Man’s body mansion crumbles

And is destroyed

By earthquakes, floods, tornadoes,

And other catastrophes of Nature.

It is strange that when many people perished

As the result of volcanic quake,

And found perpetual security in Thy arms,

Two prisoners were left alive

For some reason,

To serve the mortal prison further.

Teach us not to worry when trials

Of physical catastrophe and depression come.

Teach us to feel that Thy all-protecting

Unseen mantle is ever present around us,

In joy and sorrow, in life and death.

Bless the live President of the United States,

That he may have less opposition

And more cooperation. Bless him

With right thought, right action, right will,

And right power, through which

He may accomplish national

And international good.

I am protected always, for the living God

Goes with me everywhere,

On the altar

Of my ever-remembering devotion.

I will recognize Thy smile

On the lips of the rose,

On the lips of babies,

And on the lips of Saints.

I will be one with God

In the temple of daily silence first, and then

I will strive for those things

Which He wants to give me

For my real and lasting good.

Heavenly Father, free me

From the intoxication of emotional outbursts,

And save me from falling into the pitfalls

Of anger, hasty action, destructive moods,

And misdirected activity.

Teach me to make calmness

The ever-present preceptor

Of my thoughts and activities.

Teach me to behold

The perfect image of wisdom

In the mirror of my constant inner stillness.

I want to worship Thee

In the temple joy of all hearts.

I want to worship Thee on the altar of Love

In each heart.

I will avoid criticizing other people

Because I do not like to have my own faults

Discussed before others.

I will forsake the pale roses of false pleasure,

And walk through the ever-blooming

Bliss Blossoms in the garden of Silence.

May I ever keep my consciousness

Free and serene, so that Thy vast life

Can manifest through my little life.

May Thy impartial love manifest

Through my selfish, limited human love.

May Thy unselfishness

Tinge all my selfish acts.

Transmute my flesh into Thy Spirit.

Transmute my mind into Thy Wisdom.

Transmute my body consciousness

Into Thy Omnipresent Consciousness.

If I have any hatred, revenge,

Or negation in my heart, transmute it

Into Thy all-forgiving love.

Teach me to think and reason

Always according to Thy wish.

Teach me to share my wisdom with others.

Teach me to act as Thou dost want me to act.

Teach me to act for myself

In my one little body

And in my numberless bodies of others.

Teach me to unite my joy of Silence

With the joy of appreciation of Nature,

And to worship Thee on their united altar.

Teach me not to be guided by my bad habits,

But by my good habits,

And especially by my inner wisdom,

Which comes from Thee.

Teach me to build

A Temple of Peace for Thee everywhere

On the soil of activity and of silence.

Teach me to behold Thee

Hiding equally

In the white, dark, yellow, red,

And brown body-temples of all races.

Open the sky, open the door of destiny,

Open the veils of life and death,

And show Thyself unto us.

May I use the love with which I loved

My own dear dead ones, to love those

Who seem to be my enemies.

Father, I will love Thee

With all the love in my heart,

With all the devotion in my soul.

Father, teach us to seek the things

Which Thou dost want us to seek in this life.

Father, may Thy earth be Thy heaven,

And may Thy children be Thy angels,

Living in harmony,

Seeking to help one another

To become prosperous, powerful, and wise,

And above all, may they be kind,

Have understanding,

And be loving and happy.

Father, I will drink vitality

From the fountains of sunshine.

I will drink peace

From the silver fountain of mooned nights.

I will drink Thy power

In the mighty cup of the wind.

I will drink Thy consciousness

In all the little cups of my thoughts.

I will drink Thy joy in my joy.

I will drink Thy Bliss in my Blissful thoughts.

Do more than exist—live.

Do more than touch—feel.

Do more than look—observe.

Do more than read—absorb.

Do more than hear—listen.

Do more than listen—understand.

Do more than think—ponder.

Do more than talk—say something.

THE world is one; we cannot live apart;

To earth’s remotest races we are kin;

God made the generations of one blood;

Man’s separation is a sign of sin.

We breathe a common air, while sun and rain

And bounteous earth our every need supply;

Seed time is sure—harvest fails us not;

The silent stars in beauty flood the sky.

For each thing lives to serve another’s need

And serving thus,

Its own deep need is served.

This is the law; the centuries have seen

The planets in their courses

Have not swerved.

But all, harmonious, circling round the sun,

Each in its orbit, keep the balance true;

When like the planets man obeys the law,

Life more abundant shall his life renew.

Till then there is no peace in all the earth,

And though we pile our gold against the sky,

It cannot save us—when the vision fails,

Strive as we may

And plead and question why.

"’Tis from yourselves ye suffer,"

Buddha said,

The Nazarene

Proclaimed the soul’s high call.

"Share all thou hast."

Yet blindly has man lived

Each for himself, instead of each for all.

What though we solve the secret of the stars,

Or from the vibrant ether pluck a song?

Can this for all man’s tyranny atone

While Mercy weeps

And waits and suffers long?

And have those rare souls

Lived and died in vain

Who taught redemption

Cometh from within?

Lay low the walls of selfishness and hate;

Swing wide the gates that Love may enter in.

Put up the sword, its day of anguish past;

Disarm the forts;

The flaming war-flags furled;

Forever keep the air without frontiers,

The great, free,

Friendly highways of the world.

So that at last to rapture men may come

And hear again the music of the spheres

And stand erect, illumined, radiant, free,

The travail and the triumph of the years.

EVERY man builds his aspirations and forms his desires according to his pre-natal and post-natal influences. Heredity and national, social, and family characteristics, tastes, and habits mold the life of a child. Children, in the beginning of their lives, are about the same everywhere. That is why Jesus said: "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." Divinity is the one nationality of all children the world over, but, as they grow older and the family and social characteristics begin to exercise their influence, it is then that individuals begin to reveal the Hindu or American or any other national and racial traits.

It seems as if God is trying to evolve the art of right living by expressing His Truth through a combination of particular civilizations, mentalities, and nationalities. No nation is complete in itself. An absorption and collection of the best in Hindus, English, Americans, Chinese, French, German, and other nationalities may offer us the best information on the art of living. It is important to note that certain individuals like Jesus, or the master minds of India, not only attained the best in all civilizations since the earliest era to the present time, but they manifested the highest ideals embodied in all religions.

Great men and saints always live several hundred years ahead of their time and exemplify the universal Truth of all times. Therefore, the art of right living can be found in the study of the best in all nationalities, plus the study of the individual lives of great saints. Of all nationalities at present, the Hindu and the American represent, respectively, the acme of spiritually and materially efficient civilizations. The Hindus and other Orientals have produced the highest types of spiritual people, like Jesus and Ghandi. Whereas, Americans have produced the greatest types of business men, like Henry Ford, and also practical scientists like Thomas Edison. A combination of the spiritually-efficient qualities with the scientific materially-efficient qualities as represented in the above examples of the lives of great men can offer us an art of living which will produce physically, mentally, morally, materially, socially, and spiritually the highest type of all-round men in all nationalities.

The next things is to select, not the particular one-sided national characteristics, but the all-round universal principles of living from all nations and from all great men. Do not take only those principles which develop the physical at the cost of the spiritual phase of man’s life, or vice versa, but also take those which equally and harmoniously develop the superman with his balanced physical, mental, moral, and spiritual qualities.

I will now enumerate a few practical methods of uniformly developing body, mind, and soul.

(a) Eat more raw food and fresh fruits, drink fresh milk and plenty of orange juice with ground nuts mixed in. (Read and follow a good modern book on dietetics.)

(b) Fast one day a week on orange juice and use a suitable cleansing mineral oil as prescribed by your physician.

(c) Walk, run, or take some form of vigorous exercise with deep attention until you perspire, every morning and evening.

(d) Read and meditate upon a passage from the Christian Bible and a passage from the Hindu Bible, (Bhagavad Gita) obtainable at any large book store.

(e) Read Shakespeare and other classics, some portions from some practical books on chemistry, physics, physiology, history of Oriental and Western philosophy, comparative religion, ethics, and psychology. Don’t waste your time on cheap novels. Read a good health and spiritual magazine. Read the editorial and health articles in the newspapers, and not only the comics and scandals.

(f) Go to a different church each Sunday. One Sunday go to the Protestant church, another Sunday go to the Catholic Church, another Sunday go to the Jewish temple, and another Sunday go to the Hindu temple, and so on. Keep on doing this in rotation to show not only your toleration, but to develop your appreciation and understanding. Call all temples, whether Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or any other religion, by the common name—"The Temple of Our God."

(g) While honoring God in all man-made temples, learn to worship and contact Him in the temple of deepest silence. Practice meditation for one hour in the morning and one hour at night. Learn the highest methods of scientific concentration and meditation as taught by great Hindu masters. Do not be side-tracked to dogmatic untested religious beliefs, but try to find the one highway of Self-Realization which leads quickly to God through the forests of belief and theology. Do not be a slave to the senses. Learn to make them serve you with lasting spiritual pleasures.

(h) Only occasionally go to see the best moral and spiritual plays or moving pictures.

(i) Obey the good laws of your family, country, and all nations.

(j) Speak kindly and follow fearlessly the Truth wherever you perceive it.

(k) Love your family and country deeply so that you may learn to love and serve people of all nations more, and learn to find God in all men of whatever race or religion.

(l) Earn more, and spend less by destroying luxurious habits. Save enough so that you can live on the interest of your savings. Divide your life into four parts, putting the main emphasis on developing particular efficiency in one line during each of the four periods of life.

(1) From 5 to 25 years, take up the study of efficiency, general education, and particular training: (2) from 25 to 40 years, earn money; (3) from 40 to 50 years, live quietly, study, and meditate; (4) from 50 years on, spend life in preaching and meditating deeply.

In short, remember, if you think of making money for half an hour, exercise one hour, if you exercise one hour, read two hours, and if you read two hours, meditate three hours and love God and act peacefully at all times. Learn to be calmly active and actively calm.

Say this prayer: "Heavenly Father, teach us to create an United States of the World with Thy Truth as our leader and president, which will guide us to live in loving brotherhood, and urge us to develop our bodies, minds, and souls perfectly, in order that Thy Kingdom of Heavenly Peace which is within us may be manifest in the actions of our daily life."

Pray also: "Heavenly Father, may Thy love shine forever on the sanctuary of my devotion, and may I be able to awaken Thy love in all hearts. Make me efficient, healthy, perfect in everything, so that I may inspire all my earthly brothers to be Thy noble children."

Above all, contact God first in the Temple of Silence, and then health, prosperity, and wisdom will be added unto you.

"The aeons one by one are flying;

The arrows one by one are gone.

Dimly, slowly, life is fading;

But still my soul is marching on."

May the Gem Lotus with its thousand petals

Open and illuminate within me

Its love, light, and abiding peace.

May my thirsty soul feast upon

The nectar of immortality

Hidden in the heart

Of the thousand-petaled Gem Lotus

—Resplendent in the majestic rays

Of a thousand suns.

May the nectar of immortality inspire me

And fulfill my Divinity.

I meditate upon the unfoldment

Of the Gem Lotus,

Petal by petal,

Day by day.

"They came and saw where He (Jesus) dwelt and abode with Him that day; for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two which heard John speak and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him: ‘We have found the Messias,’ which is, being interpreted, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, He said: ‘Thou art Simon, the son of Jona.’"

It is important to note the difference between Jesus the man and Jesus the Christ. Jesus was the name of the man. The Sanskrit origin of this name is found in the word "Isa," or, Lord of Creation. Mispronounced by travelers in many lands, and being used in many different languages, the word Jesus came to be used in place of Isa. The Spanish pronounce it "Hazus."

Different people, with voices influenced by different climates, pronounce the same words differently and give birth to different languages with different spellings. The word "Calcutta" is spelled differently by different races. The English spell and pronounce it "Calcutta." The Bengalees pronounce it and spell it "Kalicata." The Western Hindus pronounce and spell it "Kalicutta." Some Norwegians pronounce and spell the same word as "Colquita." This illustrates how the name "Isa" could be changed through the ages into "Jesus."

Originally names expressed a quality of an individual. Then they were handed down from father to son for generations. This complicated matters and later each individual had to have the name of his family, and also a name signifying his individuality. This may be illustrated by my own name, which is a combination of Yoga and Ananda. Yoga means scientific union, and Ananda means Bliss. The distinctive quality is the love of scientific union of the soul with God. For that reason, the name of Yoga was given by my Master. Ananda corresponds to a family name, but in this case it belongs to the order of Swamis and means those men who seek Divine Bliss.

Jesus, the Christ, likewise has meaning. Jesus was the name given by the family signifying a Divine child, or lord of Creation, and the name Christ was given later and signified the Christ consciousness which was manifest in the body of Jesus. Strangely enough, the family of Jesus, seeing the miraculous signs which attended His birth, named him "Lord of Creation" or "Isa," and later, due to changes in pronunciation, called Him "Jesus."

The Sanskrit name "Kutastha Chaitanya," or Christ Consciousness, and the name of one of the greatest prophets of India, Christna, who lived about 1500B.C., show that the word Christ is a very ancient word, meaning the unchangeable consciousness present in every atom of matter and in every speck of finite Creation. The Hindu prophet was called Jadaya, the Christna. Jadava was the family name, Christna the spiritual name. Jesus, the Christ, signifies that the body of Jesus was the vehicle in which the Christ Consciousness, or universal intelligence present in everything, was manifest.

People, through different ages, have sought the Messiah, or the christ, who could turn their attention from the soul’s consciousness of little portions of the matter-world, such as country, society, and family, to the Omnipresence of Christ Consciousness. Throughout the ages, when the souls of people, instead of being identified with Christ Consciousness, became entangled in individual, family, social, and national consciousness, they became limited, producing many miseries. Blind attachment of family property, and so on, leads to selfishness, quarrelsomeness, delusion of permanent possession, inharmony, worries, and the like. So-called blind patriotism produces commercial greed, desire of wresting the possessions of others from them, and terrible wars.

After souls suffer by repeatedly passing through family, social, and national troubles in different incarnations, they automatically desire to be released from misery and long to find emancipation through a Christ-like savior. The Bhagavad Gita says that self-liberated souls are used again and again as vehicles of God, and are sent on earth to express the Christ Consciousness in order to help release matter-entangled souls.

God never created Himself into a human being, subject to the weakness of flesh and mental limitations. If God manufactured Jesus Christ as His Son, already complete and perfect, then the temptations of Jesus, by Satan, and His victory, were nothing but Divine Acting. Christ, who was already above death and temptations, could not have needed any mental strength to overcome them. Hence, Jesus, as a perfect Son of God, could not be an example for us.

Jesus was a liberated soul, one of the greatest that ever came on earth. He had struggled through many incarnations in order to come to that Christ State, and it was during the Christ State, in which He could feel His consciousness in every atomic cell of His great body of all matter, that He could act as a Savior of mankind. It is only in this State that any Soul is able to feel Its perfect identity with God. Jesus, Himself, said that all those who received Him, (i.e., were mentally advanced enough and spiritually transparent enough) to them He gave the power to be the Sons of God. In the words of Andrew we first find the differentiation between Jesus and Christ.

"And when Jesus behold him (Simon Peter) He said: ‘Thou art Simon, the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Caphas, which is, by interpretation—A Stone.’"

Jesus saw Simon Peter and predicted that his spiritual life would be strong as a stone.

"The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him: ‘Follow Me.’"

When great Masters, like Jesus, come on earth, they bring with them their advanced disciples, in order to give them the higher teaching, and to test their spirituality on the psychological battlefield of the earth. So, Jesus, knowing His previous Guru, (preceptor), and disciple relationship with Philip, calmly said: "Follow Me." This was a command to Philip, for Jesus recognized His spiritual responsibility as a preceptor toward Philip as His disciple. Jesus indicated that Philip should tune in his instinct-guided reason and will power with the higher wisdom-guided reason and will power of Jesus because that was the only way Philip could free himself from mortal delusion and overcome the compelling temptation of flesh.

Delusion and pre-natal bad habits may completely overpower the reason and will power of a disciple during crucial tests when the delusive dictates of his own reason seem to him to be virtuous and true. In this state the disciple should never trust to his own decisions, about new undertakings of his life. Vice wears the cloak of virtuous reason to lure him away from the spiritual path. At that time the foresight of the preceptor should be consulted and his advice should be followed obediently by the disciple, even though his own befogged reason may rebel and tell him to do otherwise. In the delusive state the best undertakings may end in a disaster, for Satan, the Universal Metaphysical Tempter, tries by every means to take the virtuous man from the spiritual path.

"Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip findeth Nathaniel, and saith unto him: ‘We have found Him, of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathaniel saith unto him: ‘Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip saith unto him: ‘Come and see.’ Jesus saw Nathaniel coming to him and saith unto him: ‘Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.’"

Philip quotes the intuitive revelations of Moses and the prophets, about the coming of Jesus, the Christ. This raises the question: "Are the happenings on this earth and earthly human affairs all predestined?" We do not think so, but if not, how could Moses and the prophets foretell the coming of Christ? We think it was this way: Moses, by his intuitive foresight was able to trace the law of cause and effect which governs human life. He knew also of the law of God which sends self-emancipated, Christ-like souls onto the earth at different ages, when the people of the earth become burdened with sin. God uses the vehicles of Christ-like souls to inspire sorrow-laden mortal beings with the courage to seek salvation.

Nathaniel was a plain-spoken, sincere man, and he knew the sin-laden state of Nazareth, and naturally he expressed doubt that such a place could ever produce a Savior. Philip was practical, and without argument tried to bring Nathaniel into the transmuting personal magnetism of Jesus Christ. Philip knew that Christ, by His very look and His magnetic life-force could electrocute the seeds of bad habits and doubts that had formed grooves in the brain of Nathaniel. Jesus gave Nathaniel a soul-penetrating look which scorched out his ignorance and took an intuitive photograph of his life. That is why Jesus said: "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile." Behold a soul which is free from satanic insincerity.

"Nathaniel saith unto him: ‘Whence knowest thou me?’ Jesus answered and saith unto him: ‘Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.’"

Nathaniel was astonished to hear Jesus analyze him so correctly and he wanted to know how it was done. So Jesus said: "Before Philip called thee, I saw thee." This seeing was not by the superficial eye, but it was the intuitive photograph of the soul taken on the sensitive perception of Jesus, who was Omniscient and versed in the art of telepathy.

Omnipresent God would never been born on earth as a human being, for God in His greatness could never completely identify Himself with the limitations of temptation, mortality, and so forth, of a human existence. Unless God could forget Himself in a human incarnation, He could never in reality struggle with the limitations of human nature and make Himself a spiritual example to us.

If Jesus was already God, and came as God, His trials and sorrows, struggles, victory over Satan and crucifixion, were but Divine acting. In that case, Jesus acted out the pre-ordained Divine part of His life without being touched by it, just as an actor plays a part on the stage without being inwardly identified with it. Such a Divinely manufactured Jesus could never inspire faith in weak human beings, so that they could conquer evil, but a God-man Jesus, who struggled to the highest spiritual freedom, could be a universal human example, and that would save God from being accused of the partiality of making one soul the Son of God and all other souls the sons of temptation and weakness.

God uses only about-to-be-perfect souls to serve as examples and teachers to deluded humans. It has occurred sometimes that perfect angles of God have consciously come on earth to show people how they should behave, by leading exemplary lives. Even the highest, and all-powerful saints express their natures in the human body, through humility, meekness, forgiveness, undying love, and unselfishness, instead of through miraculous physical forces. In evil-submerged human life the tendency is to suppress wrong by physical force. When the human limitation vanishes from man, then he uses only the superior, nobler forces of love, instead of machine guns and revengefulness, to right the wrongs in individual and collective life. Even if great saints are tortured or ridiculed on earth, they behave Divinely, using only the highest and noblest moral methods to conquer evil.

It isn’t raining rain to me,

It’s raining daffodils.

In every little drop I see

Wild flowers on the hills.

The clouds of gray engulf the day

And overwhelm the town.

It isn’t raining rain to me.

It’s raining roses down.

It isn’t raining rain to me.

But fields of clover bloom,

Where every buccaneering bee

Can find a bed and room.

A healthy unto the happy—

A fig for him who frets—

It isn’t raining rain to me.

It’s raining violets.

IT IS SOMETIMES well, even though the road is clearly defined, to put a special warning mark on unusually dangerous hazards. We paint white the fences around mountain curves, put stripes on dangerous obstacles in the road, and plant buoys and bells on treacherous shoals near the channels of traffic. A minister who had spoken strongly against Sunday golf learned after the service that his host for dinner was an enthusiastic Sunday golfer. When the minister hesitatingly said that he had no intentions of being personal, his friend replied: "Don’t mind that. It is a mighty poor sermon that doesn’t hit me somewhere."

While the word saint primarily means a holy or godly person, one who is sanctified or consecrated, one redeemed and consecrated to God, it is also used in the Old Testament to mean any Jew as one of the chosen people of God, and in the New Testament to include all members of any Christian church. Acceptance of the definition which includes as saints all Jews and all members of Christian churches, probably gives abundant latitude for a discourse on unlovely saints.

However, the meaning in this discussion is that which naturally comes first to mind when the word is used in such a connection—unlovely persons who have regarded themselves as among the elect, or perhaps we do not so much mean that as to attempt to reveal "ways in which certain saints might go on toward greater attainment of character."

When one surveys the religious world with an eye to its development of moral and social character, one is likely to wish that one could rewrite the whole code, and shift its entire emphasis. Not that most of the instructions are not good, but that the undue importance given them results in neglect of other vital characteristics, developing one-sided individuals and a warped civilization.

This does not refer primarily to the outright hypocrite who professes one thing and practices another. Such cheats may be found in any circle and are in no sense to be charged to the institution or platform which they use in their nefarious schemes. The individual who deliberately professes one ideal and lives by another is not an unlovely saint, but a rank imposter. I have in mind those persons who profess a religion of a kind, and follow it at least to some degree, yet fail to touch with creative wand major portions of their lives.

Some of these are so far from numerous, and happily are so rapidly disappearing, that it is not necessary to give time of their discussion. Such, for example, as Kathleen Woodward’s grandfather, whom she mentions in her autobiographical study, "Jipping Street: Childhood in a London Slum." This grandfather, "affecting an extreme puritanism in his morals, beat his wife and daughter, and broke up the few sticks which comprised their home, and once swung my grandmother round the room by her hair."

Aside from such gross discrepancies between professions and life, religious and moral instruction has been so limited in vision that some of the most important phases of moral and spiritual development have been neglected. Indeed, the instruction has been so warped that often unwholesome and immoral attributes have been sanctioned as holy, and fine human attainment has been absolutely barred by the so-called agencies of morality and religion themselves.

When a lone drayman was laboring to put a huge trunk through a doorway, a husky bystander offered to help and took hold on the opposite side. After several minutes of fruitless effort, during which the trunk did not budge, the stranger said: "Whew, I don’t believe we will ever be able to get it in." "In?" yelled the drayman, "I am trying to get it out."

One reason for the crawling pace of the race in moral and spiritual development is that the forces of training, while pulling vigorously on certain elements of character that are noble, push just as strenuously on certain other phases which hold the race back.

An example of the force applied by religion to develop leanness of character, and to put brakes on the wheels of human progress, is seen in attempts to claim exclusive possession of the way of salvation. No matter how fine and upright one may be, he is in this respect unlovely if he claims that his way is the only way of salvation. He may obey all the codes and conventions, but his morality lacks the finer touch of respect for personality when he endeavors to force his opinions on another, or claims that salvation can be found only by his method. There is a certain immorality to blemish his otherwise beautiful character. His sainthood bears a mark of unloveliness.

Dogmatic saints lack that balance which gives the ship of progress a steady keel. Fanaticism requires no brains and little effort. Balanced enthusiasm keeps the machinery of mental adjustment running at top efficiency, and forces the soul to draw deep at its wells of inspiration. It is quite a task to develop the kind of balance Maud Fletcher Galligher thus longs for:

"Large enough to include all in love; small enough to treasure a single smile.

Broad enough to see from another’s viewpoint; narrow enough to use discretion in its acceptance.

Energetic, but not to the extent that deprives another of doing; never so indolent as to allow another to do one’s own work.

Extravagant enough to be surrounded by the beautiful; saving enough to have no more than one can appreciate fully.

Wise enough to know life’s deeper meaning; frivolous enough to enjoy life’s pleasures.

Never too high to bend to the lowest; never too low to aspire to the highest."

No one has a monopoly of Truth or Salvation. The great American disloyalty is fear of Truth, and the same defect is the outstanding Christian hypocrisy., The American nation, with its guarantees of freedom of utterance, is founded upon a conviction that Truth will stand before error, and that Truth is always desirable. It is un-American to attempt coercion of another’s opinions; it is un-Christian to declare there is only one technique of Salvation. There are so many beautiful things in the Christian religion; there is so much idealism within the churches; there is such a challenge to the human spirit, that these truths and institutions have nothing to fear from true religious freedom. It will be a glorious day when the churches learn that the supremacy of Christianity does not consist in antagonism to other truth, but in the embracing of all goodness and beauty.

We should eliminate the words heathen and pagan from our religious vocabulary. They are only our brothers, following their gleam of truth. The same light "lighteth every man." Unwillingness to see the beauty and truth of another’s position is a bondage to the mind, a poison to the soul. Loyalty to country and cause does not depend upon blindness to other values. A man loves his home, not because there is nothing else in the city worth while, but because home and city each enhance the other’s glory. So shall a true soul honor his country and cling to his religion, enlarging them both by whole-hearted devotion which makes them supreme in a world of multiplied loyalties and ideals.

Every one, outside the Roman Catholic church, sees in its dogma of salvation only through that church. a stumbling-block to the race and an obstacle to the fullest usefulness of the Roman Catholic church itself, but the characteristic is hardly less prevalent in Orthodox Protestantism. In fact, the characteristic trait of Orthodoxy is its claim to monopoly. When one admits that others possess Truth, and are on the path of rectitude, he is no longer Orthodox. As reported by the Los Angeles papers, a leading pastor, in a sermon following the death of Thomas A. Edison, said that he did not know whether Edison was saved or not. He knew the inventor had not met the Orthodox Christian tests of salvation during his life, but, dying, he said: "It is beautiful over there," so the preacher can only leave his soul with God and hope that maybe he saved him in that minute.

Nor does Orthodoxy set the limits to this unloveliness of saints. Many movements called liberal are tainted with its evil. This same unloveliness is at once the strength and the weakness of Christian Science—its strength of dogmatism in developing an enthusiastic following determined to see what they cannot see, and to be true to error in hope that error will reward them with some magical blessing—its weakness in that it makes impossible the exploration of a free mind in its fields of grain and chaff. The Christian Science Church maintains a stronger Orthodoxy than the evangelical churches. Instead of one infallible book, it has two, and at every service states that there is no human error in the service because all it elements come from the Bible and from Science and Health, and it is therefore divinely ordered.

We should not be over-critical of persons whose faults we can see. A true estimate includes two other elements: Appreciation of the values they do represent, and sympathy rather than condemnation for their failures. The rankest dogmatism and orthodoxy would arouse not antagonism, but sympathy. In individuals, they are the result of complexes, fears, inhibitions. They are a compensation for a conscious or unconscious feeling of inferiority. Dogmatism is always the product, not of faith, but of fear. It is the refuge, not of truth, but of error.

"Some hearts go hungering thru’ the world

And never find the love they seek.

Some lips with pride or scorn are hurled

To hide the pain they may not speak."

We shall partake of that loveliness which we miss in these saints only if, avoiding all appearance of dogmatism, we devote ourselves to the cause of Truth. We must be continually examining our appetites, opinions, theories, to see if we are accepting them because they are true, or if we are calling them true because we accept them. Our view of the dogmatic saint must rouse within us an enlarging passion for Truth. Seeing the power of prejudice, superstition, and authority, we should be more desirous of joining that small minority who follow the gleam of Truth and answer the beckoning of freedom. We know that the little group is at the head of the procession in which all men march and of which destiny is commander. In his desire for Truth one links himself with the eternal, and regardless of temporary turns of fortune, is on the side of the ultimate victory.

Oh, say what is Truth? ’Tis the fairest gem

That the riches of worlds can produce;

And priceless the value of Truth will be,

When the proud monarch’s costliest diadem

Is counted but dross and refuse.

Yes, say what is Truth?

’Tis the brightest prize

To which mortals or gods can aspire;

Go search in the depths

Where it glittering lies,

Or ascend in pursuit to the loftiest skies;

’Tis an aim for loftiest desire.

The scepter may fall from the despot’s grasp,

When the winds of stern justice he copes,

But the pillar of Truth will endure to the last,

And its firm-rooted bulwarks

Outstand the rude blast

And the wreck of the fell tyrant’s hopes.

Then, say, what is Truth?

’Tis the last and the first,

For the limits of time it steps o’er;

Though the heavens depart,

And the earth’s foundations burst,

Truth, the sum of existence,

Will weather the worst,

Eternal, unchanged, evermore.

The seeker of Truth is always in a minority, of course. He is anathema to orthodoxy, a rebel to entrenched privilege, a dangerous individual to those who live on falsehood, and he has not the consolation of finality. He must content himself with the fact that as against them all he is in spirit on the side of the eternal plan and purpose of the universe. He must rejoice that he seeks to march in the vanguard of God’s battalions, as they move forward into new territory. If this place him in danger and let loose upon him the arrows of all orthodoxies, he can cry with John B. Gough:

"What is a minority? The chosen heroes of this earth have been in a minority. There is not a social, political, or religious privilege that you enjoy today that was not bought for you by the blood and tears and patient suffering of the minority. It is the minority that have vindicated humanity in every struggle. It is a minority that have stood in the van of every moral conflict, and achieved all that is noble in the history of the world. You will find each generation has been always busy gathering up the scattered ashes of the martyred heroes of the past, to deposit them in the golden urn of a nation’s history.

Minority! If a man stand for the right, though the right be on the scaffold, while wrong sits in the seat of government; if he stand for the right, though he eat, with the right and truth, a wretched crust; if he walk with obloquy and scorn in the by-lanes and streets, while falsehood and wrong ruffle it in silken attire, let him remember that wherever the right and truth are, there are always ‘Troops of beautiful tall angels’ gathered round him, and God himself stands within the dim future, and keeps watch over his own. If a man stands for the right and the truth, though every man’s finger be pointed at him, though every woman’s lip be curled at him in scorn, he stands in a majority, for God and eternal forces are with him, and greater are they that are of him than all they that be against him."

Anya cha bahabah Shoora madartha tyaktajeebitah

Nanashastrapraharanah sarba yudhabisharadah.—Stanza 9.

Ahya cha (and others)

bahabah Shoora (many warriors like Shalaya Kritabarma, etc.)

Nanashastrapraharanah (possessing many wespons)

Sarba (all of them)

Madartha (for my sake)

tyaktajeebitah (ready to lay down their lives)

Yudhabisharadah (well trained of battle)

And other diverse warriors, also well trained for battle, and armed with various weapons, are present here, ready to lay down their lives for my sake.

And other diverse warriors of temptation, well skilled in psychological warfare with good and armed with various sense lures, are abiding in the kingdom of the body, all prepared psychologically to use their entire living power to fight for me (King Material Desire).

King Material Desire, with his soldiers of physical craving, is always afraid of the soldiers of the good. Therefore, on the eve of a psychological clash, he reviews his own forces of evil and the defending forces of the resisting good.

It is easy for a man to go down a deep, gradually descending subway, but it is when he tries to climb back out of the depth that he finds resistance, and it requires effort to overcome it. Likewise, the man who lives completely controlled by his material desires, born of bad habits, does not feel any spiritual resistance within him. He goes smoothly down the depths of evil. It is only when he tires to climb out of the subterranean pit that he finds resistance from evil desires and habits.

The above ideal warns the spiritual aspirant that, as soon as he tries to change the course of his life from evil to good, he will find the awakening of material desires and an army of pre-natal and post-natal bad habits ready to give battle to his sacred resolutions and holy actions instituted to find emancipation from earth bondage.

Material desires are gathered by the soul through incarnations, from the time it leaves the abode of Spirit. Mundane desires are born of material habits. Pre-natal material habits appear as worldly instincts, and after birth, material habits appear as strong tendencies. King Material Desire describes these matter-bent tendencies as great psychological heroes skilled in the use of various psychological weapons.

Whenever the spiritual aspirant becomes inwardly awake, he finds that his consciousness becomes the battleground where the mental warriors of bad tendencies, with their weapons of temptations, rally to fight the forces of good habits and discrimination armed with the weapons of wisdom.

Most people who are meek prisoners of bad habits do not encounter any resistance, or battle with the various weapons of lure used by bad material tendencies. Ordinarily, such people are so engrossed in their bad habits that they don’t dream of a spiritual escape, but, whenever a spiritual aspirant does stop from his mad rush toward evil and wants to tune back toward the good, he finds evil habits consciously using many missiles of temptations to destroy him.

A story will illustrate this:

Mr. J. was a confirmed drunkard, making a nuisance of himself to his family and neighbors. He met a saint and took the vow to abstain from drinking. He asked his servants to hide his costly wine in locked boxes and to keep the key, and instructed them to serve the liquor to his friends only. Everything went along all right with Mr. J. for some time because of his joy in the power of a new resolution against drink. For a while he did not feel the unseen gripping lure of the liquor-tempting habit.

As time went on, and he felt himself proof against liquor temptation, he asked his servants to leave the key of the wine room with him so that he could serve the red liquid to his friends himself. Feeling further mental security, he thought it was too much bother to go to the cellar to get liquor for his friends, so he kept some wine bottles hidden in the parlor. After a few days, Mr. J thought: "Since I am proof against liquor, let me look at the sparkling red wine in the bottle on the table."

Every day he looked at the bottle. Then he thought: "Since I am absolutely proof against temptation, I may just as well smell it." This went on for a few days. Then he thought: "Since I no longer care for liquor, I will take a mouthful of wine, taste it, and then spill it out." He did this. Then he thought: "Since I am so strong and am proof against liquor, there will be no harm if I drink once and swallow a little." After that, he thought: "Since I have conquered the liquor habit, let me take only one gulp of wine at a time, as many times as my unenslaved will desires." Then he found that he got drunk and kept on being helplessly drunk every day in spite of his will, just as he had before.

The above illustration shows how:

1. The liquor drinking habit was put down temporarily by the strong resolution to conquer.

2. It shows how Mr. J. failed to realize that his resolution against liquor had not had enough time to ripen into a good habit. Every devotee should remember that it takes from five to eight years to substitute a good habit for a strong bad habit. Before the strong good habit is formed, the devotee must stay away form his evil habit-forming environment or actions, as was proven by the way Mr. J disregarded this law, brought his wine bottle near him, and gradually reawakened the memory of the drinking habit. Therefore, in preventing the nourishment of bad habits, one must get away from evil surroundings, and above all, one must never bring evil thoughts into the mind. The latter causes the former and is more dangerous.

3. Then again, Mr. J. not only forgot that he should not have brought liquor so near him, but he also forgot that he should have recognized the psychological weapons which his bad habit used to defeat his good resolution.

4. The liquor habit remained unseen, hidden in his subconscious mind, secretly sending out armed spies of desire and pleasing thoughts of taste to prepare the way for the re-invasion of the liquor habits, which was to come back again and usurp the body and soul of Mr. J.

If you have a tendency to live on the misery-producing material plane, learn to stay away from tempting environments outside and to cast out thoughts of temptation from within. Surround yourself with the right kind of environment, and keep your mind filled with the kind of thoughts which will produce the effect that you desire.

BROTHER, why are you sad?

Life has brought just a few glad days in her basket before she empties her treasures into the cold hands of Death. Greet her every moment with the warm radiance of your heart ere night darkens her face with the silence of the grave.

Brother, why are you disturbed?

The just hand of God bestows the free wealth of air and light to the sad and to the glad alike. What price can buy the gold of the sunset hours or the songs of the birds in the bower of the morn? If a wayward child of God has inflicted a wound in your trusting heart, can you not forgive him in grateful memory of the myriad gifts of forgiveness and joy that are showered on you from twilight to twilight?

Brother, why are you worried?

Have you ever weighed your tears against your smiles, or your sorrows against your joys in the balance of life? Is not the face of the day brighter than the veil of the night, or the smiles of children more enchanting then their few tears and cries?

Therefore, smile as long as the day is a guest at your door, because when night arrives the flowers will close their eyes and the songbirds will fall asleep on the bed of forgetfulness.

FOR a number of years now the astrophysical observatory of the Smithsonian Institution, under the direction of Dr. Charles Abbot, has been measuring daily the amount of solar radiation in different parts of the Western Hemisphere. Stations have been established at Washington, D.C., at Table Mountain, Calif., and at Mt. Montezuma, Chile. Another solar station is to be established on Mt. St. Catherine in the Sinai desert.

Already this patient work is beginning to lead to important conclusions concerning variations in weather. Progress has been especially rapid during the past year since Dr. Abbot invented a mathematical machine for analyzing the results. Concerning these solar radiation studies Dr. Abbot says:

"Not only does the gigantic sun keep the nine planets with their 27 moons and the thousand planetoids all in orderly motion, but it furnishes light, heat, power, and the elements of life itself. Therefore, observing solar radiation is not merely for astronomical knowledge, but it concerns the practical matter of crops, health, weather, and power supply."

MENTION of Adam and Eve and other Bible names has been found on inscribed tablets of the Fourteenth Century, B.C. The writings belong to the period shortly after the lifetime of Moses, who led the Israelites through the wilderness toward their Promised Land of Palestine.

The tablets which have been deciphered were discovered at Ras Shamra, which is on the Syrian coast, to the north of Palestine. The writers of the tablets had no single deity, but various gods. Among these is the Old Testament name, Elohim, which was the name of God, as given in the original Hebrew in the first book of Genesis. Adam is referred to as the man from the East. This conforms to traditional geography, which places the Garden of Eden to the east of Syria and Palestine, in Mesopotamia.

The similarities to Biblical names and ideas point back to some earlier origin, which both the Hebrews and the people of Syria had in common.

EVIDENCE of the existence of a "Life Ray," which helps in the building up of the human body, has been revealed by recent researches. This startling new development in science was disclosed by Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins in his Presidential address to the Royal Society of London. There was a strong conviction, he said, that life in some way made use of atomic energy, the basic of which is electricity, and that it indeed might be the special stamp of life.

Certain recent experiments seemed to have proved that the living tissues were the seat of radiations, which were able to produce effects at a distance. They showed also that the cells of the body in giving those rays affected the growth of their cells.

"A year ago," said Sir Frederick, "I should have been disinclined to mention the subject, but the work by many scientists since then seems to have brought satisfactory proof that chemical reactions in living tissues are indeed accompanied by radiations, and that what is happening in one cell affects the neighboring cells."

"The invisible rays," Sir Frederick explained, "were now being measured. They had been demonstrated by means of a counter. Their wave-lengths had been measured, and they were being examined by the physicists and could be easily recognized. The rays from the body cells are already being used in the study of certain diseases. There is one school of scientists who are studying cancer and other diseases by means of this Life Ray."

Wash 14 large mushrooms well, skin them, remove the stems close to the caps, and chop the stems fine. In a skillet melt two tablespoonfuls of butter, add the chopped mushroom stems and three-fourths cupful of chopped celery, cook for five minutes, then stir in two cupfuls of fine bread crumbs, two teaspoonfuls of onion juice, one teaspoonful of salt, and a little pepper, and one tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Turn the mushroom caps gill side up, and fill them with mounds of the stuffing. Place the stuffed mushrooms in a shallow pan, pour around them two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, cover closely, and bake in a moderate oven for about forty-five minutes. Toward the last, remove the cover and let the crumbs brown lightly on top, or set the pan of mushrooms under the flame of the broiling oven for a few minutes to brown. Serve on rounds of buttered toast.

Mix two cupfuls of raisins with one cupful of honey, one-half cupful of Pignolia nuts, and one-half cupful of Pistachio nuts. Put all through a grinder, then form into a round loaf about four inches in diameter. Wrap in waxed paper and put away in a tightly covered receptacle. When needed, cut in slices. It can be used the next day, or it will keep for several weeks. It is delicious served with fruit salad or vegetable salad.

IF YOU want to be loved, start loving others who need your love. If you expect others to be honest with you, then start being honest yourself. If you do not want others to be wicked, then you must cease to be evil yourself. If you want others to sympathize with you, start showing sympathy to those around you. If you want to be respected, you must learn to be respectful to everyone, both young and old. If you want a display of peace from others, you must be peaceful yourself. If you want others to be religious, start being spiritual yourself. Remember, whatever you want others to be, first be that yourself, then you will find others responding in like manner to you.

It is easy to wish that others would behave perfectly toward you, and it is easy to see their faults, but it is very difficult to conduct yourself properly and to consider your own faults. If you can remember to behave rightly, others will try to follow your example. If you can find your own faults without developing an inferiority complex, and can keep busy correcting yourself, then you will be using your time more profitably than if you spent it in just wishing others to be better. Your good example will do more to change others than your wishing, your holy wrath, or your words.

The more you improve yourself, the more you will elevate others around you. The self-improving man is the increasingly happy man. The happier you become, the happier will be the people around you.

Stagnant people are unhappy. Extremely ignorant people scarcely know how it feels to either be happy or unhappy. They are unfeeling, like the stones. It is better to be unhappy about your own ignorance than to die happily with it. Wherever you are, remain awake and alive with your thought, perception, and intuition, ever ready, like a good photographer, to take pictures of exemplary conduct and to ignore bad behavior. Your highest happiness lies in your being ever ready in desiring to learn, and to behave properly.

THE last three articles of this series have mentioned some of the evidence which Egypt, India and other centers of ancient culture have preserved from their last Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages. The year 702 B.C. (see Diagram in October, 1932, East-West) marked the start of the equinoctial Kali Yuga or Iron Age of the Descending Arc. This year roughly corresponds to that of the founding of Rome and the start of a history of mankind that can today be recounted with fair chronological accuracy. With these more exact, or more generally accepted and authenticated, records at our disposal, do we find that the fate of empires and the story of mankind have followed a course which can serve as a verification of the Equinoctial Time-Chart we are considering? The answer must be in the affirmative, and the historical record of this 1200 year Iron Age is one of the destruction of proud and mighty empires, of the almost total extinction of the light of human knowledge, and of the prevalence of wars, famines and pestilence. The civilizations and learning of the Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages, gradually diminishing with the passage of the Autumnal Equinox down the Descending Arc of its cycle from 11,502 to 702 B.C., had completely perished by the time the Iron Age came to an end in 498 A.D., and the splendours of the ancient world, overrun by its hordes of barbarian conquerors, were no more.

Egypt, her Golden and Silver Ages and even the spacious times of her great Bronze Age monarchs, such as Cheops, Amenophis IV and Queen Hatasu, now but a dim memory, fell under Ethiopian rule in 790 B.C., and surrendered the last vestige of her freedom to Alexander in 332 B.C. "Thus," writes J. M. Ragon, "perished that ancient theocracy which showed its crowned priests for so many centuries to Egypt and the whole world." W. J. Colville points out facts which confirm the validity of the Equinoctial Age-Chart, since he says, "One very remarkable fact has impressed all Egyptologists greatly, namely, the vast superiority of the older over the more recent monuments. Egypt apparently has had no infancy or childhood, but appears as though it started on its strange career fully equipped with all the possessions of maturity, and then began at first slowly, then more quickly, to decline."

The same writer has the following to say regarding the Golden Age of the world: "the Greeks, in common with the priests of Egypt, claimed a divine descent, and, from one standpoint at least (the heroic), there is much to substantiate their claims. All nations of antiquity have preserved traditions of a Golden Age in remote antiquity . . . Though it is always possible to speak of a reputed Golden Age in the past as only a romantic legend pertaining to the infancy of our race, that view by no means suffices to account for the numberless treasures of antiquity being discovered from day to day . . . The gods of ancient peoples were not altogether mythical or imaginary personages. Their actual history, at least in outline, can be readily traced to remote ages when gods and goddesses were names applied to ruling men and women who were, in a sense, spiritual adepts as well as temporal rulers. To peer no further into antiquity than the period described by the historian, Manetho, we read of the reign of the gods in Egypt continuing in an unbroken line for 13,900 years.1 These were the Adept-Kings referred to extensively in carefully preserved records now coming under the gaze of general scholars, though for long kept in secret during the Dark Ages of ignorance and persecutions from which we are fast emerging."

Egypt was not alone in feeling the weight of Kali Yuga. "Chinese history," H. G. Wells tells us, "is still very little known to European students, and our accounts of the early records are particularly unsatisfactory. About 2700 to 2400 B.C., reigned five emperors, who seem to have been almost incredibly exemplary beings. There follows upon these first five emperors a series of dynasties, of which the accounts become more and more exact and convincing as they become more recent." The Chinese records which are so "unsatisfactory" to Wells, are merely those historical accounts of the high Golden, Silver and Bronze Age civilizations in China, to accept which he would have to discard his elaborate misconceptions about the ancient world. The five "incredibly exemplary" Emperors and the state of the country during their reigns are therefore dismissed without enlargement by Wells, and he does not breathe freely until the chinese records touch the Iron Age period, when the accounts become, he says, "more exact and convincing"—that is, more bloodthirsty and ignoble, and thus more in keeping with his own ideas on the nature of the ancients.

The Shang Dynasty, which began in 1750 B.C., and the Chow Dynasty, which rose to power about 1125 B.C., marked the heroic Bronze Age period in China, and even Wells is forced to concede, through the sheer weight of material evidence (which cannot be dismissed as "lies" like mere written records), that "Bronze vessels of these earlier dynasties, beautiful, splendid, and with a distinctive style of their own, still exist, and there can be no doubt of the existence of a high state of culture even (!) before the days of Shang."

With the coming of Kali Yuga, a chaotic state of internal wars and conflict with the invading Huns marked the several centuries which Chinese historians call "the Age of Confusion." A state of profound disorder was manifest under the last theocratic rulers of the Chow dynasty in the 3rd century B.C., and sometime later a part of China’s ancient literature vanished under the Emperor Shi Hwang-Ti, who made an attempt to destroy the entire body of the Chinese classics.

A mighty Aegean civilization disappeared shortly before the start of the Iron Age, with the destruction of Cnossos, and Troy (Hissarlik) by the early Greeks. These ancient sites have recently been excavated. "The Cretan labyrinth was a building as stately, complex and luxurious as any in the ancient world. Among other details we find water-pipes, bathrooms, and the like conveniences, such as have hitherto been regarded as the latest refinements of modern life. The pottery, the textile manufactures, the sculpture and painting of these people, their gem and ivory work, their metal and inlaid work, is as admirable as any that mankind has produced . . . Greek legend has it that it was in Crete that Daedalus attempted to make the first flying machine."2

The coming of the Dark Age saw the extinction of the Elamite civilization in Mesopotamia. Its chief city, Susa, boasting a culture dating back to the Golden Age, fell to the Persians in the 8th century, C.C. The great Assyrian Empire dwindled away with the fall of Nineveh before the conquering Medes and Persians in 606 B.C. The Chaldean civilization of ancient Babylon perished in the 6th century, B.C. through the devastations of Cyrus and Darius. The bloody career of Alexander "the great" saw the wanton destruction of many cities of great antiquity, including Tyre, Gaza and majestic Thebes, which were razed to the ground and their people sold into slavery. Naught remains today to remind us of Theban glory but the grand ruins of the Golden Age temple of Karnak, which all archaeologists concede could have been built only by men of extraordinary intelligence and artistic gifts.

The older civilization of the Etruscans was wiped out in the 5th century B.C. by the rising Romans and the Gauls from the north. The great days of Greece were over by the 2nd century B.C.3; then "gradually barbarism fell like a curtain between the Western civilization and India" (Wells).4 The early promise of Rome was frustrated by the Punic Wars with ancient Carthage, the "most wasteful and disastrous series of wars that ever darkened the history of mankind" (Wells). The universally famous sea power, Carthage, thus perished by fire at the hands of Rome (146 B.C.) and her population of over half a million people was wiped out. the Greek city of Corinth was murdered by the Romans in the same year.

Julius Caesar, whose conquest of Gaul is popularly supposed to have "civilized" it, i.e., Romanized it, accomplished nothing more than the destruction of the ancient Kelto-Gaulic civilization. Its chief city, Alesia (now St. Reine), seat of the ancient Gaulic learning and the home of the Druids,5 was plundered and burned by Caesar in 47 B.C. Bibractis (now Autun) in Gaul suffered a similar fate at the hands of the Romans in 21 A.D., and the whole body of her historical and religious literature perished, like that of Alesia, by fire. J. M. Ragon, Belgian authority on Masonic origins, has the following to say:

"Bibractis, the mother of sciences, the soul of the early (European) nations, a town equally famous for its sacred college of Druids, its civilization, its schools, in which 40,000 students were taught philosophy, literature, grammar, jurisprudence, medicine, astrology, occult sciences, architecture, etc., Rival of Thebes, of Memphis, of Athens and of Rome, it possessed an amphitheatre, surrounded with colossal statues, and accommodating 100,000 spectators . . . and in the midst of those sumptuous edifices, the Naumachy, with its vast basin, an incredible construction, a gigantic work wherein floated boats and galleys devoted to naval games; then a Champ de Mars, an aqueduct, fountains, public baths; finally fortifications and walls, the construction of which dated from the heroic ages. . . . a few monuments of glorious antiquity are still there, such as the temples of Janus and of Cybele. . . . Arles, founded 2000 years before Christ, was sacked in 270. This metropolis of Gaul, restored forty years later by Constantine, has preserved to this day a few remains of its ancient splendor; amphi-theatre, capitol, and obelisk, a block of marble seventeen metres high, a triumphal arch, catacombs, etc. . . . Thus ended Kelto-Gaulic civilization. Caesar, as a barbarian worthy of Rome, had already accomplished the destruction of the ancient Mysteries by the sack of the temples and their initiatory colleges, and by the massacre of the Initiates and the Druids. Remained Rome; but she never had but the lesser Mysteries, shadows of the Secret Sciences. The Great Initiation was extinct."

The 5th century A.D. was Attila and his Huns laying waste to Europe. During the same century, cruel and degenerate Rome met her just fate at the hands of the conquering Goths and Vandals, and the year 493 A.D. (a date practically coincident with the passage of the Autumnal Equinox over the nadir of its cycle) saw Theororic the Ostrogoth on the throne of Rome. "So it was in utter social decay and collapse that the great slave-holding ‘world-ascendancy’ of the God-Caesars and the rich men of Rome came to an end. . . We have dwelt on the completeness of that collapse. To any intelligent and public-spirited mind . . . it must have seemed, indeed, as if the light of civilization was waning and near extinction . . . The social and economic structure of the Roman Empire was in ruins . . . It had presented a spectacle of outward splendour and luxurious refinement, but beneath that brave outward show were cruelty, stupidity and stagnation. It had to break down, it had to be removed, before anything better could replace it" (Wells).

The history of the Jews during this Kali Yuga is one far removed from the days of their glory under Saul and Solomon in the Bronze Age. Their Babylonian captivity occurred about 590 B.C. Jerusalem, their sacred city, passed from one alien hand to another, and in 70 A.D., the Roman Emperor Titus completely destroyed the temple and city after a horrible siege.

Palmyra, ancient trading center in the Syrian desert, fell to the Romans in 272 B.C. and remained a scene of desolate abandonment for centuries thereafter. The great cities of the Anatolian peninsula were all plundered and destroyed by the Persian hordes. By the 6th century, A.D., the ancient magnificent cities of Baalbek (Heliopolis), Amman (Philadelphia) and Gerash, who have left us eloquent evidence of their architectural and engineering skill in Syria, had declined to the state of miserable small towns. The regions of Cilicia and Cappadocia, in eastern Asia Minor, containing many thriving seaport towns thoroughly permeated with a gracious Greek culture, had sunk into barbaric impotency by the end of the 6th century.

India was invaded by barbaric Hunnish hordes during the Dark Age we are considering. The Indo-Scythians founded the Kushan dynasty over all northern India. The Ephthalites came in 470 A.D., and their most powerful leader, Mihiragula, the "Attila of India," inflicted atrocious cruelties upon the people.

So the story goes. There were parts of the world in this Age of Kali which were unaffected (through the action of "cycles within cycles" which provides, according to individual national destiny, for minor Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages within a major Iron Age) by the turmoil and retrogression that marked the affairs of mankind in general during this Dark Yuga. But history gives us the plain story of the correspondence that existed between events on the earth, and the passage in the heavens of the Autumnal Equinox over the lowest part of its cycle. This inauspicious time in the heavens was indeed an inauspicious time upon the earth.

______

1This span would put the beginning of the line of theocratic rulers back well into the last Golden Age of the Ascending Arc, which endured for 4800 years and ended in 11,502 B.C. Herodotus has the following to say: "The Egyptians assert that from the reign of Hercules to that of Amasis (570 B.C.), 17,000 years elapsed."

2Wells admits this much, and also that the Cretan civilization "was already launched upon the sea as early as 4000 B.C.," but he advances some superficial sophistries for the cause of this high culture in such early "Neolithic" days.

3An interesting tie-up with our Equinoctial Age-Chart is found in the periods of the Greek Olympic Games. This institution, dating from the Descending Bronze Age (some authorities give 1453 and others 1222 B.C. as the date of their origin), was discontinued in the 4th century A.D. and not reestablished until 1896 (in Athens), shortly after the start of the Ascending Bronze Age.

4Wells is worth quoting here, because his accounts of the well-known historical periods (which start only in the 8th century B.C.) are, generally speaking, as dependable as his accounts of the ante-historical ancients are hopelessly mistaken.

5These Druids, custodians of a high civilization dating at least from the last Silver Age of the world, and builders of the great astronomical structures whose ruins still stand in England (Stonehenge) and in Brittany (Carnac—the ancient European correspondence of the Egyptian Karnak), are mentioned in Isis Unveiled as great "architects, for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such that even now the ruined remains of them ‘frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers’," according to a statement in the report of the Archaeological Society of the Antiquaries of London. Further information on the Druids may be found in W. F. Skene’s The Four Ancient books of Wales (1868). These Druids are represented by Wells, with his customary perversion of truth in all matters pertaining to the ante-historical ancients, as savages given to human sacrifice!

Out of the fathomless depths I cry;

Up to the highest mount I fly;

I delve the deep; I pierce the sky;

Where’er thou goest, there am I.

I bloom in the flower; I sleep in the snow;

In the stars you will find me,

In the sun’s evening glow,

In the hot clime of southland,

In Iceland’s cold snow;

To the end of the endless, e’en there do I go.

And on through the limits of time

And of place

I enter the realm of limitless space,

Where the Now is a part of Eternity

And place is engulfed in Love’s endless sea.

I DREAMED that I walked to the top of a mountain, back of my home in the foothills, to watch the sun rise and listen to the call of the quail. Strolling along, I suddenly discovered, seated under a wild walnut tree, a little man who had the silvered hair of age and the innocent face of a child.

"Good morning," I greeted him.

"All mornings are good," he said, smiling.

"And it is sad that day must always be followed by night," I said.

"Night is as beautiful as morning, and as glorious as noon-day," replied the strange little man.

I introduced myself.

"Your name belongs to you, so you could not have a better one," he said.

"And may I ask your name?"

"I have all names and none," he replied. "I have been called by many names, yet none of them defines me."

"How long have you been here?" I inquired.

"Since before men thought of space and time," he answered.

"And how long do you expect to remain here?"

"Until after men cease to dwell in time and space," he replied.

"And you do not desire to visit other places?"

"Not unless someone can convince me that There is better than Here and that Then is better than Now," he said.

"Go down to the city with me," I invited. "Your wisdom is needed in the world of men."

"What should I say or do to them?" he asked, simply.

"You could reform them," I said.

"I think they have enough reformers," he answered. "Besides, I am not sure that they need reforming. They were perfectly formed, in the first place and, since perfection cannot become imperfect, they do not need to be reformed."

"Perhaps you are right," I admitted. "However, most of these men are dead and need to be awakened to knowledge of their perfection."

"If they are dead, it would be cruel to awaken them, for the dead know no pain," he replied.

"Even if you have no message for my people, come down with me for your own sake," I pleaded. "You will find in the city treasures of which you have not dreamed, master of dreams though you may think yourself to be. You will find love and beauty and music and drama and wonderful books and a million miracles of science."

As I finished speaking, a leaf came fluttering through the air and fell in the little man’s lap. He picked it up and held it out for a moment and then said: "Do you think your Science could explain the What, Why, Where, When and How of this?"

He opened his hand and the leaf fell silently to the ground. Then he smiled and closed his eyes.

IN THIS day and age of seeming turmoil, chaos, and despair, it is mete that mankind should become better acquainted with some of the spiritual laws which surround him and govern the affairs of life; by so doing he should be able to change adverse circumstances into avenues of peace, plenty, and happiness. Especially is it fitting at this time to give due consideration to the Spiritual Law of Gratitude. This law is so vital and so dynamic in its operation that every individual in the universe should be familiar with its contents, but, through faithful application, still more familiar with its results.

The Law of One’s Life functions through the Law of Gratitude. Learn to think of gratitude as a channel through which one receives. The two great channels of transit are Gratitude and Love. Let us look into the nature of this Spiritual Law of Gratitude, analyze it, note its component parts, synthesize it, and then pledge ourselves to be most faithful in its application.

Looking into the nature of this law, one finds that its first characteristic is that of FORGIVENESS. Forgiveness of what? Forgiveness of one’s self, because of the errors which one has made; but, more than that, the forgiveness of those who have inflicted some personal injury. Here someone may say that such a philosophy is absurd; that it is impossible to be grateful to one who inflicts a personal injury, and that quite intentionally. To that party I would say that you are no better than he who inflicted the injury.

If you would rise above your environment, you must get through with your grudges and through with your hurts; you must understand the term: "Forgive us our trespasses AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US," and if you do not possess that spirit of forgiveness naturally, cultivate, it, nurture it until you can say sincerely as did Jesus, the Christ: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Remember that the Law of Attraction is summed up in these few words: "With the same measure that ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again." If those nearest and dearest to you are ungracious, bless them and let them go their way, but never fail to do your part by pouring out that love upon others.

A second phase of the law is that of intense gratitude for everything that touches your life. Here again someone will pronounce this an absurd philosophy and ask: "How can I be grateful for all of the injuries, the hurts, and the obstacles upon my pathway?" Dear friend, whether you know it or not, your obstacles are your law of gratitude; they are your perfected expression of mental and spiritual growth. The person who overcomes the greatest obstacles mounts highest. This statement has been proven in the lives of many, among whom may be mentioned Lincoln, Roosevelt, Hoover, and Gandhi. One must work with this law with an open mind, and use it to bless the things that hurt him. When one comes to understand that those things in his life, however difficult, belong to him NOW, then he will learn to give thanks for those difficult problems, knowing that they are stepping-stones to his HIGHER SELF.

The third phase of the law is that of EXPANSIVENESS, which involves the elements of service and love. God cannot be put into a little square box and kept there, nor can that individual who has a strong bent toward spiritual development expect to manifest much progress by focusing his time and efforts within the four walls of his own home. Please do not misconstrue the meaning of this statement. Service and love rendered within the walls of one’s home, or among one’s friends, are excellent as far as they go, but that individual who would make marked spiritual progress must expand his life to include more people and more circumstances than ever before.

This is a day and an age when one finds it possible to "Help somebody today" without expending a great deal of time and effort, if these are limited. So many people are in dire circumstances that one need not even cross the street to become more expansive, to lend a helping hand, to share a bit of God’s love, and to bestow upon others the blessings which God has so bountifully given us. Jesus the Christ taught that: "Even as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me." As men are moving among men continually, and are in contact with the business world, those who are so inclined will find it an easy matter to "Help somebody today."

To the busy housewife and mother, who is of necessity kept close to the home duties, and who may not find a ready channel of service outside her home daily, it might be suggested that she purchase an inexpensive garment, perhaps a child’s dress, to be made. On those days when it has not been possible to render a service to some outsider, make it a point to spend at least ten minutes a day working on that garment, and in each stitch weave the golden thread of Divine Love. When the garment has been completed, give it to some stranger who is in need.

Is your neighbor a stranger or a newcomer? Is his skin black, white, or yellow? Is he rich or poor? What does it matter? God is no respecter of persons, neither should one permit any of these factors to become an obstacle to one’s expansiveness. If your neighbor has met with adverse circumstances, lend him a helping hand irrespective of his station in life. If someone crosses your pathway who seems sad and lonely, speak words of comfort and cheer to him. Whatever the situation may be, do not hesitate to give your help freely and lovingly for, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

As one’s mind wanders back through the pages of the past, one recalls many characters who exemplified this phase of the Law of Gratitude which has been referred to as EXPANSIVENESS. Walt Whitman sought all kinds and conditions of people, and through his expansiveness and application of Divine love he came into Cosmic Consciousness. A further example to be cited is that of Tolstoi. He sacrificed his wealth and his family for the sake of the Russian peasantry. Today our minds are turned ever to the Far East, to that far-away land of India were, foremost among the men of the world, looms that small by dynamic spiritual character — Mahatma Gandhi. Could one ask for a finer example of expansiveness, a more dynamic case of true devotion and love to his fellowmen? His reward truly will be great.

In recapitulation, this Spiritual Law of Gratitude is seen to comprise three outstanding elements, namely:

1. Forgiveness.

2. Intense gratitude for every circumstance in life.

3. Expansiveness—which includes the elements of:

(a) Service.

(b) Divine love.

From experience, the writer can vouchsafe the statement that anyone who is great enough to apply this law in his daily life for a period of three years, or even less, will find that those adverse circumstances of his life will flow through channels of peace, plenty, and happiness. He will find that while he lives in the same objective world, he lives in an entirely different world; it shall have become a spiritualized world in which the joy of his heart knows no bounds, and the glow of his soul shines as the bright morning star. Then he shall have touched the door of the portal whereby one enters into that ETERNAL KINGDOM OF BLISS.

IT is my earnest desire, in discussing the imminent present and the various SIGNS which certain prophetic utterances in our Scriptures foretell of this time, to build up the Light of Truth in such a manner that souls hearing may be roused from mortal slumber and brought forth into a new consciousness as that Light breaks through the obscurity, in which the vast multitudes of humanity lie dreaming today.

For the most part, in bearing witness to the times and seasons, I endeavor to confine my discussion to the Christian Bible, although there are other records of an inspirational origin which deal much more clearly and minutely with the subject. For obvious reasons, I quote largely from the sayings of Jesus, but I know that the Almighty Creator is not partial, but raises up His Annointed Ones to preserve and carry His word to every nation, affording all a revelation suited to their understanding and particular needs and graded according to their individual powers of comprehension and soul growth.

God’s agents are legion. His revelations are without number. It is ridiculous to affirm dogmatically that any one book is the word of God and beside it is none else in all Creation. Let us not be so simple as to place our faith in printer’s ink. Wiser far is he who reads the infallible Book of the Stars, forever settled in heaven." The stars in the firmament are the words of the Book of the Almighty.

Wherever the Light of Wisdom and the desire for virtue and good deeds shine, there will His speech manifest and His inspiration be. He is wide as the Universes and changeless, whose place magnificence is, and counterpart to endless time. The ALL—whose Great Existence surpasseth the grandest thoughts of men and Gods, whose worlds in splendor are the scrolls on which His hands write with the souls of mortals His Almighty Will and boundless Love—To be in harmony with Him is the sum total of all Wisdom.

The Bible opens with a declaration that God placed great Lights in the firmament of heaven "For SIGNS and for seasons; for days and for years." As the Psalmist also declares: "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork." By deep study of the known science of Astrology, Sages are thus able to correctly read this COSMIC BIBLE and foretell many astonishing things—even to seemingly minor details—which can be read plainly in the heavens. The time of the founding of this country is there foretold and many important events in its history, past and future.

The Bible speaks of that Pillar in the midst of the land of Egypt, the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, as a witness, standing as an everlasting testimony in stone, a mathematical Astrological Bible, the builder of which, Thothma, we will speak of, and bring the Light of Truth to bear upon his character and aspirations, for our instruction is wisdom. "Great men are not always wise, neither do the aged understand judgment."

This Pillar of Witness clearly reveals the dates of great world events like the late war, its beginning and end. It designates the present hard times by a depression in the ceiling, which suddenly drops down to such a depth in the ascending passage that one has to get down on one’s hands and knees to barely pull the body through the tight place—by measurement, an inch for a year. This state of affairs lasts for eight years, from the fall of 1928, so we may take comfort that we are now in the darkest hour, as we may reasonably hope that there will be a gradual recovery for the following four years. At all events, it looks like a new start upward was about to commence under the leadership of our new President. Whether this be so or not, the indications are that in the fall of 1936 we will be ushered into the greatest era of prosperity and amity the earth has known for thousands of years.

It is quite significant that President Roosevelt requested an OPEN Bible, upon which to take the oath of office. Hitherto, a closed Bible has been used. He also showed great wisdom in his inaugural address, and in its superb brevity it revealed a high degree of consciousness, for a politician. He quoted from the Bible: "Where there is no vision, the people perish." May he have the true vision and become a real leader, to bring the country up out of the chaos in which it is today. Further, he said that the business of life consisted not alone in receiving, but also in giving; that wealth does not create happiness, and that the present trials and tribulations would work out for the moral and spiritual uplift of the nation, and lead into paths of permanent happiness. I ask you: Is this not a welcome SIGN of the times, to see a President of the United States revealed as a man of vision and a spiritual prophet of liberation and wise understanding of the great purposes of life?

That period known as the Time of the End—a transitional period of more or less war, disaster, and chaos, and, on the other hand, a time of great increase in scientific knowledge, marvelous inventions, marking advancement in all spheres of human activity—material and spiritual, began about the year 1881 and it is without doubt that there has been more advancement during the past fifty years than for thousands of years previous to that date. Events full of significance and portending the winding up of the affairs of the retiring god of this world, have followed each other in rapid succession since that time, so that we think old Mother Shipton is vindicated, when, in the Fourteenth Century, she said:

"Carriages without horses shall go

And accidents fill the world with woe.

The end of the world shall come

In Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-One."

Monarchies are succeeded by Republics, and within Republics, Fraternities are born. It is now time of the latter form of fraternal cooperation to take the place of competitive warring. Economic necessity is driving our people toward this. The crash of the economic structure compelled those left without a medium of exchange to do this to live. We must, in a new deal, return to first principles of living—to the land as a foundation. It looks as if the farmer is at last going to get some kind of protection. He now has no market for his crops. The unemployed craftsman has no money to purchase, but he, with his skill, can get together with the farmer and they can barter their products. This is being done in certain places and will spread to others. This is a SIGN of the Times, and marks the birth of a new order of cooperative fraternity, after the communal idea of The Christ, and is the true fellowship idea on a spiritual basis, which, when once rightly organized and established, will prosper and lead to a happy solution of the vexed economic problem.

BACK in the fighting days of the empires of antiquity, and even during the ages of feudalism, there existed a peculiar but beneficent institution known as the "right of asylum," or the city of refuge. Sometimes this was actually a city and sometimes only a building, such as a temple or church. To this place of refuge hunted folk fled—fugitives from an avenging justice, a pursuing enemy, or a tormenting conscience.

The asylum, as it was called, was recognized as a thing apart from ordinary life, as a holy place, where the hunted one was safe from his pursuers. If such pursuer was his own torturing conscience, the victim usually buried himself in some part of the house of God, in the church, or a monastery. There he found peace, or, as it was often expressed—"sanctuary." The passing centuries saw the passing also of this haven of refuge. although the monastery—or for women, the convent—still survives.

Whatever it may be called, we of the modern world are in sore need of some such place of refuge from that very modern world itself, some place where we can escape the assaults of the life around us. If we cannot find a physical place for our physical presence, we must find a sanctuary within our own souls in which we can find peace. Otherwise, the answer for many of us is futility, misery, or perhaps suicide.

Not only man, but the lower order of life needs this protection. Certain animals, birds, and insects have been provided by Nature with a protective covering, a coloring, an outer shell, a defense against the outer world of hostility, noise, distraction, waste of energy, dissipation of attention, and so on, down the list of forces or happenings from without which might in any way tend to interfere with their ability to live the lives Nature intended them to live.

It has become the fashion nowadays to emphasize the dependence of the human individual upon society. We are told that for our happiness and progress we need the presence of our fellows at all times, but is not the exact reverse of this the real truth? Is it not only the cultivation of an internal solitude among crowded lives, the ability, as someone said, to sit quiet for 15 minutes in a room, that makes the social order endurable? Sociableness, even a little of it, says a modern writer who has thought deeply, often murders solitude. Society, even that of really nice people, alas, often brings in its train all that fretting, chafing, tantalizing, irritating flock of worrying thoughts which destroy the dignity and beauty of life much quicker than any lonely vice could.

If we are to find any blessing, any soothing in solitude, we must learn how to control our thoughts. When we "go inward" to commune with ourselves, we find even there potential enemies—our thoughts. Listen to a modern philosopher of solitude (John Cowper Powys). Would it be difficult to think of hearing these words from the lips of our own Swami Yogananda?:

"It is astonishing to think how long humanity has existed, and yet how little we have advanced in gaining control over our thoughts. To control your thoughts—that is the most important thing you can do; far more important than to control your children, or your food, or your drink, or your wife, or your husband, or your business, or your work, or even your reputation. He who can control his thoughts is at the key-position of the Cosmos. He has the clue, the secret password. Down into the depths of the sea he can dive and find pearls and coral and drowned gold. Over the grassy prairies he can follow the wind until he feels as if he were clutching the rim of the horizon with his crooked fingers."

Our modern crowd-consciousness has tended to vulgarize life, to cheapen, blight, pervert, and eclipse the natural dignity of our nature. We are compelled to make a strong effort to liberate ourselves from it, so that we can really regain our spiritual personality—the "I am I" of our individuality.

We hear a good deal about the leisure we will all have when machines do all our work for us. However, (to quote Mr. Powys again,) "The burden, the futility, and frivolous recklessness, the nervous manias, the hypochondriacal anxieties, the mad rush ‘to kill time,’ of people who are not driven by stark necessity to a life of constant toil, are not encouraging tokens as to what we would all do with ourselves if we had more time at our disposal."

The protective covering we need is a new philosophy, to heighten our life in those moments when we can live to ourselves. We need philosophy to kill boredom, to destroy inertia, to dispel lethargy, to drive away weariness, to overcome that sense of futility which so often accompanies modern so-called progress.

One of the chief causes of unhappiness in the world is that our mind is preoccupied all the while with its relation with other human minds. Free yourself from this, says the philosopher: "Make the friendliest and kindliest retreat you can into solitude, and in a few moments your nature will have bathed itself so deeply in the cool baths of primordial Being that you will feel yourself able to return to the troubling arena of humanity with an inviolable and a secret strength."

At every crisis, when we are harassed, driven, hunted, persecuted, thoroughly confused, miserably humiliated, we need, says the writer quoted above, some "significant mental image that we can resort to quickly and decisively, some image that is at once a mental picture and a challenge to a psychological effort. Such a formula, such an image-gesture, we may find in the realization of our consciousness as an indwelling power holding the body in its control, using the senses of the body to its own purpose."

This ability to withdraw from the trivialities of the sense-life is our protective covering. What a blessed refuge it might be for all of us if we would only call it to our aid when the batterings of life are too much to withstand. The world is too much with us. In this mechanical, hurried age we need to re-establish our poise. Our lives are too much publicized. We need to restore private life. We can’t do without conversation, and when we are alone, we turn on the radio.

We need an inner sanctuary, a city of refuge, to which we may fly when sorely distressed by the cares of a mad world. The present writer can testify to the blessedness of this innermost refuge as developed on the basis of our Swami’s teachings. For years his rule of life was that of the typical American: "Something doing all the time." Every minute must be filled with movement, words, practical things. At best the man must have his brain working all the time. A moment of quiet, of "doing nothing"—except communing with himself—this was, by the modern test, a wasted moment.

How different now! What a blessing meditation has proved. It is the protective covering, the defense when a mad foolish world becomes unendurable. It opens the door to communion with God. In the words of Swami Yogananda, in his lesson on "The Highest Technique of Meditation":

"It will produce in you tremendous power of doing active work in life. Above all, it will bring you in touch with the superconscious (the Soul and the great Spirit,) giving you wonderful peace, harmony, and poise of mind, so essential in the higher living of life."

Our inner sanctuary is our well-spring of strength, of power, of joy, of peace.

Amazing science of SWAMI YOGANANDA, India's famous philosopher, has helped thousands of men and women gain health, happiness and success. Priceless secrets reveal simple methods anyone may use to harness the dynamic forces of Inner Power. Attain prosperity through cosmic consciousness—banish fatigue—re-charge body energy—adjust stomach and abdominal troubles—remove fat or gain weight—increase lung capacity—prevent colds, headaches, rheumatism—overcome nervousness—attain lasting youth—gain bubbling energy, radiant happiness and success. Endorsed by Luther Burbank, Galli-Curci, Homer Samuels, Vladimir Rosing, Marie Carrera, E. de M. Baruch and others. FREE BOOKLET—Swami Yogananda invites worthy students. A 64-page Free Booklet sent to those sincere in their desire for help. Address Swami Yogananda, Self Realization Fellowship. San Rafael Ave., Los Angeles, Calif.

Following are a few simple axioms for attaining this end:

1. Face the facts. Nothing is to be gained by pretense or evasion.

2. Find out the extent to your own responsibility. This is very important.

3. Stop worrying. Worry is a bad mental habit disguised as a duty. Its basis is fear, and fear is always poisonous.

4. Look forward. Your career is not limited by what happened last year, or even this year. Ask yourself what it will be five years from now, or ten? The answer depends upon yourself.

5. Keep a stiff upper lip. Courage is nine-tenths endurance.

6. Think constructively. We cannot stop thinking, but we can change the subject of thought.

7. Keep working.

Sometimes I make my way along the street,

And gaze into the eyes of those I meet.

Some faces there seem free from every care,

While some show lines of burdens

Hard to bear.

Their tragedies perhaps—I’ll never hear,

Of budding romance always hovering near.

Kaleidoscopic pictures ever new,

All pass before my eyes in quick review.

The gamut of all life, from high to low,

Stands clearly forth

From out this passing show,

To him with ears to hear and eyes to see

The inner life that struggles to be free.

May I be kept alive

To the last minute of living,

To my nerves, in weakness or strength,

New pathways giving.

New thoughts for my mind,

New passions for my soul,

Never content with convention’s dole.

And when I can no more love a new truth,

Nor hope for new joy and love, as in youth,

May the forces of circumstance

Together concert

To stop my dying, and make me alert.

WE wish to be of greater service to our readers and students and have developed this method of helping you to demonstrate in your life the abundance and success which are yours by divine right.

Until you realize that you and the Father are one, and that "All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine," until you know this in your mind and soul, you cannot manifest the abundance, health and happiness which you desire.

The purpose of the Horn of Plenty Bank and prayer practice is to help you to get the right attitude of mind firmly established through the daily practice of right prayer and right habit, and thus to help you to demonstrate in your everyday life the things you are only vaguely wishing for now.

As your mind is changed and renewed through right thinking, through persistently knowing that your good is yours now, the way opens for you to receive it.

The Horn of Plenty Bank is a beautiful reminder to keep the idea of abundance always present in your consciousness.

This plan helps you practically in a number of ways. First it shows you how to think correctly and encourages you in doing so through inspiring you to daily affirmation and prayer.

It helps you to realize and develop faith in the one unfailing source of supply, which is God, through the practice of a short prayer and meditation which is to be held in mind each time a coin is deposited, whenever a negative thought appears, and at as many other times during the day as possible.

It helps by supplying an easy method of saving for subscriptions to "East-West" Magazine, for spiritual books or for offerings to the Mother Center to help carry on the holy work of spreading God’s message to suffering humanity.

It helps by giving you the opportunity to supply your friends with gifts of spiritual literature. In this way you put into practice the command, "Give and it shall be given unto you."

It helps by giving you, along with the little Horn of Plenty Bank, a special lesson outlining the Divine Law of bringing desires into manifestation. Faith and prayer and work are the most important steps. Wishing and ineffective prayer get you nowhere. This method teaches you how to pray correctly and then how to do your part in bringing about your desire.

It also helps by giving you the service of trained workers who pray for your success, health or happiness from the moment your request reaches us for a Horn of Plenty until the contents which you have saved are sent in with your order. You will wish to have one of these beautiful banks with you always once you have started your prayer drill and have found how effective it is.

Complete instructions in the use of the bank and also a lesson in demonstration are sent with each request for a Horn of Plenty.

TAKE the bowl of my mind

And fill it with Thy understanding.

Take my bottle of emotion

And fill it with Thy mercy.

Take the empty basket of my Soul

And fill it with Thy Fragrant Wisdom.

Use my life’s vessel

To dip cupfuls of Thy Love

And pour them

Into the desire-parched throats of others.

Break the walls of my love

And flood me with Thy Omnipresence.

’Tis the streak of love’s dawn

Peeping through

The little opening fissure of my heart,

Which bespeaks of the sunlight of Thy Love

Spreading over

The dark dungeon of my indifference.

The darkness of my love is lit

By the gentle luminosity of Thy Love.

The empty hall of my Soul

Is illumined by the light of Thy Spirit.

Thou art the Life behind my body,

The intelligence behind my mind,

The love behind my feeling,

The wisdom behind my ignorance.

With the little taper of my love

I may read Thy Golden Book,

Which lay age-long hidden in me.

Thy love has been

The invisible Candle of Peace

Dispelling my darkness.

And showing me Thy secret messages

Written on the pages of all hearts.