[This is taken from James Allen's The Way of Peace.]
Man, in spite of his bodily appetites and desires, in the midst of all his
clinging to earthly and impermanent things, has ever been intuitively conscious
of the limited, transient, and illusionary nature of his material existence, and
in his sane and silent moments has tried to reach out into a comprehension of
the Infinite, and has turned with tearful aspiration toward the restful Reality
of the Eternal Heart.
While vainly imagining that the pleasures of earth are real and satisfying, pain
and sorrow continually remind him of their unreal and unsatisfying nature. Ever
striving to believe that complete satisfaction is to be found in material
things, he is conscious of an inward and persistent revolt against this belief,
which revolt is at once a refutation of his essential mortality, and an inherent
and imperishable proof that only in the immortal, the eternal, the infinite can
he find abiding satisfaction and unbroken peace.
And here is the common ground of faith; here the root and spring of all
religion; here the soul of Brotherhood and the heart of Love,--that man is
essentially and spiritually divine and eternal, and that, immersed in mortality
and troubled with unrest, he is ever striving to enter into a consciousness of
his real nature.
The spirit of man is inseparable from the Infinite, and can be satisfied with
nothing short of the Infinite, and the burden of pain will continue to weigh
upon man's heart, and the shadows of sorrow to darken his pathway until, ceasing
from his wanderings in the dream-world of matter, he comes back to his home in
the reality of the Eternal.
As the smallest drop of water detached from the ocean contains all the qualities
of the ocean, so man, detached in consciousness from the Infinite, contains
within him its likeness; and as the drop of water must, by the law of its
nature, ultimately find its way back to the ocean and lose itself in its silent
depths, so must man, by the unfailing law of his nature, at last return to his
source, and lose himself in the great ocean of the Infinite.
To re-become one with the Infinite is the goal of man. To enter into perfect
harmony with the Eternal Law is Wisdom, Love and Peace. But this divine state
is, and must ever be, incomprehensible to the merely personal. Personality,
separateness, selfishness are one and the same, and are the antithesis of wisdom
and divinity. By the unqualified surrender of the personality, separateness and
selfishness cease, and man enters into the possession of his divine heritage of
immortality and infinity.
Such surrender of the personality is regarded by the worldly and selfish mind as
the most grievous of all calamities, the most irreparable loss, yet it is the
one supreme and incomparable blessing, the only real and lasting gain. The mind
unenlightened upon the inner laws of being, and upon the nature and destiny of
its own life, clings to transient appearances, things which have in them no
enduring substantiality, and so clinging, perishes, for the time being, amid the
shattered wreckage of its own illusions.
Men cling to and gratify the flesh as though it were going to last for ever, and
though they try to forget the nearness and inevitability of its dissolution, the
dread of death and of the loss of all that they cling to clouds their happiest
hours, and the chilling shadow of their own selfishness follows them like a
remorseless specter.
And with the accumulation of temporal comforts and luxuries, the divinity within
men is drugged, and they sink deeper and deeper into materiality, into the
perishable life of the senses, and where there is sufficient intellect, theories
concerning the immortality of the flesh come to be regarded as infallible
truths. When a man's soul is clouded with selfishness in any or every form, he
loses the power of spiritual discrimination, and confuses the temporal with the
eternal, the perishable with the permanent, mortality with immortality, and
error with Truth. It is thus that the world has come to be filled with theories
and speculations
having no foundation in human experience. Every body of flesh contains within
itself, from the hour of birth, the elements of its own destruction, and by the
unalterable law of its own nature must it pass away.
The perishable in the universe can never become permanent; the permanent can
never pass away; the mortal can never become immortal; the immortal can
never die; the temporal cannot become eternal nor the eternal become temporal;
appearance can never become reality, nor reality fade into appearance; error can
never become Truth, nor can Truth become error. Man cannot immortalize the
flesh, but, by overcoming the flesh, by relinquishing all its inclinations, he
can enter the region of immortality. "God alone hath immortality," and only by
realizing the God state of consciousness does man enter into immortality.
All nature in its myriad forms of life is changeable, impermanent, mutable. Only
the informing Principle of nature endures. Nature is many, and is marked by
separation. The informing Principle is One, and is marked by unity. By
overcoming the senses and the selfishness within, which is the overcoming of
nature, man emerges from the chrysalis of the personal and illusory, and wings
himself into the glorious light of the impersonal, the region of universal
Truth, out of which all perishable forms come.
Let men, therefore, practice self-denial; let them conquer their animal
inclinations; let them refuse to be enslaved by luxury and pleasure; let them
practice virtue, and grow daily into high and ever higher virtue, until at last
they grow into the Divine, and enter into both the practice and the
comprehension of humility, meekness, forgiveness, compassion, and love, which
practice and comprehension constitute Divinity.
"Good-will gives insight," and only he who has so conquered his personality that
he has but one attitude of mind, that of good-will, toward all creatures, is
possessed of divine insight, and is capable of distinguishing the true from the
false. The supremely good man is, therefore, the wise man, the divine man, the
enlightened seer, the knower of the Eternal. Where you find unbroken gentleness,
enduring patience, sublime lowliness, graciousness of speech, self-control,
self-forgetfulness, and deep and abounding sympathy, look there for the highest
wisdom, seek the company of such a one, for he has realized the Divine, he lives
with the Eternal, he has become one with the Infinite. Believe not him that is
impatient, given to anger, boastful, who clings to pleasure and refuses to
renounce his selfish gratifications, and who practices not good-will and
far-reaching compassion, for such a one hath not wisdom, vain is all his
knowledge, and his works and words will perish, for they are grounded on that
which passes away.
Let a man abandon self, let him overcome the world, let him deny the personal;
by this pathway only can he enter into the heart of the Infinite.
The world, the body, the personality are mirages upon the desert of time;
transitory dreams in the dark night of spiritual slumber, and those who have
crossed the desert, those who are spiritually awakened, have alone comprehended
the Universal Reality where all appearances are dispersed and dreaming and
delusion are destroyed.
There is one Great Law which exacts unconditional obedience, one unifying
principle which is the basis of all diversity, one eternal Truth wherein all the
problems of earth pass away like shadows. To realize this Law, this Unity, this
Truth, is to enter into the Infinite, is to become one with the Eternal.
To center one's life in the Great Law of Love is to enter into rest, harmony,
peace. To refrain from all participation in evil and discord; to cease from all
resistance to evil, and from the omission of that which is good, and to fall
back upon unswerving obedience to the holy calm within, is to enter into the
inmost heart of things, is to attain to a living, conscious experience of that
eternal and infinite principle which must ever remain a hidden mystery to the
merely perceptive intellect. Until this principle is realized, the soul is not
established in peace, and he who so realizes is truly wise; not wise with the
wisdom of the learned, but with the simplicity of a blameless heart and of a
divine manhood.
To enter into a realization of the Infinite and Eternal is to rise superior to
time, and the world, and the body, which comprise the kingdom of darkness; and
is to become established in immortality, Heaven, and the Spirit, which make up
the Empire of Light.
Entering into the Infinite is not a mere theory or sentiment. It is a vital
experience which is the result of assiduous practice in inward purification.
When the body is no longer believed to be, even remotely, the real man; when all
appetites and desires are thoroughly subdued and purified; when the emotions are
rested and calm, and when the oscillation of the intellect ceases and perfect
poise is secured, then, and not till then, does consciousness become one with
the Infinite; not until then is childlike wisdom and profound peace secured.
Men grow weary and gray over the dark problems of life, and finally pass away
and leave them unsolved because they cannot see their way out of the darkness of
the personality, being too much engrossed in its limitations. Seeking to save
his personal life, man forfeits the greater impersonal Life in Truth; clinging
to the perishable, he is shut out from a knowledge of the Eternal.
By the surrender of self all difficulties are overcome, and there is no error in
the universe but the fire of inward sacrifice will burn it up like chaff; no
problem, however great, but will disappear like a shadow under the searching
light of self-abnegation. Problems exist only in our own self-created illusions,
and they vanish away when self is yielded up. Self and error are synonymous.
Error is involved in the darkness of unfathomable complexity, but eternal
simplicity is the glory of Truth.
Love of self shuts men out from Truth, and seeking their own personal happiness
they lose the deeper, purer, and more abiding bliss. Says Carlyle: "There is in
man a higher than love of happiness. He can do without happiness, and instead
thereof find blessedness. ... Love not pleasure, love God. This is the
Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and
works, it is well with him."
He who has yielded up that self, that personality that men most love, and to
which they cling with such fierce tenacity, has left behind him all perplexity,
and has entered into a simplicity so profoundly simple as to be looked upon by
the world, involved as it is in a network of error, as foolishness. Yet such a
one has realized the highest wisdom, and is at rest in the Infinite. He
"accomplishes without striving," and all problems melt before him, for he has
entered the region of reality, and deals, not with changing effects, but with
the unchanging principles of things. He is enlightened with a wisdom which is as
superior to ratiocination, as reason is to animal instinct. Having yielded up
his lusts, his errors, his opinions and prejudices, he has entered into
possession of the knowledge of God, having slain the selfish desire for heaven,
and along with it the ignorant fear of hell; having relinquished even the love
of life itself, he has gained supreme bliss and Life Eternal, the Life which
bridges life and death, and knows its own immortality. Having yielded up all
without reservation, he has gained all, and rests in peace on the bosom of the
Infinite.
Only he who has become so free from self as to be equally content to be
annihilated as to live, or to live as to be annihilated, is fit to enter into
the Infinite. Only he who, ceasing to trust his perishable self, has learned to
trust in boundless measure the Great Law, the Supreme Good, is prepared to
partake of undying bliss.
For such a one there is no more regret, nor disappointment, nor remorse, for
where all selfishness has ceased these sufferings cannot be; and whatever
happens to him he knows that it is for his own good, and he is content, being no
longer the servant of self, but the servant of the Supreme. He is no longer
affected by the changes of earth, and when he hears of wars and rumors of wars
his peace is not disturbed, and where men grow angry and cynical and
quarrelsome, he bestows compassion and love. Though appearances may contradict
it, he knows that the world is progressing, and that
"Through its laughing and its weeping,
Through its living and its keeping,
Through its follies and its labors, weaving in and out of
sight,
To the end from the beginning,
Through all virtue and all sinning,
Reeled from God's great spool of Progress, runs the golden
thread of light."
When a fierce storm is raging none are angered about it, because they know it
will quickly pass away, and when the storms of contention are devastating the
world, the wise man, looking with the eye of Truth and pity, knows that it will
pass away, and that out of the wreckage of broken hearts which it leaves behind
the immortal Temple of Wisdom will be built.
Sublimely patient; infinitely compassionate; deep, silent, and pure, his very
presence is a benediction; and when he speaks men ponder his words in their
hearts, and by them rise to higher levels of attainment. Such is he who has
entered into the Infinite, who by the power of utmost sacrifice has solved the
sacred mystery of life.
Questioning Life and Destiny and Truth,
I sought the dark and labyrinthine Sphinx,
Who spoke to me this strange and wondrous thing:--
"Concealment only lies in blinded eyes,
And God alone can see the Form of God."
I sought to solve this hidden mystery
Vainly by paths of blindness and of pain,
But when I found the Way of Love and Peace,
Concealment ceased, and I was blind no more:
Then saw I God e'en with the eyes of God.
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