Friends:
Amid the excitements of the present National Week, amid all the Conferences on matters of importance to the Nation, amid the discussions—industrial, commercial, political—which are agitating this great City, and will agitate it during the next week, we, of the Theosophical Society, have ventured to invite you here to consider not the passing concerns of the moment but the perpetual concerns of the life dealing with the eternal interests, the life wherein alone permanence can ever be found.
I have chosen for the subject of our Convention Lectures, those great problems of thought which ever challenge the attention of the highest mind of man. That question of questions of the nature, of our conception, of God; the nature of man, his relation to the Universe in which he finds himself—the evolution of an intelligent spiritual Being amid the transitory phenomena of passing worlds; then that profound question of conduct, what is Right and what is Wrong? is it possible to find a standard of ethics? is it possible to find a canon of conduct which will guide us in that tangled path of action which is one of the hardest problems of human life? Then, lastly, the meaning of Brotherhood, on what it is based, in what it consists, what duties it imposes upon us, what is to be our attitude to our brethren on every side. These questions, that on these four mornings we are to consider, are not questions of the passing time, but are the problems that confront humanity at all the stages of its evolution. Not only is that so, but in this alone can we find peace, amid the turmoil of the world; not in the constant struggles of outer life may peace be found, but in the heart of peace which abides in the Eternal, that can remain peaceful in the midst of storms, amid friends, amid enemies, amid neutrals; only in the Peace of the Eternal may the human Spirit find abiding rest. When that centre is found, when that knowledge of God which is eternal life has been realised by man, then, and then alone, can action be wisely taken, not swayed by passion, not moved by prejudices, having nothing to gain which the outer world can give and nothing to lose which that world can take away; asking for nothing, desiring nothing, save to be an instrument of the Will that works for Righteousness, seeing in the world around us the field of action where God is working, and where we can be co-workers with God. There, and there alone, can you work above the gu?as, using them for the Divine purposes, but not permitting yourself to fall under the glamour of their phenomena; making use of all: of the passions of man, of the aspirations of man, of the good and of the evil, turning them all to send man forward on the path which God has marked out for human progress. That is the high activity which finds its expression in Service, and that can only be where God has been realised, and where the Spirit of man, consciously one with the Spirit Eternal, sees everywhere one Will, one Wisdom, and one Activity, and men, in all their different workings, the instruments whereby the Divine Will is worked out in evolution.
Hence, our study in these four morning hours is not apart from the day's activity, but is really the source, the spring, of that activity; and so, loving all because in all the Self abides; seeing the inner Self, unblinded by outer appearances; thus may work the messengers of the great Hierarchy that guides our world. It is to a treading of the path that leads to Service, it is for that, that I invite your attention to these profound problems of the spiritual life of man.
Now, to-day, we are first to consider the nature, the existence, of that One Life in which we all subsist, and the views that man has taken thereof.
Let me say at the very outset, that there is a common view to-day among many thoughtful, among many good men, that it does not much matter what a man believes providing that his conduct is right. That is a half truth, not a whole truth, and it is the natural reaction from the Middle Age view in Europe that it did not matter what a man's conduct was provided that his beliefs were orthodox. Such a view has not only been found in mediÆval Europe, but also has been found in India herself. You will find among Indians to-day, as still among some Christians, that the all-important matter is belief in certain dogmas, and that where those are held conduct is comparatively unimportant. We all know men in all faiths who are orthodox, as it is said, in belief, but whose lives are worldly lives, and sometimes not even of a very high worldly character. Now, a century or so ago that view was so common that men were persecuted, men were penalised, because of a difference of theological views. If men did not believe, at one stage, the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, then their fate was, at first, the stake, then later the prison, and still later, slander, social ostracism, and disabilities under the law of the land. In England, that is now largely swept aside, and we have the opposite exaggeration: "Let a man think as he will; but let him be a good citizen, a good man." But that leaves out the profound truth that "man is created by thought, and as a man thinks, so he is"; conduct is not independent of thought, for thought is the spring of conduct, and so it is written in the Bhagava?-Gi?a, that "a man is compacted, composed, of his beliefs," and as a man believes, so he is. You have to make, however, a distinction between beliefs conventionally accepted, and the real belief, which is the conviction of the heart, out of which action arises. And so, I urge on you to-day that right-thinking on the great truths of life is a most important part of the whole of your conduct. The better your thought, the better will be your life. The truer your thought, the more candid and transparent will be your actions. But remember that it must be your own thought, and not the thought of your neighbour, not the thought of authority, not the thought of a book, however ancient and however sacred, not the thought of a great man, however true for him; the thought that moulds conduct is the thought of the actor, and every man is responsible for his own thinking; the repetition of the thought of another is useless and even mischievous. Be not then afraid to think, even about God Himself. Do not think it is blasphemous to enquire; do not think it is blasphemous to doubt. Doubt is the stage which comes before a larger and truer thinking. You doubt your past thought, because you are opening up new vistas of thought and the past is lying behind you. The man who never doubts never really thinks; and there is a wholesome, a healthy scepticism which is the forerunner of a nobler and a truer faith. Think as far as you can. It is true that from the very Highest thought and speech fall back unable to go farther; but as far as you can think, as far as your intellect is able to grasp, to investigate, to argue, think your freest and your noblest, and you will grow by your errors as well as by your truths. Do not then fear to think; do not fear to be called unorthodox; try your best to think truly and accurately, and trust in Truth, who never betrays her servant. The determination to think your highest, the determination to think your best, may lead you into some desert for a time, but there are gardens on the other side of the desert. You may have to cross many a desert, many a torrent which seems to sweep you away; but I, who ventured all to seek for Truth, who left family, friends, religion, because their religion had become to me untrue, I bear you witness that such unbelief is the way to a higher, a greater, and a serener faith, and that those who are unwilling to lose the life of the past will not be able to advance into the life of the future.
Now, let us, with regard to our thoughts of God, realise that there are two lines towards knowledge. The first is the way of the intellect, which deals with metaphysics, which deals with philosophy, which gradually lifts a man out of superstition, out of narrowness, out of ignorance, and carries him as far as human intellect can go. Along those lines exercise your intellect, think your best, but remember, that it is written that not by intellect shall the Self be found, and the path of realisation is not the path of the intellect. It is the path of the conquered senses, of the conquered mind, when in the "quietude of the senses and the tranquillity of the mind, the man beholds the glory of the Self". That is realisation: that is the only knowledge: that is Eternal Life. By the intellect we reach the highest philosophy, and let none dare to despise philosophy, which rises up to peaks of knowledge, which are the glory of the human race. But, on the other hand, remember that it is the pure in heart who see God. It is the conquest of the lower nature which enables us to breathe the air in which the higher nature lives; and not by intellectual research, not even by devotion itself, but by sinking into the depths of your own being, by searching within, there where the Self abides; by casting aside everything that changes; by saying to the senses: "You are not I"; by saying to the mind: "You are not I"; by saying to the highest intelligence: "You are not I"; in the silence, where the mind has naught to say; in the silence, where the senses are not heard; in the depths of yourself, one with the Supreme Self; there, and there only, shall you realise that you yourself are one with the Self Universal. A hard path, a difficult path, the outcome of the practice of lives of self-abnegation and of service; but once you have realised God, you can never doubt again. An intellectual argument may be overthrown by keener logic, by larger grasp of facts; but the man who once has seen the Face of God, he never again can doubt that God is, that God is All. That is the Self-realisation of the Mystic. That is the triumph, not of the intellect but of the Spirit; then the Spirit which is Divine recognises its kinship with the Spirit Omnipresent, and when once, as I have said before, you have found God within yourself, then, and only then, will you find Him in every one in everything, around you. That is the triumph of the Spirit. That is the Peace of the Eternal.
And now, let us turn to man's conceptions of God, and see how they have changed. And, in doing this, friends, let us seek for the kernel of truth which underlies even mistaken beliefs; for, man is so constituted that no error can hold him long in bondage save by the truth that that error conceals. Just as you may have the husk, the shell, and the kernel within it, so in every error that dominates mankind there is a kernel of truth that gives it its nutritive power. Only when you recognise the kernel of truth will you be able to convince a man of the husk of error.
Now, looking back to early times in our race, we find what is called Polytheism; and that you practically find everywhere. You find it very very strongly in the first half of the Hebrew Old Testament, as is called the Hebrew part of the Christian Bible. If you read that, what is the God that you find? Clearly, a God of limited power, a God of limited knowledge, what in the talk, the jargon, of the day is called a "tribal God". In the early story told by the Hebrews, the conception of God is very limited. You find Him "walking in the garden in the cool of the day," and calling out to the man he had created: "Adam, where art thou?" You find him a little later—when men have multiplied and begun to build a tower which in their ignorance they think will reach up to heaven—saying; "Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." For "now nothing," he said, "will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do". And so, we read, that "the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded," and he confused the speech of the builders, so that they were scattered abroad and could not build their tower. And the Babel of Tongues is a phrase in English, because it was the Tower of Babel from which all the languages on earth originated! You find him again with his chosen people, the children of Abraham, leading them into the land he gives them; and then you come across the remarkable statement that "the Lord was with Judah," one of the tribes, and he drove out all "the inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron". You see at once that you are in the realm of a very limited kind of tribal God. Of course, I know that in the days when the Bible was regarded as verbally inspired, as God's Word, they said these statements were an accommodation to the ignorance of man; but that is only the desperate effort of the believer in verbal inspiration to infuse the knowledge of later days into the form of ancient fables. You and I recognise at once that where thoughtful Christians are concerned, these are to them old ideas, that you have here the local God, the tribal God, and that the God of the Hebrews of the early days does not claim to be the only God, but only the chief one, the chief for his own nation: "Who among the Gods is like unto Thee, O Jehovah!" That is the position of the Hebrews, and they have their own National God. To go away from him is treachery to the State. To disbelieve in him is punishable with death, because it is treason to the Nation, and such punishment was not so much regarded as a religious persecution as a State penalty. As a State and social sanction, the worship of Yahveh was maintained among the Hebrews; it was the State, the National, Religion. He conquered the Gods of the Philistines, He fought with the Gods of all the other people round about, each with their own God.
Then you come to a new aspect. The people of Israel are scattered; they are carried away captives into Babylon. They come into touch with the great Theologies of the East, and then a new view of God is taken by their writers. You may draw a line in the Hebrew Old Testament between the post-Babylon, and the pre-Babylon views of God. That is done now by every scholar. The pre-Babylon view is that of the Tribal God, one among many; the post-Babylon view is the sublime conception drawn from a great eastern faith, and then we find poetic and splendid phrases regarding God. He is the "High and Lofty One who inhabiteth Eternity, whose Name is Holy". There you have a spiritual thought. You are no longer within the region of the tribal Gods. You are out of the region of the local Deities; you have passed on into a great and spiritual world, where God inhabits Eternity, and where, in another splendid phrase, it is written: "God made man in the image of His own Eternity." There you have the later conception, there the God Universal; and with that, one remarkable fact that you must never forget, that in the later writing God is recognised not as what we call the Author of good only, but the Author of evil also. It is written in the Prophet Isaiah: "I am the Lord, and there is none else; I form the light and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things." It is written again: "Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?" You must realise that where God is seen as "the One," when there is "none else," then He is the Author of all, and not only of the particular line of narrow morality that belongs to the evolving human kind. So also in the Bhagava?-Gi?a you find the phrase of Shri K??h?a: "I am the gambling of the cheat." I shall come back to that in order to point out to you its meaning, but at the moment I only ask you to remember that in what is now called the Christian Bible, not in the Hebrew part of it only, but in the Christian part as well, you find that same conception of one "Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world," that shows itself in every form, that cannot be divorced from anything that exists. And so, in a very splendid psalm, again post-Babylon, you have the psalmist saying: "If I go up into Heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in Hell, behold, Thou art there also; if I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy Hand guide me, and Thy Right Hand lead me." Heaven or Hell, what are they? passing phenomena of human evolution. If God is found in Heaven, he is also found in Hell; only in Heaven he is the Bliss of Unity with the Law; in Hell He is the Pain of Law disregarded, and that, in order that by the suffering caused by the onward rush of the disregarded Law, He may teach the lesson of obedience to the Law, the lesson which the man refused to learn by precept, and must therefore, for his own future safety, learn by experience. Now that idea is eastern. When the Christians wrote the New Testament, they narrowed this profound idea of God.
They brought also, those post-Babylon Jews, they brought also the Babylonian conception of an Evil Spirit over against the Good, the great idea in Zoroastrianism of the opposition between Hormazd and Ahriman, that coloured all the Christian concepts. The Satan of Christianity, the Satan of the Christians, is the Ahriman of the Zoroastrians. And so also with the Eblis of the Musulmans. He is the enemy of God. There you come down, as it were, to the planes of practice. Two forces quarrel for the mastery and we call them good and evil, recognising the duality of the flesh and the Spirit. We take that duality, and we put one over against the other. We forget that the flesh is necessary for the unfolding of the Spirit. We forget that matter is the necessary field in which the Seed of Divinity shall develop into the manifest God, and so we lose the Unity. We live in the realm of duality, and we make opposites, as they are in practical life, of those two sides of Deity, the Spirit that informs, the matter that makes action possible. Zarathushtra has, behind his duality, that "Boundless Space" which is really the description of the all-enveloping nature of God Universal; and when we deal with Hin?uism, we find there the explanation of those rather fragmentary truths that come down to us along other lines. We have finally that terrible blunder of the Christian, who makes God, all love—as in truth He is—giving forth from Himself—for He is the only creator, One, "there is none else"—the Spirit Satan, who is the embodiment of hatred; and you find, finally, that in the great struggle, according to the common Christian belief—which intellectual Christians are outgrowing, you must not forget—you find in the final result of the struggle, that it is not God, but Satan that is the conqueror, for "the bottomless pit" is full to overflowing, while Heaven is a city with walls around it, and with a comparatively limited number of inhabitants. But that is not the deeper teaching of Christianity; it is the crude popular view. If you go through the writings of S. Paul, what is written there? You find it is written that the day shall come when the Son, who is God, shall be "subject to Him who put all things under Him, and God shall be all in all"—God in Satan, God in Hell, God in the wicked, evolving them to righteousness. And so in the very centre of the Christian teaching you find that "God is all and in all," and is it not also written in Al Quran, which largely reflects the popular necessary teachings of the time, is it not written by the great Prophet of Arabia, that "All shall perish, save His Face"? Everywhere is God; God is everything; in everything He is the ultimate good, the inevitable fate of man.
But now what does this Polytheism mean? There is a truth in it. For every Nation has its own ?eva, as we should say; its own Angel, as the Christian and Musalman would say. These subordinate hosts, these Angels and Archangels, these ?evas and ?evis, they are all superhuman intelligences, working out the will of God the Supreme. Think for a moment of Astronomy. There was a time when this little world was the centre of the Solar System, when fixed, with the Waters below and the Waters above, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars also, circled around our Globe. Science gradually found out that the universe was larger than the Solar System; that the Universe had many Suns and many systems. It found out that our globe went round the Sun and not the Sun round our globe. The world was lifted out of this position of superiority and thrown out into space, one among myriads of worlds; that was the heresy for which Giordano Bruno died. He proclaimed the multiplicity of worlds, and that the Sun was the centre of our system, but that there were other worlds and other Suns. In the old days that was a frightful horror, for he turned everything upside down. What can you do with Christian teachings if our globe is one among many? Christ died for this world. Did God die for a grain of dust in an endless Universe? The whole dignity of our world was lost. Then they said that Christ ascended up into Heaven, but Bruno said that there was no "up" and no "down". Our world with space below it; our world with space above it. Where then is Heaven? Where is Hell? Where is Heaven? Where is the Throne of God? Where the right hand of God where Christ is sitting? Where did He go to on that Ascension day? Where is He to be found in this unlimited space? And so they said: "Oh! burn him, get rid of him, send him to find the worlds of which he talks." So they burnt him and scattered his ashes, and joyed that he was dead. But Bruno lived still although the body was dead, and Science, Science triumphed, although its votaries were burnt, were racked, were imprisoned. They took Galileo and forced him to his knees to confess that he had been mistaken; "and yet it moves," were the whispered words of the Scientist, who did not dare to face the horrors of the Inquisition. And so Science triumphed, and now, what do you find? Not only that our Sun is, to us, a stationary body and the world goes round it; but that ours is only one of many systems, and that all those systems and their Suns go round another Sun, and that is not the last, and again that is not the last; for all those masses of systems, they also go round a still higher Sun, and so concentric circles of worlds, of systems, of Universes, without end that human eye can pierce, without end that human mind can grasp; and so we begin to realise that the local Gods of the past, they have their places, all circling round the One who is the centre of all life, "the One without a Second". All Universes rise and fall in Him. All Universes are born and die in His immensity. No thought may limit Him. No mind may grasp Him. He is the All, the One, the Omnipresent, and His Life lives in the Angels and Archangels, lives in the ?evas of all the systems, and in all they are His Ministers, carrying out His Will.
And so there arose what is called Pantheism. God is All and in all. Now there is a great difference between the Pantheism of the West as embodied in Spinoza, and the Pantheism of the East, that you find in the Ve?as, that you find in the Zend-Avesta, that you find in the old dead Religions of Egypt, of Greece, of Rome. The Pantheism of the West is one Divine Existence with certain attributes, the Spinozean Pantheism. It is the Formless Boundless Existence. Not quite the Nirgu?a Brahman, the "Brahman without attributes". His Pantheism is as cold and uninspiring for conduct, as the Nirgu?a Brahman would be if that were the last word of Hin?uism. Infinite, All-embracing, All-in-holding, out of Space and Time, that is the central thought of every great philosophy, Musalman, Hin?u, Zoroastrian, I might almost say Christian—though that is more doubtful, for it is more rigid, and narrowed by being confined more or less within the conceptions of the Bible. If you go to the great Musalman Doctors of the ninth and tenth centuries a. d. you will find magnificent descriptions of the All-God. In That is said to exist not only what has been, not only what is, but that which shall he, and all eternally existent, all that is conceivable, all that is inconceivable, all is in Him. It is the same as the A?vai?a-Ve?an?a—if you take away from that the conception of the Sagu?a Brahman, and the devotional side of Shri Sha?karacharya in his s?o?ras—the One without a Second, embracing all, conceiving all, all-existing, one Now, without past, present, and future, nothing to be excluded. But then comes the next step, the Sagu?a Brahman, the "Brahman with attributes," that is not a second, but the One in manifestation. He manifests a part of Himself. Said Shri K??h?a: "I established this Universe with a portion of myself, and I remain"; all-transcending, all-embracing, the manifested God, limiting Himself by manifestation. And so Manu speaks of Him as "a mountain of light," the generating Light; the One with attributes, but the attributes belong to the manifestation. They might vary perchance in another age, in another Universe. Then there go forth from Him the three great manifestations, Will, or Power; Wisdom, or Self-Realisation; Activity, or Creative Intelligence, and that threefold manifestation, of Power, of Self-Realisation, of Creative Intelligence, that is the root of every Trinity, as it is called, that you find in the ancient and in the modern worlds. Three forms of Manifestation inherent in one Existence, the creative Power, that brings a Universe into existence, called Brahma among Hin?us; the sustaining all-preserving Power, that maintains a Universe, all-permeating, all-preserving, that is called Vi?h?u; and He into whom all re-enters, the Destroyer, the Regenerator, He into whom all returns that a higher form may reappear, that is Maha?eva, Shiva, the Supreme Bliss.
Naturally among a people unmetaphysical and unphilosophical, you get a division which in truth does not exist. They see three different Deities and quarrel over them, where there is only One, showing Himself in the three essential forms for a Universe which comes, which lives, which passes; and hence you have the Shaiva and the Vai?h?ava fighting the one against the other. I saw the other day in the caves of Elephanta, the Ar?ha Shiva Ar?ha Vi?h?u, the Hari-Hara, which is said in the legends to be the combination of the twain in one. A fanatic was worshipping one and depreciating the other, it is said, and the image of Vi?h?u changed, and became half Maha?eva and half Vi?h?u, and the double image smiled upon the worshipper, to remind him that the division was in man and not in God.
So also there are hosts of ?evas, for the eastern Pantheism includes the innumerable forms in which God-in-all expresses Himself, and so we have Polytheism in a higher form. You need not be afraid of words, for that is the all-embracing truth. Polytheism asserts the existence of the ?evas and ?evis, who carry out the Will of the Supreme. "Not for the sake of the ?eva is the ?eva dear, but for the sake of the Self is the ?eva dear." Only as the manifestation of the Self is the ?eva seen, as you, in your turn, are manifestations of the same Self. But the ?eva is a more highly evolved manifestation than you are. These innumerable ministers of the Supreme Will, they also are manifestations of the One; they mar not the Unity. And so in the Ve?as you chant to all of them; and so in the Zend-Avesta you invoke them all.
Now the Western will tell you that all these ?evas of yours are the personifications of the elements; that Agni is not a being, but is the Fire personified. You must turn that right upside down, if you want to make it true. Agni is not a personification of the element Fire; but Fire, the element, is the material expression of Agni, his body, his vehicle, by which he shows himself in the world. And that is your key. Ignorance personifies an Element. Knowledge sees a Being whose material expression is an Element. Ignorance sees the physical. Knowledge sees in everything physical a manifestation of the One Self, showing Himself in a limited form for the helping of His world. And so the higher Occultist may address Agni, the ?evaraja of Fire, and, below Agni, countless hosts of those who are called Fire ?evas, or Fire Elementals, all expressions of his nature, all using a special type of matter in the world. Hence you hear that when the world was built, the elements came forth, and each had the Life-principle within it. Fire came forth, but Agni, the ?evaraja, was the Life-principle within the fire-matter, and so with Varu?a for water, and so with Kubera for earth. You have within every Element, nay, within everything that you call a law in nature, you have a Life-principle, a ?eva, or Angel, call him what you will, names matter not, provided that you realise that the Self which works in you as man, works in all these Beings in ascending ranks of hierarchical power; but they all are expressions of the one Divine Will, and the One works in all of them, and "the wise see the One, although they call Him by many names".
Now there you have the whole truth: God is everything and in All. God is manifested in countless forms, in countless grades of living intelligences, and each has its own place, and the ?evas come forth from Brahma, as later from Him come forth vegetables and animals and men. There is only the One Life, but it is manifest in infinite forms—Pantheism-cum-Polytheism, God-in-a-Universe. Now, if you realise that, if you understand that, all these many ?evas and ?evis, these many Angels and Archangels, are only expressions, phenomena, manifestations, of the One, just as you are. Then, you will realise that all these, carrying out the Divine Will, are the hearers of prayer, are the guardians of mankind; some are guardians of Nations, others the guardians of special areas smaller than Nations, but all are agents of the One. When the peasant prays to the form that he worships, and asks for help, that is really a prayer to the One Supreme, which is answered by His minister, the ?eva who is addressed by the peasant; and if you talk to the peasant here in India, you will find that most, if not all, of them realise the One behind the many, and know, that the One alone is God, although they appeal to those who are nearer in evolution to themselves, as they ask a Collector rather than the King. And so we begin to realise that Polytheism has its truth, and only needs to be understood. Then all Nature becomes living, beautiful, sympathetic, God smiles in everything. The thinker should realise it, and then none will ever blur the Unity by the multiplicity of manifestations. Thus you come to the whole truth, and find it living, exquisite, a perpetual joy. All Nature lives and loves. There is but One Life, but One Existence, but one Supreme Omnipresent Being. We cannot call him Spirit, because Spirit is the antithesis of Matter, and Spirit and Matter blend in Him. So we call Him the One without a Second. In the boundless realms of space, in the infinity of Universes, that One is expressing Himself in countless ways, but all is a manifestation of Himself. He the One Thinker; from Him, all thought comes forth. He, the one Actor; from Him all activities proceed. All our human words of right and wrong, of good and evil, those are limited to the evolving lives in relation to each other. There is nothing that can be excluded from the One and Universal. In Him, all is well, all is highest and best. And, when we come to deal with Right and Wrong, we shall see how this works out, how it gives us a human standard, a standard by which we may guide our steps. But, for this morning, I will leave with you that Supreme Ideal: that there is but the One in All, in Everything; the lowest dust beneath your feet has the One within it; the highest ?eva in the highest heaven is but another expression of the One. You express Him, the animal expresses Him, the vegetable expresses Him, the mineral expresses Him. How else shall they live, save in Him who is life? How else shall they evolve, save in Him who is manifesting Himself through them? Be not afraid to love the world, which is one of His manifestations, one of His thoughts; but see Him everywhere and in everything, and so shall everything become spiritualised. Let Him speak to you through the world, as He speaks to you through the Spirit. He speaks in every breath of air; He speaks in every leaf on the forest tree; He speaks in the foam and crash of the Ocean's breaking billows; He speaks in the solitude and silence of the Mountain. There is none other. There is nothing else. He is the One Existence. And as you realise that, you share His power, and you share His peace.
