudes extant between the man of attainment and the man of illusion. Equality, misapplied in the realm of politics and philosophy, has meaning when ascribed to the essence of Spirit, one and all-uniting. In the recognition of spiritual inequality a large per cent, of the mind's vain operations are to be classified. It is the nature of the mind to struggle to reach a level beyond it and this is the origin of ambition. Spirit is neither high nor low. There is but One "Who is high. In ambition discord is born and discord breeds eccentricity of emotions constituting the immoral. The thought of spiritual unity and equality instils a transcendent love for all mani- festations of Spirit, for the entire universe. The 118 Stages of Psychic Progress. most miserable and the seemingly most unworthy are folded close beneath the soft wings of the divine motherhood of Spirit. The innumerable variations of social life are nothingnesses in the supreme vision of Spirit. They are vacuum-formed and vacuum- lived. They are like shadows on the crystal sea of existence, which does not in essence change, though the shadows are numberless and prodigious. The understanding, with its operations, is as a dancer changing her appearance, costume and pantomime with each shade of technique. The understanding, simple in essence and activity, loses its simplicity, be- coming complex through association and identification with physical, mental and psychic life. To return to that pristine simplicity to and the pure existence of Spirit is the task which lies before each soul. The mighty, unbroken flow of consciousness must stream through all the obstacles of material and mental existence into the depths of universal knowledge, existence and beatitude. The actor assumes various animal skins, impersonating the habits and instincts of different animals. It is an impersonation. The understanding adopts all these various impersona- tions, and it is these impersonations which qualify the soul in the belief of manifold existence. The existential features of Spirit are eternality, intelligence and happiness. These are the character- istics of truth and reality. They are expressive of the unconditioned, of the absolute, of the free and of the infinite. The soul has been proceeding forward and forward into manifestation. It is time to recede. Stages of Psychic Progress. 119 Before it is nothing but the desert of opinion, the desert of change, the desert of desire, the desert of sorrow. Before it is the wilderness of complexity, of quality, of mirages. Falsehood and hypocrisy have lighted their lamps and claim self-illumination. They are the ignis fatuus which lights the way of the foolish and ignorant. The source of true light is the source of truth itself, the essence of truth, the glory of truth, the all-encompassing beauty, sublimity, om- niscience and omnipotence of truth. That which in its very nature is illusory, cannot be called real. It cannot be said that illusion is either real or unreal. Real it is in a phenomenal sense. Beyond phenomena, it is essentially unreal. There- fore we can say neither aye nor nay. When one comes into the light and into the truth, the darkness of ignorance is scattered, the radiant sun of truth shines, the day of understanding and of direct perception has dawned. He no longer is bound. He is free, Freedom is now his nature. He is all-knowing. Om niscience is now his nature. He is perfect. Perfec tion is the essence of divinity, and the soul is divine When truth shines forth, error has taken flight, Relative truth is to ignorance as a brilliant light is to a waste of darkness. But all-containing truth is like a sea of light, and beyond that sea is nothing, for the sea is present in every shade and phase, — an ocean of universal light. The mental spectrum is a bright and clear mirror on which all knowledge is re- flected according to the will and the disposition of the soul. Illusion and wisdom may be compared to the 120 Stages of Psychic Progress. blindness of some animals. Take, for exampie, the owl. In the glory of the sunlight the owl is blind. To the owl, the light of day is darkness. The night, the darkness, is its condition of sight. Similarly many see only in the night of ignorance and super- stition and are blind in the very presence of all radi- ant light. Our birth-right is the upper world, the world which is the reality of all worlds, the world of the day, the world of intelligence. As long as men sojourn in the midst of darkness and in this vale of tears they cannot expect any glimpse of truth beyond the outermost phases of this condition. Selfishness and ignorance are co-existent. The one is comple- ment to the other. Ignorance gives so much import- ance to this fleeting ego which constantly repeats : "I am small. I am sick. I am weak. I am conditioned. I am great. I am happy. I am this or I am that." The condition of this illusion is oneness. Differen- tiated and individualized it appears as many, resem- bling the one sun mirrored as many in various pools of water. Universalized, this illusion is the potential and active energy of the Supreme. Individualized, this illusion is the potential and active energy of the individual souls. The state of activity is ever the state of imperfection, finiteness, instability and uneven- ness. The state of potentiality, is the condition of the highest power, truth and intelligence. To bring this state of activity into a condition of silence, bring this ever-chagning state into a state of immutability, this discordance into a condition of perpetual har- mony, is the business of life. Xo matter if we fail Stages of Psychic Progress. 121 in this particular life. The ideal may be realized in another life. Progression is in never looking too far ahead, nor behind. The very end and aim of psychic effort is the plac- ing of full importance where it is needed. The full importance of mental states must be realized. That is the secret of all this bodily and mental activity. It is not alone the secret of these things, but of all the phenomena in the universe. Knowing one piece of clay, the entire nature of clay is known. Acquainted with the qualities of the mind, we know the mind itself ; in other words, we become knowers of this uni- verse. All is the variation of one mind-substance. Gaining control of this is gaining control of the entire personality. In the midst of ignorance, the soul, blessed with realization, shines forth. Yet there are few who appreciate the light of the Perfect Ones. Clothed with physical vesture, men are incapable of discerning the hidden power and bliss, knowledge and divine essence of Him who has entered into the innermost sanctuary of his nature, who has reached through and through himself and found in the veriest depths of his own soul that light and life which he exteriorised and worshipped as God. There is no God but He Who is the real essence of man; no divine essence, but the divine essence of the soul of man. No worship is to be paid except to him who is the Self of the self of man. Disbelief in God is not so bad as disbelief in one's self. Man can believe in God only by first believing in himself. Belief in the sanctity, the divinity, the immortality of its 122 Stages of Psychic Progress. nature, will exalt the soul. Spirit becomes meaning- ful and transcendent in the light of true self-appre- ciation. Without the complete renovation of antiquated ideas concerning the nature of mind, without giving up the old and inconsequential idea of the influence and form of thought, we can never hope to get much beyond the exterior perception with which the mind is normally concerned. It is well enough to adapt the mind to symbols, but deeper than symbolism and its effect on the imaginative and emotional faculties is the conscious perception of truth and its effect of calm and peace, self-conquest and control, psychic knowledge and power on the soul. The pathway to the Ideal leads beyond the Ideal into realism of mar- velous unfoldment, and beyond this, into the very constituencies of soul, its mystery and the solution of its mystery. PHYSICAL KELATIONS. CHAPTEE VI. PHYSICAL RELATIONS. In the contemplation of physical unfoldment, the mind is awe-struck with the solemnity of existence. There is nothing but life, life infinite and eternal, endless, nameless and unspeakable, and these innu- merable lives are but variations of that infinite life which stands back of every separate life as its vivify- ing center and sustaining source. All are as wavelets in the vast, unindividualized, impersonal ocean of existence. The universal, all-pervading life has its first individualization in the manifestation of un- thinkable numbers of individual particles, projections of its substance, the essence of light and heat. These partializations are the supplying source of atomic and molecular life. These are the real builders of the universe, supplying the composing substance through which form takes expression. All life, all manifesta- tion, from the largest sun to the minutest atom, has its "soul" in the soul of all material substrate, the vivifying central life. In a physical sense, the great condensations of matter, as suns, are absorbing more of this central life than other bodies. Then, too, more of those "fiery" lives, the first differentiation of homogenous substance, are acting upon these vast bodies, giving them radiance, brilliance and stupen- 126 Physical Relations. dousness of form. Each physical form or condition has its peculiar method of absorbing this central life. The vast bodies obtain their sustenance and abiding power from the "fiery" lives direct. The subordinate bodies, which these larger bodies rule, obtain their formation by severance from the larger bodies. Then these subordinate bodies exteriorize their potential vitality, and undifferentiated vitality commences dif- ferentiating itself, continues and continues. Again, the differentiated particles continue to distribute themselves becoming ancestors to other differentiated particles. This condition endures and endures until the vitality has spent its last manifesting force. There, then, commences the re-absorption of all this force, the disintegration of evolution. The differen- tiated becomes gradually less and less differentiated, continuing and continuing until the absolutely homo- genous, from which all differentiation was specialized, is reached. It is the beginning, the drawing and the closing of the circle, composed of numberless smaller circles, all revolving within the major circle. This is the story of manifestation of terrestrial life. In this differentiation is included the manifestation of form, human, animal, vegetal, mineral, and chem- ical. All proceed from the evolution of a severed portion of a sun. This severance is brought about by the over-crowded activity of too many "fiery" lives. The heat they impart, by the centripetal and centrif- ugal process, reaches a definite point of condensation, when the aggregated mass can no longer hold together its constituent parts, and a portion or portions fall Physical Eolations. 127 asunder, giving birth to worlds which come under its province of heat, motion and light. That is the story of the solar system. This departure from the study of sense perception is necessary, in order to show the freedom of soul from bondage of matter, and to show the non-existence of matter, a truth which bears direct and important relation to sense perception, because it tells what all this which the senses perceive is — nothing. If the senses perceive anything in the outer arrangement it can be life and life only. All individualizations of matter are projections of intelligence and life. What we believe to be the sun is the exteriorization of the substance of a supreme being, an archangel, one of the great Lords of Life. All these stars and suns, all these solar bodies are cosmic intelligences who have dominion over subordinate planets and impart life and light to them. The earth is a spirit from whose soul substance all the lives on earth proceed. But this is going beyond the immediate phase of this dis- cussion. All that the senses perceive is unreal. The ques- tion arises, what, then, is this which falls within the area of perception ? It is a delusion. The question arises, how and why is this delusion ? That question is unanswerable. It is as impossible of analysis as Self. The only solution is that in the essence of the soul all externality lies, as the self-generated cause and effect. In all sense perception, there is an afferent and an efferent action. In this the nervous system is the 128 Physical Eolations. conditioning factor. I am looking at a painting. The outer stimuli are presented to the mind through the action of afferent nerves. The sensory nerves carry the image to the brain and in the reac- tion of the brain, it is held, the painting has origin. There is no painting on the wall. All that we know of the external condition is what our sensa- tions tell us, and our sensations are internal and have a mental connection. In spiritual philosophy, this universe is in the mind. There are, of course, certain laws which cause the mind to receive any number of specialized sensations in a special order. Not alone that, but these specialized sensations are specialized and perceived by a number of intelligences in the same order. Now, how is this? This law which particularizes sensations so that they are carried to a number of minds in the same order is conditioned by what are called "planes of being." Planes of being are certain states of consciousness of a special varia- bleness through which sensations are received in same- ness and unity of order. Still there is a certain vari- ableness which allows the conditioned in any special state to receive sensations in a particular degree of intensity, some feeling them more than others, some getting more out of sensations than others. All be- ings resident on the same plane have similar cogni- zance of sensation. This order of sense perception is the dividing point between Self and the cosmos, Self and the physical. The mind, occupied with its own findings, pays at- tention to them, with the result that farther vision is Physical Relations. 129 excluded and it centralizes, enlarges and determines only one aspect of this universal variableness, the outer physical. There are states beyond the physical of which the mind is unaware, because of its blind- ness to aught save its particular physical vision. The mind must loosen this pronouncement of effort and vision, and allow it to turn into other channels of dis- cernment. The physical has its purpose and its value in the cosmic order, and in the relation of Self to the cosmic order. Yet it is not the all in all; it is not the only viewpoint of universal existence. The mind is always either undervaluing or overvaluing its re- lations to the external. The physical is indirectly bound to the soul ; it has a religious importance out- side of its own immediate sphere of activity, for body, mind, psychic nature and the soul are indistinguish- ably interrelated and co-operative in activity. They have an influence upon each other and, through each other, upon themselves. Everything in life is in- separably blended with everything. Everything is dependent upon everything. Everything is so consti- tuted as to have a gravitative direction and influence on everything else. This is relevant to everything in the physical arrangement. It is relevant to every- thing appertaining to the psychic order and the psychic spheres. Nothing in nature stands by itself. It exists only through an infinite contrast with all other phenomena. So it is with the attraction of body, soul and mind. During the early stages of de- velopment, the soul progresses only as the body is regulated under certain prescriptions. The body is 130 Physical Relations. highly organized and possesses great influence over man's nature because all the energies and activities of the mind have unintermittently had the body as their field. This control on the part of the physical has to be substituted by mental control and psychic control. The initial step is to bring the body under the sway of the mind by regulating its desires and so bring the physical under the dominion of natural law. The idea is to make the body relatively independent by narrowing the range of its wants and necessities. Many of the so-called necessities of life are no neces- sities whatever. Compare the physical requirements of the savage with the requirements of civilized man. The simple life can never be a success unless the mind becomes more primitive in want and desire. The great teachers of psychic control were adepts in this revaluation of physical need. They did not in- hibit the functions of the body by inanition. They took no starvation course, but adapted themselves to the requirements of natural law as applied to the human body. They did not carry their obedience to natural harmony to the the point of indiscrimination or fanaticism. They were simply at oneness with nature. They knew the value of attending to bodily need. No true teacher will publicly teach the indis- criminate practice of celibacy or of long fasting or any of the many other forms of asceticism. These things are well enough for ascetics who have enough determination of will to overcome the body. To preach physical torture is to preach bodily and psychic insanity. Did the Christ preach and teach fanati- Physical Relations. 131 cism to the public? He did preach what might be understood as fanaticism if applied to the public, but, happily, His ascetic preaching was solely directed to His apostles and disciples. True, one who wishes to outdistance the normal path of psychic progression and believes himself possessed of enough will-power to master ascetic practices can obtain perfect control of the body by limiting its wants to the outer order of life sustainment. But this should be done under the supervision of a living teacher, acquainted with physical qualities of endurance and the indraw- ing and outbreathing of the life-force. Much of this bodily control can be had through the Delsarte system of expression. This system is a very imper- fect imitation of the grand Yoga systems of the Orient, particularly the Hatha Yoga, or the Yoga referring to the control of the body. This body yoga has nothing to do with religion. It simply paves the way to conscious control of the involuntary muscles of the body and the rebirth of atrophied parts. This signals the liberation of the body from disease, for the master in these psycho-physical practices can, by certain movements of the body, regulate the action of the gastric juices, the motion of the heart and the general function of the digestive and circulatory systems. Control of these centers of physical activity enables the practitioner to throw abnormal tendencies into the sphere of normality and, not only that, but to increase the abiding condition and qualities of these functions to a point where they become super- latively even in their regulation and movement. Sick- 132 Physical Relations. ness is the result of the conflict of bodily motions; health, their perfect adjustment. In any effort to progress in a psychic manner, it is positively neces- sary to maintain an equilibrium of the forces working in the body. The seeker after truth cannot be ham- pered in his psychic unfoldment by any physical in- harmony. Physical inharmony has a tendency to pull down the mind and to hinder it from proper concen- tration. We have instances where men of great moral and mental stamina have achieved spiritual and psychic greatness while laboring under great physical stress, but the instances are rare. That is why, in all systems which have Self-knowledge for their cen- tral basis, there is, first of all, a physical method proposed by which the physical can become thoroughly self-established and self -active, regular in condition and motion. But the goal of all effort must not be confused with physical well-being. It has little, if anything, to do with it. If well-being and the regu- larity of motion of physical forces were the sum total of all effort, then the tree and the stone are religious. Our day is a day of healers and healing. Religion is intimately related to mental therapeutics. Until the upholders of these religio-therapeutic cults turn their attention to religion and place sanatative values in their true meaning, they are not firmly established. The body is a mass of sentiency supervised by presid- ing consciousness. At death the consciousness recedes to the immediately subjective plane, the psychic plane, and the body appears to be activeless, lifeless and motionless. The very contrary is true. Never Physical Relations. 133 is the body in such a high state of activity as at dis- integration. Disintegration is as specialized a motion of life as the organic activities continuously carried on while the body is inhabited by consciousness. This disintegration is a whirl of manifestation. Con- sciousness is the controlling energy of life, drawing the internal and external activities of the body within the sphere of its conscious and sub-conscious desire. When consciousness is withdrawn all the cell-lives, all atomic and molecular lives lose their integrated character and become a seething vortex of uncon- trolled lives. They no longer work in regular order. They have become segregated and the body which was formed through their co-ordinate activity, gradually dissolves as these minute lives associate themselves with the respective bodily, vegetal or mineral sub- stance for which their activity calls. "Death is but another aspect of life, and the destruction of one material is but a prelude to the building up of an- other." Our bodies are a mass of life, appearing in- organic because of the limited sense of vision, which, unassisted by microscopic instruments, is unable to detect the aggregated infinitesimal lives which form separate cells. Men cannot readily understand how all that is presumed to be inorganic is, in reality, highly constituted life, imperceptible to normal vi- sion. All that science can do is to approve the aeon- old theories of spiritual science. The theory of atomic life was once ridiculed as impossible. Now it is the very basis of bacteriology and that department of medicine which deals with parasitic and blood dis- 134 Physical Relations. cases. Until recently it was thought that bacteria and other lives which were discovered in the body were "abnormal visitors" and the cause of disease. They were identified as disease germs. Now, however, more concerning them is known. Not only are there disease germs in the body, but armies and armies of health germs which labor for the upbuilding and pro- vidence of the body. Cicatrices on wounds, scars, callosities and kindred physical conditions are the work of these armies of life savers. There is always this duality, this struggle between health and disease microbes, and we can assist the former by adapting our bodily habits so that they can more readily and more effectively do the work of restoration and the fighting-off of disease. If we recover from serious illness, we have not only our physician to thank, but also these innumerable and infinitesimal workers who are always at work in our behalf. If we become masters in psychic control or if we become self-con- trolled through the concentrative method, we can immeasurably aid these little lives whose existence is occupied with the arrangement of our lives. Esotericism, more alive to truth than the high material science, recognizes life in every form and condition of the universal order. It sees a life in the fire, in the water, in the earth, in the air, everywhere. It sees individualized lives in the numberless atoms which form these elements. Life is a marvel of marvels, an ever-recurring wonder, an everlasting procession of life eternal. Those who pride them- selves on our modern-day sciences are as children in Physical Relations. 135 comparison with those men who thought out things ages before there was human habitation in the lands of Europe. There is nothing new under the sun. All acquired knoweldge is only a new presenta- tion of truths older than time itself. For all truth, like all life, is eternal. The physical control which the culture of Self- knowledge imposes is far beyond the classification of any health cult. It is more psychological than thera- peutical. It is mental rather than physical. The aim of Self-knowledge is knowledge of every condi- tion which bears any relation to the higher interests of the soul. Control must be exercised from the ground up, so to speak. Everything that pertains to the personality must be properly adjusted and bal- anced. The higher harmonies are always based on the lower, and the climax of attainment is the climax of all the harmonies which, in degree of growth and circumference, make the summit of harmony. The ultimum of attainment through Self-knowledge may be compared to a grand symphony, when every varia- tion of sound is perfectly interblended, when every note is true and every modulation, the acme of technical perfection. The physical must not be un- derestimated. It, too, has its relation to the whole and, in the whole, even to the Self. The Self, as it were, reaches in and through all its outer garments of expression, reaches the physical and gives it the vivifying touch by which it throws off impurity, placing itself in accord with the Law and preparing the foundation, solid and well constructed, on which 136 Physical Eelations. the Self rears the marvelous structure of its power, and perfection. All preachers of truth, all inter- preters of the higher teachings, had a worthy con- ception of the body, and of the interrelation of the Self and the physical. In speaking of the body, they call it "the temple" of the Self. They say that eat- ing, drinking, sleeping and the many pursuits of physical necessities are not to be suppressed. Every motion, every act, if turned into the proper channel of expression and directed to the Self, becomes divine in meaning and in efficacy. Everything belongs to the all-containing Self. Nothing exists besides it Therefore, in a relative sense, the physical and the body are to be considered as belongings of the Ideal. In that light their activity can never become misdi- rected. It can never manifest the low or inverted order. If the body is hungry or cold or suffering any discomfort the sage attends to the need, knowing that if the body is in any way discommoded it is no longer a perfect manifesting conduit for the phys- ical and terrestrial expression of Self. The student of spiritual matters is anxious to give the body such food and such physical comfort as will enable it to do the greatest amount of service. Perfect service is the work of all conditions, the manifested action of inner harmony. In relation to purity of food, the scriptures of various nations differ as to the nature of pure food. The Bible, for example, particularly the Old Testament, denounces the use of swine's flesh. In this a wise physiological providence is discerned; it was hygienic advice. In a country like Judaea Physical Relations. 137 pork is the last food permissible. Its indiscrim- inate use would result in digestive disorder and manifold trouble. The Mohammedans condemn pork for the same reason. They also condemn every kind of liquor because in that climate, liquors have harmful influence. With the spread of Christian- ity this rigid adherence of abstinence from pork relaxed. It goes to show that the New Testament preached to the inhabitants of colder lands, changed in this regard from the Old Testament, owing to the difference in climatic and temperamental surroundings. The Arabian and the German or the Norwegian live in separate spheres of physical relationship. What would be food for the one would be poison for the other. Meat is not a tropical food, but in cold regions it is a physical re- quirement. The fat substance and the animal stimu- lus of food are essential in the temperate zone, especially in its upper region. There is nothing sin- ful in the eating of meat. Meat is vitalized vegetal matter. In the end, all energy and life force, and matter which supplies physical vitality comes from the sun. The vegetal kingdom receives its life and life material from the sun in a direct manner. The herbivorous animals live upon the vegetal kingdom. The carnivorous animals live upon flesh, and all, directly or indirectly, get subsistence from the sun. The East Indians have alone transposed a psycho- spiritual meaning in food regulation and prescription. They did not confine abstinence solely to pork, but to meat as such. The reason given was, that all life 138 Physical Relations. being one, it is sacred, and inviolable irrespective of form. Another and still deeper significance attached itself. Animal foods, being the most indirect of all sun-produced foods, were purveyors of impurities. The idea is that the more the body obtains food and life supply direct from the sun, the more is it in natural harmony and the elements of the body are purer. Animal food is coarse and, therefore, little of it should be eaten. The religious teacher does not say: "Thou shalt not eat meat." He only advises that it is rather indiscriminate to indulge in it, to accustom the appetite to its taste, and make it a mat- ter of habit. If there is the want for meat, if it is necessary for bodily sustenance, the thing to do is to eat meat. All this seems strange to those who do not understand the psychology of food. "What we are is largely the result of food. Food produces various humors which affect the body, and from food tem- perament largely develops. The elephant is herbiv- orous; it is also gentle. Its size would apparently make it formidable, but size has nothing to do with temper. It is a matter of food. The lion lives on meat; it is dangerous. This is likewise true of all the cat and canine tribes. To bring this closer to mind, examine the processes of digestion. We eat bread and the digestive process takes the substances which compose bread and converts them into blood, muscle, bone, tissue and vitality. The same holds good of meat. The digestive processes take the sub- stances of the meat — that is the vitality, the essence, the tissue, the bones, the muscle — and convert these Physical Relations. 139 into bodily sustenance. This brings the idea clearly and forcibly to mind. There is nothing sentimental or emotional about dietetics. It is really sanative and hygienic. It is psychological, and only the ignorant will cast any slur on the idea. All spiritual thought is based on careful empiricism, on minute study of physical details. It does not bind the will. It educates and allows the individual to determine and choose. It is not in compulsion that perfection is had, but in knowledge and discrimination between what is right and what is wrong. The Self is free, and if the lower self is to attain to oneness with the higher Self then it too must be free. If it goes astray, if it desires to tread the dubious path, well and good. It inevitably must turn back and know and do better. The soul must awaken to truth ; other- wise there is little merit to right conduct performed because wrong conduct is unknown. It is easy enough to be moral when one is far removed from temptation and does not know its meaning. If one wishes to eat meat, he is at liberty to do so. He is at liberty to do whatsoever he pleases. Experience will be his teacher and in the end truth will prevail. There is always danger that the mind, concentrated upon certain things, will fall short of others. There are those who believe spirituality to consist in ad- herence to outward form. These worship form, not for the meaning of the form, but because of the form itself. This is idolatry and is psychologically un- wholesome. One side of such natures is distorted. We need only consider the Turk. The Turk is a prac- 140 Physical Relations. tical prohibitionist, but he is a sexual esthete. Moham- med was farseeing. He told his followers they must not eat pork or drink stimulants, but wives they could have to the number of four. One does not have to look very far for the cause of this code. Polygamy is an essential element in rapid production. It formed one of the more radical methods for the propagation of the Mohammedan faith, more certain even than conversion by sword. The celestial habitations of the Mohammedan faith partook of the same sexual savor which spiced the earthly life of the follower, only the sense pleasures were vivified. This is the danger of specialization in the moral code, the over- emphasis of one mandate to the exclusion of others. The practical consequences of this condition are enor- mous. It is witnessed in the decadence of the Mo- hammedan race and its backward position in the progress of civilization. Wrong stimulus may have its good effect in the beginning, but it is disastrous in the end. It is not enough that one element must be controlled and the rest allowed to run riot. All the physical elements must be mastered and their service directed to spiritual attainment. That is the secret, not only of religious and psychic progress, but also of social progress. The physical, when controlled, allows a greater field for the action and control of mind. It shows the mind its self-sufficiency, that it is not bound by physical limitations. Mind is inclusive of body. Mind manufactures body. Out of thought-material the body becomes concretized. The necessity is to Physical Relations. 141 concede intelligence to the sphere of intelligence, to the mind ; to know that the body is only the body, only an instrument, and that the aim and purpose of bodily comfort is only to render it useful for the higher life. There is no intelligence in the body. Intelli- gence of the mind resident in the body lends seem- ing intelligence to the body. The body is not dull, lifeless and inert, but a mass of instinctive intelli- gence of myriad lives which co-ordinate into a cell; of unthinkable myriad lives which form the number- less cells of body, building up the organs, tissue, bone and muscular structure. Intelligence alone is real; only in the distinctions of intelligence is substance recognized. Where men cannot discern intelligence they speak of substance, but what is substance ? Here is a layer of life strata and they call it human intelli- gence. But indefinitely above and beneath this ter- restrial strata are numberless other strata, spheres or planes of being. By the vivification of the senses super-physical spheres may be discerned and their intelligences communed with. Beyond the animal strata of being is the vegetal. The vegetal is no longer considered destitute of life. Men are apt to give too flimsy and narrow a meaning to the word "life." They call only those things alive which move and breathe. Botanists are now assured that vegetal forms communicate. Where sensitiveness is con- cerned, what is more sensitive than a sensitive plant ? It is alive with sensitiveness, and sensitiveness is the manifestation of life, real and active. The roses and the lilies, the violets and the pansies are alive, having 142 Physical Relations. the tactual sense remarkably developed. It may seem somewhat sentimental to assert that flowers are re- sponsive to human love and care, nevertheless it is known that some flowers quickly wither if worn by certain people. This is a deep occult truth. The physical life of flowers, their fragile vitality, is quickly absorbed by persons of coarse vitality, whose very presence seems detrimental to flowers. Others can care for flowers and they remain in bloom for days. Those who are responsive to the sensitiveness of flowers will not carelessly pass one thrown on the street to wither and die. This shows us the livingness of the vegetal king- dom. Flowers seem to be only visions of material beauty, when in reality they are visions of the eternal beauty of life. The chemical kingdom is also a mass of life. Limited in sense perception and in that sensitiveness which overlaps the boundary of normal feeling, one cannot readily see life in chemicals, but the universe is constructed of chemicals. If there is life manifest in the concretely physical, life must also exist in chemical compositions out of which the physical universe is formed. It is a deep, deep study and the more the study, the greater the marvel. Nat- ure is a revelry of life, filled with life to complete- ness. A particle of water does not look like a world of life in itself, but to the millions of animalculae who inhabit it, it is a world of vast dimension. There is no substance. All is life, throbbing life. "What appears to be matter exists only through normal vision which fails to discern the infinitely invisible Physical Relations. 143 life, cognizing only the outward condensation of that life in bulk. Beyond the terrestrial sphere are the psychic worlds, again all life and the manifestation of life. As the microscope presents a vision of the indefinitely small, so the psychometres and the instru- ments of psychic discoveries relate the physical to the psychic worlds, revealing life, infinite, all-pervading, illimitable, inconceivable, omnipresent life. The vastness of the cosmos with its innumerable phe- nomena is, when rightly perceived, but a replica, vast and pregnant, of the greatness of Self. Man is by far greater than all this physical greatness of dimen- sion and bulk and most important in the universal order, for all material existence and form is depend- ent on the expression and determining influence of the individual. Insight into the importance and relation of the physical, demands intuitive perception. It takes lives of continued effort for a single science to evolve. The science of language has developed with the patience, investigation and perseverance of hundreds of in- dividual lives. So, in the summary of individual un- derstanding of Self and the physical, it requires re- peated individual lives of effort to realize truth. But, if persisted in, the end is sure. MOKAL KELATIONS. CHAPTEE VII. MOEAL RELATIONS. The responsibility to life each individual owes is the preservation of the sacredness and wholesomeness of life, so far as it lies within his control to check retrogressive influences. Each person is the custodian of the individualized force, constituting his nature. According to the fluctuations and the rhythm of in- dividual life is its wholesomeness and evolution de- termined. Each particle of the great sea has its influence upon the sum total of waters. One cannot disturb a particle, but what the entire sea must re- adjust itself. So it is with the infinite ocean of existence. The various inharmonies of individual lives have wide effect. Each and every thought, each and every attitude of personal life has its latitude of collective influence. Even as in the material order, an insignificant atom has tremendous activity, so the slightest variation of thought has a wide area of influence. The disturbance of matter in the potential order will cause the potential to become kinetic, to manifest. The disturbance of the minutest particle of the psychic element will disturb the whole constitu- tion of the individual. For this reason is self-control a necessity. It is good to obey the moral law, not because of any reward here or hereafter, but because 148 Moral Relations. by adjusting desires, thoughts, and emotions to moral law, men harmonize their individual life forces, and acquire self-mastery. Regenerate characteristics are stimuli to evolution. They serve not only to direct the mind into higher forms of co-ordination and activ- ity, but also have important bearing on physical mal- adjustments, rearranging discordant elements, and bringing them into their sphere of usefulness. Moral- ity has nothing to do with sentimentalism ; it has everything to do with mental and physical sanity, with the specialization of factors conducive to the aggrandizement of individuality, to the perfection of sensibilities, and the manifestation of potential facul- ties and talents. Morality is a solid, concrete, power- ful force capable of producing radical results. Proper moral attitudes are vibrant with the strength of re- sistance. Virtue may, as a poet says, "often arise from sated desire," but it may also exist through lack of temptation. Many are virtuous because they have never had the opportunity to be otherwise. It is not in shunning evil that moral strength is manifested, but in overcoming spiritual lethargy in the very pres- ence of passion. Virtue comes not from inexperience but through multitudes of experiences ; as the climax of the relations between the soul and desire and pas- sion. It is only when the mind realizes the vanity of things that their experience and pleasure become negative to consciousness. The untutored and unin- formed soul "kisses the mouth of sin" unawares of the ominous significance. The average mind has but an instipctive and a conventional moral consciousness. Moral Relations. 149 That is why, in the processes of evolution, various conditions develop to stem or change the tide of public understanding of morality. The moral element has meaning in the harmony of individual constituents. It manifests in relegating instincts to their proper sphere, and in changing in- verted instincts into modes of serviceability. The moral has significance in the sympathetic. Sympathy and moral consciousness are co-existent. Consider the meaning of the word and its derivation. The root is in the Greek noua "pathos/' which means feeling, and in "sun" the Greek preposition with. Thus "with feeling" is the meaning of sympathy. If one sympathizes with the sorrow of a friend, he does so in ratio to his sensitiveness to the vibrations causing the sorrow of his friend. Similarly with joyous sympathy. Morally applied, sympathy is the har- mony of consciousness with evolved instincts and emo- tions. Men of spiritual sympathies feel the harmony of the higher and the discord of the lower, and revolt at the latter and adapt themselves to the former. When feeling is beautiful in conception, it no longer contains itself, but flows from the heart as a filled vessel overflows. It is then truly great, and its in- fluence is truly healing and restorative. Whenever such sympathy is applied to the miseries of others, redemption follows in its wake. That is the meaning of the redemption by the "Son of Man." The Christ was transfigured with sympathy for man, enslaved in ignorance and prey to each retrogressive influence. Sympathy naturally develops love. Redemption was 150 Moral Relation . not due to any desire to save humanity from the rigorous and exacting justice of a vengeful deity. It was the natural outcome of a great love. Great lovers of humanity are active workers in changing the course of stagnant expression. Their activity is the triumph of a developed moral comprehen- sion. The meaning of natural evolution is moral. All effort at variation of form and specialization of force has deep vital meaning. The achievement of nobler channels of expression, the development of better modes of manifestation has a mental and psychic bearing in keeping with physical evo- lution. There is a biological and evolutionary idea in many of the truths interpreted by religious dogma. The central facts of the chemical and biolog- ical sciences have always been known. Our modern science is only re-discovering ancient truths. The public receives its scientific information in different forms. It is generally interpreted in practical values, and that is the essential in the education of public opinion. Science unearths different laws and dis- coveries and applies them in the practical course of scientific education. Knowledge must turn into serv- iceableness before it has any than a purely theoretical value. Practicality is the value of theory. Theory, if well founded, aims at practicality. Scientific truth was delivered in ancient times through religious sym- bolism and mythology. The priests were not only cus- todians of moral truth, but equally custodians of his- toric and scientific truth. The people were illiterate, therefore truth could be interpreted to them only Moral Relations. 151 through the imaginative process. In the beginning, this interpretation was perfect and in harmony with truth, but, in time, the priestly caste neglected its original responsibility and intellectual pursuit. The religious interpretation of truth became solely myth- ological and symbolistic. Thus the latter was exclu- sively dwelt on and, in time, became the distinguish- ing features of orthodox religion. Scientific pursuits were inherited by worthy exponents of secular life. Then misunderstanding, bitterness and struggle arose between the sectarian and the religious interpretation of truth, but this was rather characteristic of religious growth in the Occident than in the Orient. The re- ligious sages of the Orient were allowed liberty of expression and of thought. Sectarianism, persecu- tion and intolerance, strange to say, were and are even now unknown in those lands where the religious instinct has been most developed and cultivated. In- tellectual freedom is the condition of true religious growth. ~No true teacher instils the idea of blind faith. Such faith is pernicious. Religion and science must unite their forces even as they did in the begin- ning, when the priestly was also the intellectual caste. We are not far from this blending of sectarian and religious truth, for truth is ever one without a second and all followers of truth are priests in their respec- tive way. The spreading of truth is the spreading of evolutionary tendencies and impulses. The practical teacher of truth is always a true teacher though his voice sound in the market-places of existence and as great as the religious teacher, surrounded with the 152 Moral Relations. paraphernalia of religion, its symbolism, color, and its variations of musical and poetic harmony. The primitive teacher had no temple but the temple of nature, no dome but the empyrean, no language but the simplest, no song but the eternal praise of the heart, no liturgy but unexampled beauty of conduct, no symbolism but the mystic relation between the idealist and the ideal. The purveyor of scientific truth, generally speaking, is bound heart and soul to the finding and spreading of truth. His life is mental. His physical wants are few. The mystic of science and the mystic of religion can readily join hands. Rid of bias, they can together tread the path to nobler things. Spiritual philosophy is the aesthetic outcome of material research, and in no wise dis- tinct. The genesis of man, the formation of the earth, all that geology and biology have discovered is but second-hand knowledge. "There is nothing new under the sun." The astronomical and mythological conceptions of the ancient Aryans smybolize and agree with the scientific facts of to-day. Knowledge evolves through lower forms and experience. Every- thing, so to speak, goes through cycles, many times repeating itself. Repetition increases the natural tendency to preservation of type. There are many associations which can only be rendered stable through indefinite repetition. The development of unselfish emotions required unthinkable aeons. Returning to the idea that the most evolved of modern ideas is but the re-echoing of ancient science, we recall the atomic theory of the origin of the cosmos held by several of Moral Relations. 153 the Greek philosophical schools. To arrive at the atomic theory of cosmic evolution necessitates an ex- perimental investigation into the chemical nature of things. Speculative knowledge is based on experi- mental investigation. So when the Greeks, or the Vaiseshika, or the Nyaya thinkers of India reasoned concerning the atomic theory, there must either have for ages been prevalent the belief, based upon experi- mental investigation, or else these philosophers un- earthed that discovery for themselves. Many labor under the impression that the philosophical systems of antiquity were radically imperfect by reason of a lack of practical scientific support. A little inquiry into the nature and growth of these philosophies will reassure us of the scientific foundation upon which they were based. In the disruption of the civiliza- tion of the ancient world many things of paramount importance were lost. The double burning of the Alexandrian library, the devastation of Christian and Mohammedan literary and scientific treasures by Christian and Mohammedan zealots had incalculably destructive influence on scientific achievements of the past. Relative to the subject under discussion was the ruthless burning of the archives of pre-historic Mexican and Peruvian civilizations, the destruction of hieroglyphic tablets and picture scripts which might have given us important knowledge of the character and civilization of pre-historic America. Inestimably much scientific lore of the ancient world was swept into oblivion by the usurpation, ignorance and superstition of the dark ages following the Chris- 154: Moral Relations. tiauization of the provinces of the Roman empire. Cicero says that in his day telescopes were in use that enabled them to plainly distinguish the pillars of Her- cules, now the Straits of Gibraltar, when viewed from the city of Syracuse. We can but pause astonished by the engineering feats of the Egyptians in constructing the pyramids. The mechanical secret of the building of the pyramids, as well as the geometrical knowledge that afforded the mathematical basis for their design, are forever lost. The greatest of modern engineering achievements do not diminish the lustre of the engi- neering feats of the ancients. Other great accom- plishments of ancient engineering skill were the build- ing of the Roman roads and the constructions of the Roman aqueducts, particularly that of the Cloaca Maxima. The ancients based their philosophy on the scientific attainments of past epochs. Their philos- ophy was on a par with their artistic and literary culture. Strange it is, that, in spite of the modern boast of superiority, we are still borrowing rhetorical standards from the Greeks and Romans, still plagia- rizing artistic culture from the inimitable Greeks, and only just discovering the science of psychology which was perfectly understood and applied centuries ago in ancient India. The pre-eminent significance of wholesomeness of character is the transmission of that wholesomeness. Degeneracy of character has its synthetic value in the entire personality and, as the avenue of reincarna- tion is through personality, gross characters on this plane of life can be conduits only of gross physical Moral Relations. 155 reincarnation. Their children are instinctively re- trogressive and readily adjust themselves to low en- vironment. With proper parental equilibrium, much of the misery of the world would be eradicated. There may arise as many eugenic associations as pos- sible, but it is only with the growth of individual un- derstanding that any relief can be had. The follow- ing of borrowed suggestions can only lead to paradox- ical results. That is the flaw in radical reforms. Individual growth will be the redeeming factor in social disturbances and in individual need. The in- dividual is the only salvation to the individual. He must appreciate the tremendous responsibility paren- tal life imposes and awaken to the sense of duties which call for moral perfection, not for selfish rea- sons, but for purity of hereditary transmission. Many are like children with the responsibility of giant char- acters. The performance of duties to posterity re- quires moral development. We fail to realize for what purpose we are on this plane of being. Instinc- tively, men are followers of impulse, regardless to what ends thoughtless conduct leads. Duty to pos- terity is not so much physical as mental and psychical. The physical is, at its best, only a poor counterpart of the characteristics of the thinker. The mental forms and forces which proceed from the will of the thinker are the true determining factors of physical expression. When all correspondences of personality are equal, posterity is assured as to beauty and fruit- age of expression. Where there is an overlapping, either of good or evil, descendants run short of pater- 156 Moral Relations. rial standards. A highly-keyed personality, whose con- sciousness is rather on the mental than on the desire plane, absorbs too much vital force in personal expres- sion to enable his descendants to properly partake of parental, mental or personal advantages of parents. This explains why men of calibre often have descend- ants far beneath their personal level. We find the sons of Caesar and Cicero unknown and inconsequen- tial save for their illustrious parentage. Too much vitality has gone in the maintenance of personal equi- librium. Men with high-pitched ambitions, men with high-strung temperaments are absorbers of their own life-forces and thus have little to transmit to posterity. The control of the finer forces of our nature is also the control of the moral element and the element of wholesomeness of progeny. It is also, and more espe- cially, the factor through which the individual is him- self perfected, harmonized in nature, and brought under control of higher influences. The personality is given greater area of expression, a wider field of activity, a greater evolutionary course. Personality is composed of various discordant elements, and it is in this discordance of vibratory influences and cir- cumstances that personality changes and develops. Personality must be tempered ; the discordances must be equalized into one unifying condition, and that condition is the state of psychic control. Psychic control is the control of the finer forces of our nature. And what are these finer forces? They are the residuum of past impressions and influences which have subsided beyond the plane of consciousness, but Moral Relations. 157 which are still vibrant and effective. These finer forces are strange in their activity. They form the fundamental essence of passions. When a person says: "I am angry," a great deal more is implied than is supposed. A state of anger assumes definite form only in the plane of normal consciousness; be- neath that plane it has resemblance to atomic ele- ments. Gaining control of these "psychic atoms," so to speak, is gaining control of states of normal con- sciousness. An aggregation of thought is as vastly dis- tinct from unconditioned consciousness as the body. Just as identification of the real ego with the body is radically erroneous, so the identification of the soul with mental conditions is wrong. The soul is not any separate state of thought nor any aggregate of separate states. It is free and unconditioned. As the soul associates itself with mental and physical phenomena, it identifies itself with them. Anger is a mental condition. It has nothing to do with the pure and unchangeable soul. Just as the physical world is the storehouse of material forms, so there is a mental world which serves as the storehouse for mental forms. Mental forms are only physical forms of rarer com- position that are invisible to the corporeal eye and intangible to the senses. The mind, in psychic vision, can distinguish this mental world, its forms, vibra- tions and influences, and thus realize the mistake of identifying itself with mental forms. The mind, encased in the flesh, is naturally occupied with phys- ical realities, but once its nature is known, or more discovered concerning its activity, a spiritual insight 158 Moral Relations. develops which will afford clear perception of the finer forces. Back of our personal nature is the weight of the lives past and the influence of those lives vibrate with tremendous potency. Men find themselves urged to different expressions of conduct, willy nilly. They seem to have no control over conditions changing the current of their lives. Such conditions are the habits formed and regulated by numberless acts in past lives. The method of mastering these forces is through the medium of opposites, by arousing con- trary states in the mind. The constant practice of such acts as these states represent will form an oppos- ing force against the compelling influence beneath consciousness. All subconscious activity was once in the dominion of conscious control. When any- thing passes beneath the plane of consciousness it is not essentially different than it was in the conscious area. It has simply become fine and potential. Each and every thought is another link in that chain which must be severed ere the soul can breathe the pure atmosphere of Spirit. Good and evil, pleasure and pain, all these and their resemblances have no purpose, save the transformation of character. Char- acter, in reality, is consciousness in the normal ; it is also the functioning of consciousness beneath the plane of the normal. Subconscious forces and vibra- tions are partial influences of character, each striv- ing for mastery over the others. Single of these psychic elements of character formulate into varied aggregations. Some have the character of anger, of gross passion, some of covetousness and different Moral Relations. 150 forms of selfishness, and so on. Some also have the character of hope, of patience, of perservance, of strength, of truthfulness, and various forms of virtue. Good and evil, with all their variations, are in the mental world, existing on higher or lower planes. The meaning of personality can thus be understood in the nature, quality and power of character. Quali- fied by duality and manifoldness, the mind is the foundation and the area of every expression. Into this network of the mind the soul has placed itself. The aim is to extricate itself from this network of illu- sion. Just as long as the real "I" is identified with anger, with fear, with weakness, with hope, or with any of the distinctions of good or evil, just so long- is the mind the recurrent inheritor of physical bond- age. This world is a great school. The child does not question concerning the construction of the school. It does not know the builder or the building condi- tions under which it was erected. All he knows is that he has his lessons to learn, that if he learns them he will be rewarded, and that if he fails to learn them he will be punished. We have our duties before us. We know that if we pursue a certain course it will be inevitably followed by pain. We also know that if we pursue another course it will bring us peace and reward. The very first lesson to be learned is that pleasure and pain are in themselves relative that they lack meaning outside of their value in developing new and more inclusive ideals of character. Character, however, is only incidental to further enlightment. Character 160 Moral Relations. leads us through the various experiences of terrestrial life, reincarnating the soul time and again and, finally, revealing to it the divinity of its nature. The evolution of character carries us from primitive moral concepts to the highest, and back of each character is the entirety of this evolution. All come through the chaos of the beginnings, upward and upward, until the very highest climax is reached, the develop- ment and the perfection of human nature. Innumer- able human lives develop the character of the potential god. The god-like character reincarnates until, through the vison of the god, a faint glimpse is caught of the final realization of the omniscient, om- nipresent, solely existent Supreme, the soul of the human, of the animal, of the god, of the lowest of creatures. Charcater is another method of attainment. It is the development of the best of the elements of human nature. These high sounding names, pregnant with psychic unfoldment, are simply different names for character. All moral effort is effort at psychic con- trol. It is the relinquishment of the lower for the everlasting Self. It is the real assertion of developed individuality expresed in the realization of the adept. Every effort of self-control is an effort in the final realization of that wisdom which can alone redeem the soul from the cycle of ignorance and superstition. Therefore, whosoever minimizes the importance of character in the evolution of spiritual consciousness, blasphemes his own nature. Before the higher can be reached, the lower must have been Moral Relations. 161 and that lower is the instinctive and the selfish self, the self of appetites and physical desires. The passing of the lower is the education of the human self, and the human is the reflection of the divine. All self -repression performed for the sake of Self, all extinction of the lower for the higher, all sacrifice and sorrow undergone for the sake of the soul is real- ized in normal culture. This is the secret of morality which few who delve in metaphyscial abstraction dis- cover. There is always this danger in reasoning in universals that particulars are lost sight of, and par- ticulars are as weighty as the highest embracive con- cept. Particulars may lose their meaning and iden- tity when absorbed into the final thesis, but, consid- ered in themselves, their importance is definite. The identity with the Supreme, the realization in con- sciousness of the divinity of the soul transcend all finiteness. One cannot say: "Such a state is this," or, "Such a state is that." It is neither good nor evil, for it is beyond these as beyond all relativities. Such a state is inconceivable and unknowable to the human mind. It is knowable only to those whose strength of purpose has carried them beyond the lim- itations of the human mind into the perception of essential truth and life. The sincere philosopher keeps pace with his convictions. No one who is aware of its poison, approaches a venomous snake. Neither will the true philosopher, who sees unity in all, one- ness in manifoldness, who recognizes the existence of infinite intelligence and the infinite presence of the Supreme, violate his convictions by infringing the 162 Moral Relations. moral code. "Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto Me," said one of the greatest of the children of men. Belief is truest belief, only when supported by the heart. Long is the way of darkness, and dense the night of ignorance. Steep is the upward ascent from the primeval, and the light which illumines the early path is feeble. The way is paved with the forms of body and the forms of mind, and thought is as gross as matter, for it is all grossness in comparison, with the rareness, the super-fineness, the aesthetic beauty of Spirit. All that is gross belongs to the order of illusion. Illusion is the mother of night and night, the habitation of the ignorant. Most terrible of the terrible is this illusion, for it is the mother of all terror, of the terrors of birth and death, of the things which seems hopeful and the things which seem hope- less. The veil of indiscrimination blinds the vison ; the light is not seen, nor is its kindly influence felt. The sacrificial knife has been raised and the victim is sacrificed on the Altar of Darkness to the Primeval Mother, the Mother of Re-current Terror. There is much wailing and much woe for all the things which are false, because of their appearance of Truth. The Truth alone is self -established, for the Truth does not change, and the Truth leads. The dawn of deliverance is the signal for redemp- tion. The Voice of Truth is the Voice of the Silence. The awakening of the moral is the morning of de- liverance, and its keeping brings the seeker into the unclouded day of Spirit. There is more truth than Moral Kelations. 163 is known, and there is more truth in the truth which is already known. The quest of truth is the business of soul and, if tthe soul rightly relates itself, it can expect the fullest revelation of truth. Nothing new can be said. The truth is the same, and has ever been the same, only its aspects are new, only its definitions suited to time and necessity. The ever- living truth is ever the saving truth. The truth is eternally one, essentially ever-present, essentially em- bodying the exalted principle of omniscience. He who has seen the truth becomes possessed of the truth, becomes one with the truth. In this sense, truth is separate in meaning from its ordinary significance, for it is the spirit of truth above all formulas, the spirit which interprets truth and guides its dispensa- tions. "When it is night to all beings, then is the man of self-control awake: when all beings are awake, then is the night of the man of knowledge." The man of self-control, of moral stamina is ever on the look-out against those very things with which men are most occupied, and for those things which seem so pleasing to most men, he is least concerned. His day is their night, their night, his day. Their knowledge is his ignorance; their ignorance, his knowledge. Out of the night of spiritual darkness duality comes forth ; out of the day of spiritual knowl- edge come unity and the consciousness of unity. Morality has special influence apart from the eth- ical. It has a sanitary influence, and that is practical. It is the practical adaptation of truth to life wherein its consistency shines forth and, in this respect, the 164 Moral Relations. practical influence of morality is that it gives tone and freedom to natural growth and expression. It harmonizes discordant phyiscal vibrations and unifies conditions when proper activity depends on unity. A little reflection on the nature of ethical demands presents a clear insight into the respective social and sanative conditions brought about by obedience to them. The breaking of the moral code is the breaking of natural law. All excesses or the practice of conduct leading to excesses are unhealthy, as well as immoral. This affords new views of many things, which, dif- ferently considered, lose relation and significance. When men realize that different practices disturb physical equilibrium, they will at least appreciate the uses of the Law, even if they fail to follow it. The Law is not short sighted. At times it is simply rendered, and men imagine the truth as something far-fetched and fanciful, but the wisdom is real, as its practical application verifies. We are often blindly led by desire into paths seemingly strewn with pleasures, w r hen, in reality, they are bordered with pain. Many deeds are "like goodly apples rotten at the heart." We are beguiled by the sophisms of desire. The moral has value, again, in that it is protective. The immoral is injurious. When we do wrong it is our- selves whom we injure. The influence of conduct may extend to others, but the individual reaction is of far greater consequence. This idea, thoroughly established in consciousness, would inhibit the com- mittal of many a crime. As it is, men believe they Moral Relations. 165 are pleasing themselves when they are frequently causing themselves illnesss and sorrow as a result of thoughtless conduct. It is like a sphere. The pre- senting side of the sphere seems pleasing and promis- ing, but the opposite side is dark and foreboding. The personality turns the presenting side about to obtain a more complete view, and the dark side shows itself. That is the meaning of immorality. When we are immoral, we are our worst enemies. As the soul evolves, it discovers that it has neither friend nor enemy, but that its own acts attract good and evil conditions. The soul, in this, is absolutely free. Within its own depths lies the power to evoke bliss or pain, and as most persons are in ignorance of how to arouse the hidden forces of the soul, they measure out pain to themselves, although their purpose is self-pleasure. Pain and repeated pain follows, be- cause the soul has not as yet developed the discrimi- nation which distinguishes between the things which truly make for pleasure and the things which cause pain. The appearances of things deceive and will always deceive. The eye of the mind must train itself to see beneath the surface and to distinguish the germ of pain in the heart of seeming pleasure. There is no happiness in immoral or in selfish acts. Inordinate passion leads to mental and physical ruin. The drain on nervous energy is a robbing of the vital stamina. Passion is the perversion of natural desire. The fire and fever of inordinate desire consumes the mental and psychic forces, disturbs the instinctive life and destroys the conditions for spiritual harmony and 166 Moral Eelations. j)rogrcss. In these things lie the interpretation and the logical consistency of right conduct. Right should be enacted not for any sake, but for the sake of right. To be morally right is to be physically and mentally adjusted; it means the harmony and perfect equilib- rium of personality. Man's responsibility during the sojourn on earth is the perfection of personality, and personality can be rendered perfect only by con- trolling its various principles. This presents a worthy attitude in relation to justice and truth. True, there is a humanitarian, an unselfish and an evolutionary motive for doing right, but the greatest motive is self- perfection. It is not in verbal assent to moral codes and in their intellectual support that good is done, but in actual, daily practice. Practice of moral demands will open the door of spiritual knowledge. If we are true to ourselves and develop the very best within us, it follows that we can then be false to no man. We should be moral, because it is unhealthy to be other- wise. Some of the passions are directly telling upon the organs and functions of the body. Anger can cause the rupture of blood vessels and disturbs the proper action of the liver; fear will cause nervous prostration, often death. Jealousy and grief also have their effects on the body. Cases are frequently recorded where infants have died as the result of nursing the mother's milk, poisoned by her sudden and violent anger. The nervous and functional troubles arising through inverted desires and emotions are numerous, and often chronic and mortal. There- Moral Relations. 1G7 fore, even from a physical point of view, too much stress cannot be laid on the uses of morality. Moral- ity will not be regarded much longer under a dogmatic or purely religious heading. The time is fast ap- proaching when the morally afflicted will be placed in the same standing as the physically afflicted, and treated and cared for. Advanced surgeons are already performing operations upon children of abnormal ten- dencies and, in frequent instances, complete cures are brought about. There is deeper value and importance attached to the conditions of the morally afflicted, for they are no longer considered wicked, but sick and, as sick persons, need medical or surgical attention. Under the heading of immorality may be included all such insanities as morbid worries of whatever descrip- tion. Responsible persons have no right to worry. It is sinful. It tends to self-depreciation and to weakness, and weakness is the only original sin. Morbid fears deplete vitality. Worry is as much of a sin as any numbered in the decalogues of religions. The most important influence of worry is its tendency to self-destruction. There are more ways to the sui- cide's grave than the sudden, fitful self-destruction almost daily witnessed. There is the self-murder arriving at its purpose by circuitous paths, and of these are worry and passion. In the mind of Him who wots of all things, the person who drinks him- self to the tomb, or slays himself through mad pas- sions, is as guilty of suicide as he who deliberately places the revolver to his head and shoots the bullet which sends him into eternity. This is another value 168 Moral Relations. of morality, the value of responsibility. The results which this responsibility carries are more terrorsome than the wildest fancies of hell, for unlike hell they are real and cruel. It is only through pain that ex- perience is gained, and often that pain is bitterest. Experience is knowledge in the nut-shell, not dry, scholastic learning, but the conscious appreciation of the values of life. It is often a hard drilling. The pursuer of passion, fettered by the iron chain of habit, has a hard time bursting the links of vice. Yet it all lies in the educated will, which must be aroused into activity and determination of purpose. Then the con- quest is easy, but this arousing of the will is far from the mind of the immoral man. He cannot school his mind to the necessary renunciation; so pain and misery compel him. When a man realizes danger from a certain direction he will not follow the line. The stricken soul must come to the practical realiza- tion of the danger and the suffering following the practice of evil conduct and absorb into consciousness the experience of pain. Then only can reform be hoped for. Then the will arises equal to the task of conquest over moral infirmities. Then the man can take a new hold on himself, uniting the lower with the higher Self. Men are their own executioners. There is no god who punishes. Who shall punish the soul in its nature essentially divine ? The essence of the soul is the essence of the Law. The Law and the individual are one. Therefore it is the individual himself who inflicts his own punishment. Unac- quainted with the vital truth and with that discrimi- Moral Kelations. 169 nation which distinguishes between good and evil, the soul pursues the mad course of desire, satisfies the cravings of the lower self and thus comes to misfor- tune. Each and every channel of imperfect expres- sion has to be reconstructed. Each discord must be brought to harmony, until the entire nature of per- sonality is well related. The only duty in life is the transformation of evil into good habits. In the per- fection of character is the perfection of personality, and in the perfection of the personality is the growth of the real individual ; and the perfection of the indi- vidual is the discovery of the soul and its identity with the Supreme. The soul is a magnet, attracting to itself everything and anything which it desires. Attractive forces at- tract to themselves only those conditions which are harmonious with their natures. This harmony often becomes inverted and the attraction and the result are, accordingly, inverted. One thing, which, prac- tically applied, is the greatest curse or blessing, is the knowledge that nothing can affect us from outside, that nothing outside of our own nature can impose anything upon us. If someone robs us, it is we who are robbing ourselves. If someone cuts our throat, it is we who are cutting our own throat. If we are illy born and physically deformed, we have ourselves to thank. iSTo one but ourselves is to blame. We are the masters of our fate and the architects of our destiny. In our hands lies the future, perhaps not the immedi- ate future, for that is already determined by past deeds, yet that, though not radically changeable, can 170 Moral Relations. be bettered by the resolve to live harmoniously. Once the will has been educated and aroused, there is no end to its transforming power for good. Nothing can prevent its currents of expression. It is all in the will to be. We are so much concerned with the will to have. The manifestation of the will to have is the root of all selfishness and inversion of character. The will to be leads to exalted heights, transforms the miserable into the divine, changes the currents of evil into good, develops the inner faculties and powers of Spirit, leads to Self-knowledge and, ultimately, to realization. Therefore, men should make it the mas- ter-purpose of their lives to cherish and practically set forth the will to be. Moral practice is the pathway of redemption. The divine can realize divinity only in the manifestation of divinity. The pure and holy are realized only in the personalization of purity and holiness. That which is beyond birth and death must manifest this beyond- ness, and this manifestation is brought about through the constant practice of morality and unselfishness. In the core of every life stands that one Self. This is the true ; this alone the immortal fact ; this is alone the saving knowledge. This immortal Self is to be reached by the pathway of the glorious and perfect ones, those who have gone before, they the Sons of Light and Truth who have manifested in the Buddha and in the Christ character. These characters express the summary of moral practice. They are the es- sence of all that is pure and holy, all that is good and great, all that is perfect and sublime. This exalted Moral Kelations. 171 state is reached only through long and wearisome lives of infinite patience and struggle where lapses are frequent and the rise difficult. Nothing reaches the goal in a moment. Everything is the result of long, patient, and persevering effort. That is why the path- way of the Immortals is beset with obstacles and dif- ficulties at every turn. This struggle is symbolized in the legend of St. George and the Dragon, in the legend of the Holy Grail, and in all great myths which have served as the moral standard for different nations at different stages of their unfoldment. This is the meaning of folk-lore and of all those elements which form the nucleus of great epics. This is the emphasis, and the worthiness of morality. It is not that the moral is of itself saving, but that obedience to moral demands is the path to realization of super- conscious truths. For ages upon ages man has dealt with outer meanings, with surface understandings, when deep beneath all this surface rubbish is the golden light whose ray gives whatever import there may be to external interpretation. Great is truth and perfect is wisdom, but both are beyond the aver- age conception. Truth is to be discovered, and with as great a zest and fervor of research as the worldly- minded give to the things of worldly importance. One cannot reach the heart of the universe and the secret of wisdom through haphazard and ill-directed effort. It requires the veriest energies of soul, veriest sincer- ity of purpose, exalted enthusiasm and high-minded- ness. In this highest of attitudes, conscious value of truth and life is brought to personal realization. For 172 Moral Relations. this reason, obedience to moral demands is the essence of all virtue and the beauty of all truth. What is the nature of the moral ? How is it to be determined ? What are its essential characteristics ? That must be discerned by the soul itself. It is the duty of the soul to lay questions before its individual understanding. It must face each and every moral problem and solve that problem to the exclusive de- finition of the individual conscience. The soul must find itself through the solution of the moral problems. When it awakens to a sense of personal freedom and discovers that knowledge which leads to the emanci- pation of the intellect and the broadening of spiritual vision, only then is it in harmony with moral values. Morality has as deep a value in the order of life as science. Its final conclusions are scientific and, as previously stated, hygienic. The entire energy of the universe is far from physical ; it is radically moral. It is not mental or scientific; it has purely moral relations. For example, the birth of the globe we inhabit has its ultimate purpose in the perfection of the feelings of its creatures and, as this perfection is to the greatest extent synthesized in man, it is the ethical development of the human race for which the earth is revolving about the sun. This is the purpose for which the sun rises and sets, for which the entire solar system moves and evolves. The ethical has its highest import in the consolidation of the true nature of man and the disintegration of retrogressive im- pulses and tendencies. It is not the focalization of power, not the consoli- Moral Eelations. 173 elation of tremendous mental energies, but the evolu- tion of the heart of man and of the heart of the universe in which all effort is founded. The Great Unknown and the Blissful Supreme is mirrored in this reflection of [Nature. Nature's aim is to perfect that reflection, until it is so purified and so purged from distinctions and personal idiosyncracies, that it loses separateness and merges into the very heart and living essence of the Great Unknowable Soul, the unit of existence, the heart of all wisdom and love. Moral- ity is the spirit in the union of the lower and the higher. Many are the pathways which lead to the Supreme, but all require an adoption of moral values. All pathways demand purification of the heart. Knowledge, power and bliss are but variable aspects of one divine essence, and that is Love. When it is realized that all knowledge is in consciousness, and that consciousness has its value in the emotions, it is readily seen that the perfection of knowledge and the perfection of consciousness is but the realization of the deepest and the highest and the greatest of all emotions, the emotion of love. But this love is dis- tinct from the ordinary conception and interpretation of love. It is transcendent, born in the empyrean of Self; it is beyond and beneath and inclusive of the loves which find their beginning and end in the personal. These truths "must be seen, heard, per- ceived and known." They must not rest in the soul as formulas of belief. The aspirant is through with belief. Direct perception and complete understand- ing form his ambition. The moral is the soul of the 174: Moral Relations. sympathetic and the sympathetic is the soul of love. Sympathy means to feel with and it is in the feeling with the ideal, that the ideal is loved. It is beauti- fully told in the Upanishads, that nobody loves any- thing for its own sake, but for the sake of the Self, and the Self is the ideal at all times, in all condi- tions and in all places. For that Self all loves should be cherished ; for that Self all morality should be cultivated. Morality for the sake of self-expansion, greater self-expression, greater self-unfoldment, these are first, fit and only motives. Freedom, infinite free- dom of will, infinite freedom of intelligence, infinite freedom of expression, are essential in the subordina- tion of the lower and the expression of the higher self. To responsibly express moral values, one must have absolute freedom. Otherwise where is duty, where responsibility % How can anyone be held responsible for what he is compelled to do ? Where is either the merit or the demerit ? Morality has inspirational im- portance. Leading, as it does, to the purification of the elements which constitute personality, it conduces to the inflow of higher knowledge and spiritual in- struction. The density and materialism of the human elements cause spiritual ignorance and pursuit of the follies of the senses. Nothing great was ever accom- plished by the chase after sense phantoms. It is in the search either after the mental or the spiritual that the transmutation of lower orders has been carried on. Whatever progress we make is due to the exten- sion of mental over physical elements. The exten- sion of the psychic and spiritual will lead to far Moral .Relations. 175 vaster vistas and greater achievements. The exten- sion of the mental has been at the expense and through the control of the physical. The physical is allied to the instinctive. The mental is associated with psychic and spiritual values. Morality is the spirit and the mother of progress. The social standards of the race are moral standards. They have developed through the suppression of lower instincts and tendencies. Truly, we are deeper than we know or appreciate. Our promptings are past our discernment, but ever and ever does the voice of truth reach through and through the soul. Sometimes perception is direct; sometimes it is clouded, taking the form of intuitions and impres- sions. Truth is the Paraclete of civilization, ever present and vivifying. Truth and the moral element co-exist. The former is the subjective aspect of the latter. This is the heroic and exalted conception of the relation of the human soul to morality. This is the annunciation of the promises of the Self within. The adjustment of personality to this high under- standing is the finality of effort. This is the truth which brings the mind into the clear light of the spiritual day, which brings it into the understanding and the true appreciation of spiritual power and con- sciousness. As it is, we are the glorifiers of our ignorance and smallness. The usual appreciation of morality is narrow and accustomed. The width of moral meaning must be further emphasized and with practice corresponding. THE LAW. CHAPTER VIII. THE LAW. In the various phenomena of nature we find an un- varying law of cause and sequence. Everything comes under the dispensation of this law, and upon it science and philosophy are founded. We reason from effect to cause and from cause to effect. This reasoning assures the fixedness and definiteness of natural purposes. We are convinced that everything is well, for there is nothing but comes under the dominion of the unchangeable and ever-present law of causation. Especially are we certain of the truth and the right in personal life, and in the progress and purpose of racial evolution. We are confident of the workings of this law, well knowing that our relations to it determine our progress. The law of causation is an axiom of reason. It precludes the existence of chance, the latter being only its indiscernible work- ings. The law is the essence of principle and truism. All things move and are by the law and their per- fection and final freedom come only through the law. The law is the principle of universal and impartial justice. Whatever occurs either of good or of evil comes under the predispositions of the law. That law is the potential source of phenomena, the reason for their existence, their development and final dis- 180 The Law. solution. It is the conditioning factor of misery and joy, of pain and pleasure. The working of this law manifests in the evolution of planets and their humanities. Every man is a surety to himself. He lives within his capacity for achievement and noth- ing, save perversion of desire or blindness of intel- lect, can interfere with his development. The law is revered as well as feared, for it is a light as well as a darkness. It may rise as high as it may cast low. Within the operations of the law, man is a free agent. He can choose his conduct and determine the intellectual conclusions which form motive principles for conduct. The law is as ex- tensive as the universe is possible of development. It is the origin of phenomena and relative life. Be- yond relative life there is no law, for Spirit is beyond the senses and thought. All manifestation within the realm of the mind, or within the realm of matter is under the sway of law. The saving feature of this law is its evolutionary tendency. It has but one perspective, the perspective of hope and the vista of achievement. Ever busied with higher interests, it constantly moulds the nature of man into channels of developed expression. The upward course is tedi- ous and often discouraging, but the law brooks no difficulties and is conscious of no barriers. Filled with the purpose of perfection, it is one with perfec- tion, and its workings dispense in no way, other than that of perfection. Yet is the law nothing in essence separate from the nature of the soul. It is not that the law is one thing and the will of man another. The Law. 181 They both are synthesized in a higher unity, the unity of that ancient and unknowable condition where consciousness, law, plurality and all things of relative origin pale into the all-embracing fulness of the Supreme. The law is the faithful distributor of merit and demerit. It takes cognizance of each thought and each word; it is the custodian of each act and desire. It discerns motives better than we; it knows inmost thoughts and the ps3