(Lecture delivered January 26, 1930)
On previous Sundays I have covered a great deal of ground of thought, in answering questions that have been sent in to me.
Other questions that came in to me afterwards have, to a large extent, been answered in the responses given to those previous questions. It is obvious that I don't want to go over grounds of thought that have been more or less adequately covered in the answers to former questions; and I also take it for granted that you know something of what our majestical theosophical philosophy teaches.
On the other hand, I recognize that on each Sunday when I speak to you, there are newcomers here in our Temple of Peace who have not heard the responses that I have given to questions previously sent in. Faced with this situation, I try to make my answers to the different questions as they come in comprehensive enough to be satisfactory, and yet not repetitions of what I have said before.
The first question that I have before me to answer this afternoon is the following:
"Do you believe that such weaknesses as we overcome in this life we must again overcome in the life to follow?"
No, not if the weaknesses are overcome. The lesson in such cases has been learned; the character has been strengthened, and there is not the same temptation to repeat the old mistakes and faults. But if the old weaknesses are overcome only in part, then only partly have we gained strength; and we shall have to meet the remainder of those weaknesses, those weaknesses in ourselves, in our own fabric of character, in our will, until we learn to overcome these remainders.
Is not all this naturally just? Everything that we gain, we gain from our own efforts. Nature is infinitely well balanced and just: spiritual nature, and mental nature, and psychical nature, and astral and physical nature. We get only what we take, and we take only what we can and may, and if we take wrongly, we pay the penalty. Furthermore, if we take what the law of nature says that we may take as collaborators in the cosmic labor, then we grow ever more towards becoming what we truly are in our heart of hearts, kin to the gods; and when we shall have reached this high status of evolution, we can take all that we will to take, for our taking will be supremely just and right.
Weaknesses of character are those parts of us which have not learned nature's lessons; and in order to overcome these weaknesses we must go to school again in other lives. We cannot go out of the universe, we are intrinsic parts of it. We are atoms in the great cosmic corpus; consequently everything in the universe affects us sooner or later, and we likewise ultimately affect everything in the universe by our actions and reactions.
Do you see my meaning? We are responsible for what we do in nature's great scheme, and she posts the entries in her books, and does the posting infallibly. It is automatic. When we do well, it means that we exercise our spiritual wills, our strength of spiritual purpose; it also means that by this exercise we grow strong; it means that we inbuild into our character all the beautiful forces and energies swinging out into manifestation from the heart of the heart of each one of us. Thus we more and more self-express ourselves; and this is evolution; it is nature's eternal commandment to us: Come up higher, be more what you really are, use your facilities, sleep not! Our weaknesses arise in us when we sleep, which means when we do not act properly — when we refrain from doing what is right.
It is according to nature's fundamental, ethical principles that right is right, and wrong is wrong. Nature is not mocked. Ye reap what ye sow. And what ye now sow, ye shall reap it in the future. You are not here by chance. Just pause! I verily believe that if any human heart thinks that the human race, or the individual human, is here on this earth by chance, he is either insane or has not truly thought over the matter at all.
I see chance nowhere. Everywhere I see the sweep of cosmic operations, what men call law and order in the universe. And as man is an inseparable part of the universe, one of the cogs, so to say, in the cosmic wheel of destiny, he is here not by chance but by law, which means by his own acts. He has made for himself the body in which he now works, and by his own acts he will make for himself the bodies in which he will live and work in future lives on earth in human form.
This is the teaching of reimbodiment, and also includes our doctrine of karma, the doctrine of consequences, of cause and effect: that by what ye sow in the field of your character — whether by doing things or by leaving things undone, by acts done or not done, by thoughts which are mastered or which you allow to master you — your character is formed, shaped, carven, builded accordingly.
Everything that happens to you, no matter how unjust at the time it may seem, or how just, is the resultant of your own acts. You have caused it. You have brought it about. Be it luck and happiness, or be it sorrow and pain, it all originates in you. Nature is not mocked, I repeat. Otherwise you must believe, if you can, in a lunatic universe in which no orderliness prevails, in which there is no consequence following upon thought and action, in which everything is helter-skelter; and what sane man believes that?
Quite along this line of thought is the answer that I am going to give to a note in the form of a question which I received shortly before I came to the Temple this afternoon. It is a question about heredity. I was asked to answer this today because a friend of the asker is leaving for the east and, as I understand it, he is interested in our wonderful theosophical thought, and wanted to know what the theosophical philosophy had to say about what men, knowing no better, call heredity.
"Is heredity just? Is it true?"
A child is born into the world. It is born healthy and strong, with every faculty symmetrical and working symmetrically with every other faculty. It is born in the lap of wealth; it has every chance in life; and it becomes a noble man — or a wretched failure — as the case may be. And another little child is born, perhaps not a stone's throw away from the house where this first child was born. Everything seems to be against this second child. It is born mayhap of diseased parents. Perhaps if the parents be healthy, it nevertheless soon shows evidences of a disease. It may be stunted in mental growth in some obscure fashion, as the years pass. Its life seems to be one long theme of grief and misery and pain. The average materialist here says: heredity!
Immortal gods, is a mere word an explanation? What is heredity? People do not know. They simply explain heredity to be a transmission of characteristics from parent to child, or from some remote ancestor manifesting itself in the present generation, which latter form of heredity is commonly called atavism. But where is the justice in all this, if we accept the common theory, called heredity which passes current among men today? Where is the justice, I repeat? Where is the right about it all?
Both these two little children that I have supposed are human beings; and naturally the tender human heart asks: Why should these two children be born in surroundings so different, and why should their destinies be so diverse? Where is the justice in it all? Where is the right? And all the answer that you get from the bigwigs of science and of modern philosophy is one word: heredity! I repeat that this word does not explain anything. The so-called explanation merely restates the obvious facts. The inquiring mind wants to know why these differences in human life are. I can go to the dictionary, or to the encyclopedia, and consult these books, and find a half-dozen or more words which are descriptive of heredity or of some branch of heredity; but descriptive words tell me nothing at all about causes, nor do they tell me why these great differences in human life exist.
Theosophists believe in a universe where law and order rule; where justice is the very heart of being; where almighty love is the cement of things, keeping things in harmony and orderliness. That is what our theosophical teaching tells us, and such likewise is the teaching of all the great religions and philosophies of the entire world, and of all human history.
Now, theosophists do not believe in any such scientific theory of heredity as commonly passes current among men, if by heredity is meant the mere transmission from parent to child of characteristics and similar traits, and without a reference to a more deeply lying cause of the phenomenon of so-called heredity. I repeat: Where is the justice, where is the orderliness, where is the right in it all? No wonder is it that we have men whose hearts bleed at the things that they see, who revolt against the established forms of philosophy and religion and science. Human instinct, human intuition, tell them that a mere description of the transmission of characteristics and traits and diseases, etc., from parent to child, is no true explanation, and is merely a description; but this description explains nothing at all.
No theosophist has ever denied a natural fact. We too believe that parents — do not transmit from themselves — but pass on automatically, as it were, the vital stream, the vital strain, and therefore characteristics similar to their own. They can transmit nothing but what they themselves have. Isn't that obvious? Does an apple tree produce strawberries? Does wheat grow from figs? No, each can pass on to its offspring only what it itself has in itself.
But the reasons, the cause? Here they are. A child comes out of the past as a character, as a bundle of energies, as an individual which itself has made for itself. You are your own creator in that sense. You are the builder of your own character. You are responsible yourself for what you are; and you pass from human life to human life, in each human life entering the bosom of the family, drawn in incarnation to the father and the mother, whose tendencies are most like those of your own character. Consequently you get the body and the destiny in the next life that you yourselves have won. Do you see the point? Do you see the justice of this?
Two boys go to school. One studies; the other plays truant. The one takes a degree and becomes a success in life; the other is a failure. What is responsible? The school? No, the two boys; each one is responsible for what he becomes, therefore for what he gets, for he himself has made it so. He himself has made himself. Do you not like this? If you don't then you must turn to the alternative and say chance.
Now chance is no explanation, it is just a word, like fortuity; or perhaps you like the explanation of the theists that Almighty God, in his great wisdom, saw fit to make one child thus and the other so; but in this case like cowards you are placing on the shoulders of a supposititious deity what in your heart of hearts you know you are responsible for yourselves. Why place upon the cosmic spirit, by whatever other name you choose to call it, the responsibility for your own faults, and then think that you can escape scot-free from your weaknesses, by saying: I believe that I shall be washed clean "in the blood of the Lamb"! Poor Lamb! I think that only a lamb could show such patience, and I don't mean this remark unkindly. I am simply putting before you, in plain language, the facts of the case in order to pass the thought over to you.
I have many good friends among the Christians, men and women whom I respect for their qualities of mind and heart, but I myself am not a Christian, nor am I a materialist. I have learned something in this my life. I am a follower of the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind; and I believe that justice is the heart of Being, and that love is the vital fluid that flows through the heart of me and all else, giving life to all things, and feeding all things. I believe that what men in their ignorance call laws, rules everything, and that man places himself in either one or the other pan of the balance of destiny; for mark you, friends, man has the godlike quality of choice. He has will; he has choice; he has intelligence; he governs and controls his destiny, for in his own heart of hearts, at the core of the core of his being, he is a god. And all evolution consists in the progressive manifestation of these faculties, energies, powers, at the heart of things, flowing through man as well as through atom, manifesting everywhere. For evolution is but self-expression; it is growth in interior faculty and power.
Thus we see that heredity, if you want to use this name, in view of this theosophical explanation takes upon itself the shapely and stately lineaments of justice and truth, for we see the reason why things happen thus and so, and the cause of the great diversities as well in human life as elsewhere. Reincarnation and karma — otherwise the law of consequences, that ye reap what ye sow — explain fully what men call heredity; for a child comes to the bosom of the family, to the parents only, to which his own psychomagnetic instincts attract him by nature's ever-moving, just operations.
"Do you think that we shall have added strength to overcome our defects in our next life, or do you believe it is just like another day dawning: we have only that which we had the day before? Surely our likes and dislikes would draw or repel those things that we like or dislike, do you not think?"
To a certain extent I do so think; but a theosophist would not have put this question in the form in which it is imbodied, because it must be obvious from what I have said in answering previous questions this afternoon, that we shall have added strength in the next life to overcome our difficulties if we have strengthened ourselves in the present life.
Does an athlete strengthen the muscles of his body by lying down and going to sleep? If so, when the time comes to run the race, in what shape is he to meet the test? We shall have added strength in the next life if we have strengthened ourselves in this life. But also, whether we have strengthened ourselves, or weakened ourselves by indulging our present weaknesses, each new life is but the dawning of another day, a new life-day. We carry on from life to life precisely as we carry on from day to day. We wake up in the morning the same man we were when the night before we laid ourselves down in our beds to sleep and to rest. We come into the new human life with added strength and power, provided that we have won them.
If this be not so, then we get something for nothing at all, and there is favoritism in the universe; and that idea we theosophists refuse to accept. We do not believe in the doctrine of favoritism. We believe that man is an incarnate god, taking out of life what he will; and woe to the man who does otherwise than justly, for all the enormous weight of the Universe is against him, because the universe in its steady and relentless operations goes steadily forward all the time; and the man who acts to disturb the harmony of being, who throws, so to speak, a monkey-wrench into the works — or tries to, unhappy man! — nature reacts upon. Then the unfortunate man says: "My God, what is the explanation of my suffering? I do not remember anything that caused it. I never did anything that merited this." As if his lack of remembering what he did in a former life or lives were an adequate excuse or explanation!
You cannot even remember what happened to you last year, even while you are in this same body, unless it was something so unusual that it struck your imagination and burnt itself into your character. You cannot even remember all the things that you did this morning. So it is obvious that this argument, from lack of remembering, is no argument at all.
Yes, every life is a new day which dawns, and we are just that which we were when we laid ourselves down to sleep before our long sleep of rest and peace at the end of the preceding life. But — and I will add this — during our stay in the post-mortem state, before reincarnation, we assimilate what we have learned, building it into the fabric of our character; and in that sense indeed we become stronger.
You see how just these doctrines are; you see the dignity with which the theosophical teaching clothes man, as with a majestic garment. This teaching brings peace to his heart, for it shows him that right and justice rule the universe; and to his mind it brings a light, for he understands.
But do not imagine for a moment, please, that the theosophical philosophy is something new, something which has been invented recently. It is — and this you can prove for yourselves if you study the matter — the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind, and in all the literatures of the great world religions and world philosophies you will find the theosophical teachings in the background of them all. In every case, one or two or three or four or more of our theosophical teachings stands or stand prominently in the foreground, and forms or form the destinctive character of each of these great world religions and world philosophies.
Theosophy is the teaching — and I am now going to tell you a little secret — originally given to the first human protoplasts on earth, the first self-conscious men on earth — aeons upon aeons upon aeons in the past, tens of millions of years agone, by spiritual beings from another sphere, an invisible sphere of existence, who incarnated in order to instruct and to guide nascent humanity, to strike the keynotes of truth in human understanding, the vibrations of which keynotes have reverberated down the ages into our own time, and form what European philosophers call innate ideas.
Think this over. Other incarnations of great souls, less lofty than the spiritual beings I have just spoken of, have occurred ever since that far past age at cyclical intervals, in fact ever since the earth has been habitable; and men have marveled, have wondered, at these great luminaries of spiritual and intellectual brilliance who have at different times lived among men, and taught them; and I here enumerate a few names of the most recent of such great incarnations: the Buddha, Jesus, Pythagoras, Krishna, Sankaracharya, Lao-tse, Confucius, Orpheus, Musaeus, Olen, Apollonius of Tyana, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato — in fact there have been hundreds of them.
Furthermore, how many geniuses of minor splendor, who were yet great men, have there not been in the history of the human race? These last are incarnations of minor spiritual entities, nevertheless showing what the human fabric of consciousness can bring forth; and you have but to follow the line backwards in your imagination, beginning by following the great ones known in history. Do not wander away from facts; but going up from the average man to greater man, to still greater man, to outstanding genius, to the great sages and seers of whom I have mentioned some names to you, then your own intuitive faculty will compel you to admit that where there is such a ladder of progression, of increasing spiritual values, where may you stop? If you can say: Here we stop! then you proclaim that you know that you have reached an end. And you don't know anything of the sort. All you do know is this ascending ladder of genius of which I have spoken.
So you see, merely on the grounds of logic and probability, our theosophical statement to the effect that in the earliest ages of thinking mankind, great spiritual beings incarnated among men in order to instruct them and teach them — demigods and gods, if you want plain words — is logic, is probable at least; and it is they who originally taught this synthetic body of doctrine to mankind which today is called theosophy, the archaic wisdom-religion of the race, belonging to no man, belonging to no one age, and which is everlasting. Theosophy is the explanation of things as they are, the formulation in human language of the principles of the universe.
Examine our theosophical literature; study our theosophical books; I leave the conclusions with you.
"This question was asked by a visitor who came to your lecture a few Sundays ago. There may be others who would like an answer to the same question, so I send it in to you.
"'Just what is the basis of your religion? Is it based on astrology?'"
No; the whole is not smaller than the part. Astrology is based on theosophy, the archaic wisdom-religion of the human race; and when I say astrology, I do not mean the tawdry, more or less disreputable, pseudo-art so called, that passes currency today under the name of astrology. That is but a tawdry remnant of the living body of the ancient astrology of former ages, which was, in very truth, a great, a noble, a holy science-religion-philosophy. This ancient astrology, beautifully complete, symmetrical, fully explained, we believe in and we also teach it. But it is as different from the tawdry, misunderstood remnant that today passes under the name of astrology, as anything which you can conceive of as enormously differing from something else.
Astrology, so called, of today, is but a shred, so to say, of a dead and sere tree leaf which fell from its parent tree three or four years ago; whereas the ancient astrology, still studied by a few privileged students today in our ranks, is like the majestic oak, green and strong and flourishing, battling with the winds of heaven, and casting its seeds abroad, to blossom into other oak trees. This is a parable, but it is a true one.
Let me tell you something of what real astrology is. As modern astronomy is mostly a descriptive science, telling us of the movements and of the physical characteristics, as far as these latter can be gathered, of the celestial bodies, so this archaic astrology is the science-religion-philosophy which tells us of the soul, of the causal relations in and behind and above the celestial bodies, explaining why they are there, why they possess such or other powers, why they differ among themselves, what influences they exert upon the surrounding Universe in which they move and live and have their being, and what influences they are subjected to.
May I tell you? — listen! — that the finest part of the constitution of the human being is, in each case, a child of the spiritual part of one or another of the glorious suns scattered throughout frontierless space. Ye are gods in your inmost parts, atoms of some spiritual sun; and the roots of the bewildering diversity throughout natural being express themselves in mankind also as the differing characters of men. This diversity is ascribable, fundamentally and ultimately, to the divine-spiritual selves and operations of the gods which infill the universe, and who are the ultimate causes of its being.
Think over the matter. The universe is full of gods, of divine beings, of cosmic spirits, call them by what name you will. The name is nothing, the thought, the idea, the truth, is everything. You are inseparable parts of the cosmic structure; the physical universe that we see is but the outer garment or veil, the body, hiding the invisible splendor within.
Intelligence, energy, love — all the faculties which express themselves in and through men — do so because man is an individual is an inseparable part of the boundless universe, and therefore what is in the whole flows through and invigorates with its enlightening flame every minutest part. Do you get the idea? Do you see the suggestiveness of these teachings? In them lie the secret meanings of the great religions and philosophies of the past, and these teachings are keys by which you may explore the works of majesty and splendor produced by human genius in the past, in the present, and to be brought forth by men of the future.
No, the basis of our religion, of theosophy in other words, is not astrology; but astrology, as I have been attempting to give you some little inkling of it, is one of the offsprings of the theosophical philosophy.
I have received an interesting communication imbodied in two questions. It is dated January 20th. I will not read the address nor read the name, because I do not know that I have a right to do so; but I will read the questions that have been sent in to me.
"I have attended several of your most interesting Question-and-Answer hours recently and have become emboldened thereby to ask two questions of my own which I hope you will find time to touch upon on next Sunday.
"The other day the following question was asked me, and I am most desirous of knowing, in your opinion, how nearly right I was in my answer, since the thing has bothered me ever since.
"Questions: Theosophically speaking, is there an absolute good and evil?
"My answer: Premising that the all-enveloping Buddha is, then it follows that the entire universe works in harmony with his laws. Since all that is works an harmony with the ONE, the universe exists for the benefit of every living thing within it and the law of the necessity of the harmony of the parts with the whole may be considered the absolute good. The antithesis of this would be the absolute bad, but, since from the very nature of the whole, this cannot be, then, theosophically speaking, there can be no absolute bad. Is this a correct answer or not?"
Speaking generally, it is. There is no absolute bad. Bad is disharmony; bad is hate; bad is separateness. Bad is lack of union. Bad is concentration of interests around the individual, to the exclusion of all else; and everywhere in the universe we see the contrary of these: orderliness, law, union, everything existing for everything else — or going to pieces!
But this kind friend, in my judgment, should beware, on the other hand, of saying that there is such a thing as absolute good. Since Dr. Albert Einstein came amongst us and taught us that there are no absolute absolutes, but that all things are relative to each other, thereby by so much limiting other things, it is obvious even to modern scientific philosophers that absolutes cannot exist. If there were in absolute good, the heart of the universe, there could be no bad in that universe at all. It would be absolutely good throughout. But we know better than this, for we see imperfection in greater or less degrees everywhere.
Imperfection is as much the law of the universe as is the constant growth to better things, for the two are really one. Imperfection arises out of the diversity that I have spoken of, or, otherwise, out of the countless multitudes and hosts of imperfect but evolving entities which are learning; and because they are learning, obviously they are going higher, and they will be going higher for eternity; for, thank the immortal gods, there are no absolute ends beyond which nothing better can be gotten or learned.
Do you see the point? There is therefore no absolute good, nor is there any absolute bad; for the one would utterly prevent the existence of the other. But what we do say is that there is relative good and there is relative evil — and no matter how high you may place the dhyani-buddha, the cosmic spirit, there is always another one still higher, more evolved, more perfected still, more divine; and this merely means that man's utmost imagination of perfection, to which he gives a name and calls it absolute good, is but a recognition of the fact, an unconscious recognition of the fact, that there is something still diviner than it.
Figurate to yourselves a boundless life, a boundless universe, a super-universe, frontierless, without beginning, without an ending; existing in eternal duration, filled full of worlds and entities in all-various grades of evolutionary perfection or imperfection, some entities so highly evolved that we humans call them gods; but others so much more highly evolved that they whom we call gods would say of them: They are our gods; and again the same thing exists in reaches still more sublime — and so on forever.
So you see that when you say absolute good, you limit, belittle, you make frontiers. Do you get the idea? Remember also that what we humans call bad or evil, is a recognition by human minds of imperfection, of imperfectly evolved entities and things. They are not wholly beautiful, not wholly symmetrical, not yet fully developed, or evolved, which last word you will remember in our theosophical teachings means the throwing out, the growth, the unwrapping, the unrolling, of what is within; as an acorn has in its heart, and will bring forth, the majestic oak; as the apple-seed has at its core the apple tree to be, which apple seed, if given proper environment, will produce the apple tree; as a human being has in the core of the core of himself all the potentialities of future evolution.
It is obvious that evolution is growth, meaning the unwrapping, the unrolling, the bringing forth, of what is locked up within. That is evolution. So consequently, when we speak of 'bad,' we mean imperfection, imperfectly evolved beings, no matter how great they may be at any one time; and therefore theosophists say, and say very emphatically, that we do not believe in an infinite, personal god. For myself, I don't believe in a unique, supreme god at all. But I believe in a universe infilled with gods, with bright and flaming intelligences; just as on earth I do not believe in one big man who is humanity, but in hosts of human beings who are men and who, as a host, express human qualities.
But above men there are other hierarchies and families of entities still more evolved; and above these are other hosts and hierarchies, and above them still others. So you can count the rungs of the ladder of Being going ever higher.
"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!"
And that is what the human race is doing, building ever nobler mansions for itself. In the present epoch of the human race, in its present evolutionary stage, we have soft and tender bodies of flesh; but in future aeons we are going to have far more perfect bodies, much more fit to express the indwelling powers of the inner god. Splendid intellectual faculties will blossom and bloom in those future aeons through men. Transcendent spiritual powers will manifest themselves in mankind; and I tell you in very truth, and in all solemnity, that before the human race leaves this earth for another earth in the invisible realms of being, in other words for something higher, men will walk this earth like demigods; and the civilizations in those far distant aeons that they will bring forth will be like themselves, the fruitage of fully developed souls, of fully developed intellects, and of fully expressed, evolved, spiritual beings.
The second question is as follows:
"Further, if possible, I would like to know why, in all theosophical teachings, the state of single blessedness is so stressed? Is it not possible for a married couple to progress together up the spiritual ascent as rapidly as they could were they single?"
Yes, provided that — !
I said to a friend the other day, when he asked me why I had never married: "My dear chap, I have my own private reasons." He said: "What are they?" So I said: "I am a trouble-dodger!" And he looked at me for a moment, and then he remarked: "You are complimentary to the other sex!" "No," I said, "I don't mean it in that way at all. I mean it in another way."
I believe in the married state for the average man and woman. I think that it offers a field for bringing forth from the human heart and mind qualities which the state of "single blessedness" does not so easily offer a field of expression for. I think that the married state is an excellent discipline. It teaches human patience; it teaches human kindliness; it teaches one self-forgetfulness, if you are earnest and true, if you really look upon the married state as a fine and splendid thing for the average man, as I do.
But there does come a time in human evolution when a man or a woman arrives at a point where he wants to concentrate all his energies — spiritual, intellectual, psychical, astral, vital, physical, everything — on one object, namely, to make himself a fit servant and servitor of his fellow human beings without any other distractions or calls of duty. And this is what we call chelaship or the state of the disciple. That is all.
I do not know that the state of single blessedness is overstressed in our teachings. On the contrary, you must have heard my predecessor Katherine Tingley, tell you hundreds of times in our Temple of Peace, how beautiful the married state is for the average man and woman. We highly approve of it.
Furthermore, let me tell you something more before I close: If a man and a woman go into the married state and make it the beautiful, dignified thing that it ought to be (now please mark carefully what I say) it is just this concentration of the splendid facilities of the human being on a limited sphere, however fine that limited sphere is, which, for the disciple who is striving to do what I have already spoken of, is the most dangerous thing of all, because the higher a man has evolved the better husband he makes, the more he loves, the more kindly he is, the more interesting and splendid companion he becomes; and where affection is, where the deepest cords of the human heart are pulled, as married love pulls them, there is nothing that so distracts the attention away from his other aims and object which is so beautiful, to wit, to make himself fit to be a spiritual servant and servitor of his fellowmen. That is what our Masters of Wisdom and Compassion are. This path of discipleship is for the few; that is true.
Thus there comes a time when every human heart must feel and say to itself: However beautiful love is, there is another love which is so much more beautiful that I cannot enter the married state without feeling my own heart too strongly attracted away from the sun and light of glory that I see in the Mystic East. It is the beauty of human love, its strong appeal, wherein lies the danger for the disciple — not that it is unholy and wrong. It is holy; it is right; it is good. I am not opposed to the married state, please understand. But for the chosen few, those who have chosen to give up life and all that it has for themselves as individuals, for the purpose of serving the human race, free from any ties of a personal nature, the most beautiful of personal things are precisely the most dangerous, because their pull is the strongest. Now perhaps you understand.
So, remember the message which has run all through our talk and study together this afternoon: that in each one of you is a living god, a spiritual entity of transcendent power and beauty, to become one with which lies on the far horizons of the future destiny of the human race; and that even now, imperfect as men are, they can come into personal communion with their god within, if they will; and when you do so, then you become a Christ, a risen Christ, risen from the tomb of the lower selfhood into the atmosphere of spiritual glory. You have become then the awakened Buddha, "the awakened one," expressing at will all the powers and faculties of the god in the heart of the heart of each one of you.