This day I will strive

With all my might and determination

To deepen my God contact in meditation.

Today I will actually meditate

Deeper and deeper

Until I can feel the presence of God.

Today I will try to eat the right kind of food

In order that I may feel

The vigor of vitality in me.

Today I will walk and exercise

With deep concentration, so that

I may revive

The vitality of vibrant youthfulness.

Today I will rise above

The consciousness of food

And know that I live

By the pure peace of Silence.

I will feed my Soul constantly

With the Divine Manna of Peace.

I will feed my Soul with wisdom thoughts

From all Scriptures.

I make a solemn resolution not to be angry,

No matter how I am provoked.

I will unceasingly give understanding love

To those who feel wrathful toward me.

I will remove the misunderstanding

And wrath of people by showing in action

My forgiving love for them.

No matter if I doubt Truth, I will never cease

To perform peace-giving good actions

Every day of my life.

I shall wipe away

All unkindness from my Soul

Because I do not like it in others.

Wherever I go, I shall drive away

The darkness of melancholy

With the light of my cheer.

Wherever I go, I will burn

The roots of depression

From the minds of people

With the thoughts

Of our Heavenly Father’s

Infinite Abundance.

God is my Father.

I am His child,

Whether rich of poor.

When I shall know Him

As mine in meditation,

Then I shall have everything that He has.

Heavenly Father, Thou art mine.

I am Thy child, And as such

I need Thy forgiveness

And continuous guidance

In all my activities.

I shall meditate deeper and longer every day,

Until I find the Soul-satisfying,

Joy-contact of God.

I will not concentrate

Upon the thought of sleep

When I meditate deeply

In the temple of night,

Waiting for Thy communion.

Since all things come from Thee,

I will love Thee First and foremost

—More than all things.

I will not forget that my highest

And most important engagement

Is with Thee,

My Father,

In daily deep Silence.

Since no earthly engagement is possible

Without using the powers

Borrowed from Thee,

I will not hesitate

To renounce anything instantly

Which interferes with my engagement

To meditate with Thee

In daily awakened Silence.

Thou art my best Father,

My most loving Mother,

My dearest Beloved and Friend,

For it is the taste of Thy love

Meagerly flowing through human hearts

Which started me on the way

To find complete perfect love in Thee.

At last I know

It is Thou who hast coaxed me

To follow the trail of fragrance

To find Thee

Hidden

In the secret temple of blossoms.

Now I know it was Thou

Who gavest me a glimpse of Thy love

In the love of those near me.

Through the love of friends

Thou hast opened the portals

To the temple of Thy Omnipresent Love.

Thou hast tempted me to seek Thee

In the voice of the nightingale.

Thou hast cast the beauty glances

Of Thy all-alluring love

Through the countless starry eyes

Of the planets.

Thou hast wept silver tears

Through the large eyes of Sun and Moon

To make me feel that Thou dost love me

In spite of my indifference to Thee.

Teach me to receive power

From Thy Cosmic Energy.

Teach me to make my Will unceasing

In its performance

Until the little light of my Will

Burns as the Cosmic Blaze

Of Thy all-powerful Will.

Father, work through my brain,

Think through my mind,

Reason through my wisdom,

Love all Creation through my love.

Teach me to receive prosperity

Through Thy hands,

And wisdom through Thy Voice of Silence.

Father, may Thy Infinite Life

Flow through my life.

Play, through the broken reed of my joy,

The song of Thy perfect, ever-new Joy.

Pull away the starry veil of the blue;

Tear away the cover of space;

Melt away the magic carpet of thoughts,

And shut off

The diverting motion pictures of life,

That I may behold Thee as Thou art.

The Christ in me

Bows to the Christ in all Creation.

Shun passion,

Fold the hands of thrift,

Sit still and Truth is near:

Suddenly it will uplift your eyelids

To the sphere:

Wait a little, you shall see

The portraiture of things to be.—Emerson.

God made neither slave nor master,

"As brothers shall ye be,"

And he who breaks the ancient law

Must pay the penalty.

Oh, you who think in millions

And sway a monarch’s power,

Discern you not the dawning day,

The liberating hour?

Foretold by seer and prophet,

Nurtured in Galilee,

And blazoned on the walls of time

Had we but eyes to see.

Oh, slow of heart, who know not

That he who serves is great;

And he who loves is conqueror

Though stormed by flaming hate.

Fling out a gracious challenge,

The age-long struggle end,

Strike palm to palm, speak heart to heart,

And make your foe your friend.

And Oh, you toiling millions,

Accept the proffered hand,

Cast from your soul its bitterness,

Else all is shifting sand.

Who takes the sword shall perish;

Who fights, fights but to fall;

The world is safe for none of us

Until it is safe for all.

For God made no man master,

But to each to work for good,

To build His kingdom here on earth

In blessed Brotherhood.

A tiny drop of water

Is so very like the Soul;

Seeking for its own expression,

Yet returning to the Whole.

Through spring and river to the ocean;

In cloud returns, unceasing motion.

Never resting, never ceasing;

Always seeking, always reaching.

By sun drawn forth to find expression,

It hastens on, nor brooks repression.

As rain drop, see it fall to earth,

Then back to sea that gave it birth.

Thus is the soul that wanders free;

’Tis ever seeking for the Sea.

And though afar that Soul may roam,

’Tis ever conscious of its home.

THE word prayer smacks of beggary. We are the children of God. He made us in His image. Why should we beg? The word prayer is antiquated and carries with it the consciousness of supplication. The psychology of supplication consists of doubt as to whether the Father will grant what we ask. We, being children of the Almighty Father, can claim everything which He possesses, namely, wisdom, immortality, happiness, and abundance. The word "prayer" should be changed to "loving demand."

The Father made us His children and we have chosen to be beggars. We must destroy our deficiencies and become acknowledged as His children, as Jesus did. To do that, we must stop being prodigal children and retrace our steps homeward from the misery-making mainland of matter. We live in hope and die either with unfulfilled hope or broken-hearted. Very seldom does real complete happiness dawn on the horizon of our lives.

We must consider the steps by which we can retrace our steps Godward. The popular system of prayer is ineffective for the most part because we do not mean business with God. When in trouble, people pray in the churches and temples, repeating the Lord’s prayer loudly together, while in the background of their minds they are thinking of a chicken dinner or something else equally as distracting. God, the Secret Knower of our thoughts, knows what selfish desires we have in our innermost mind, so He seldom manifests Himself. While the demons of sensations and thoughts dance in the temples of body and mind, it is difficult to recognize God, who remains hidden behind the veil of Silence within.

The popular method of prayer does not reveal the psychology and art of prayer. Ordinary prayer consists of addressing our desires, half in belief and half in doubt, to an unknown God. If prayers are answered, a superstitious trust in God may result; if they are ineffective, distrust may follow. Even an answered prayer has to be tested and distinguished from a fulfillment which was coming anyway without the casual intervention and effective activity of the prayer.

Effective prayer, therefore, must be scientific and definite in performance and must give intelligent understanding of all its factors. All those who want to demonstrate the scientific nature of prayer must first be sure that there is a God to pray to.

How can this be known? First by accepting the testimony of great souls such as Jesus, Krishna, Swami Shankara, Babaji, and so on, who said that they found God, talked with Him, and solved the riddle of life after listening to the Truth from the Sacred, Divine Lips.

They have said that God responds to law. They experienced this response and have said that all people who conform to the law can test and experience it for themselves. Physical laws have to be interpreted by the physical senses and judged by the understanding. Divine laws have to be comprehended by concentration, meditation, and intuition.

1. Solitude is the price of God-contact.

2. Knowledge of the laws of tuning the body, mind, and soul radios to contact God is necessary.

3. Since God is also above law, devotion is necessary to call His attention. The devotional call, if sincere, deep, and continuous, and if it is supplemented by sincere efforts at deep meditation, must bring Divine response. Devotional demand is greater than law, for it touches the heart of God and makes Him answer His naughty and good children alike. Law is based upon mathematical precision, but devotion is based upon claiming God as our own true love, for did He not make us in His own likeness? Law is exacting in its demand, while love causes God to surrender Himself to the devotee. God can never hide from the person who exercises devotion, love, the law of meditation, and the Soul-Call.

4. Continuous personal zeal must be put forth. Whether God seems to respond or not, one must never cease loving. The beginner in devotion must not be discouraged if God does not respond to His immediate intense demands. God never fails to listen to all Soul-Calls, but He does not always respond in the way that we want Him to. He has His own mysterious ways. Besides, He consciously responds only when He is sure that the devotee wants Him and Him alone. That is why some saints have been tested with disease, or intense poverty, or temptation, and when found to prefer God to health, life, abundance, or temptation, then God came. If one persists long enough in seeking, one will surely find God at the end of the trail. SAINTS ARE PRODIGAL CHILDREN OF GOD, TEMPORARY SINNERS, WHO DO NOT GIVE UP TRYING TO BE GOOD, SO AS TO GET BACK TO GOD.

You must not be discouraged because of your ill health, or poverty, or moral weakness. Remember, sin is only a temporary graft, and that in reality you are eternally a Son of God. Even if the world condemns you and casts you away, remember that God will ever seek to find you and to bring you back Home. Never mind if you cannot see Him or hear His knock at the gate of your heart. For a long time you have been hiding from Him and running away in the marsh of the senses. It is the noise of your own rowdy passions and of the flight of your heavy footsteps in the material world that has made you unable to hear His call within. Stop, be calm, pray steadfastly, and out of the sullen silence will loom forth the Divine Presence.

Your mental microphone has been broken by the hammers of restlessness used by your noisy passions. That mind microphone must be repaired by deep silence, or by the practice of the technique of concentration and physical discipline, preceding your prayer of loving demand. When you feel calm, your mind microphone is repaired, and then it is time to broadcast your first and foremost loving demand: "Father, make me realize again that Thou and I are One."

Do not jump up after one or two mental broadcasts, but with continuous personal zeal keep on consciously with the ever-increasing hunger of your heart, incessantly, mentally uttering the above affirmation for the lost unity with God, until you feel the ever-increasing thrill of joy bursting around your heart, and your whole body. This increasing joy after meditation is the only proof that God has answered through the devotion-tuned radio of your heart.

The longer and deeper you meditate and affirm, the deeper will you feel and be conscious of the ever-increasing joy in your heart. Then you will know without doubt that there is a God and that He is ever-existing, ever-conscious, omnipresent, ever-new Joy. Then demand: "Father, now today, all day, all tomorrow, every instant, in sleep, in wakefulness, in life, in death, in this world, and in the beyond, remain with me as the consciously-responding Joy of my heart."

After that, ask if you wish, for healing of the fleeting flesh, or ask for passing prosperity, or for anything that you think with wisdom that you should have, but never forget to request, all the time: "Father, be Thou mine always, as Thou has been, and may Thy love be the only King reigning on the throne of all my ambitions and desires. May I be able to make a fitting temple for Thee in every heart."

Oh, the shimmer, the glimmer

Of green growing corn in the sun.

The green of it, the sheen of it,

The sparkle and gleam of it—

Oh, the gladsomeness of young corn in June!

"And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there. And both Jesus was called, and His disciples to the marriage. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto Him, ‘They have no wine.’ Jesus saith unto her: ‘WOMAN WHAT HAVE I TO DO WITH THEE? MINE HOUR IS NOT YET COME’."

Jesus addressed His mother as "woman" because He saw only the Divine Spirit as His real mother and father, and His earthly mother as only a human being. "Woman, I can have nothing to do with thee, even though thou art my mother, until the right time comes for me to be directed by the Divine Power to act, and to manifest His glory."

Jesus did not perform the miracle of turning the water into wine just to accommodate His mother, or to show His Divine Powers, but He performed the miracle in obedience to God’s direction.

At the proper time, before people who have the possibility of Spiritual awakening, miracles are sometimes performed by Saints in order to bring people unto God. Saints usually prefer to draw people by the love of God and not by miracles. That is why they seldom show their power. Miracles draw curiosity seekers, while the love of God draws highly developed Souls. For that reason Jesus did not want to perform miracles until He was commanded by God to do so at the right time.

"His mother saith unto the servants: ‘Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.’ And there was set there six water pots of stone, after the manner of purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them: ‘FILL THE WATERPOTS WITH WATER’."

At Divine intuitional suggestions, Jesus asked the servants to fill the waterpots so that He could declare the glory of God by changing the water into wine. Besides, He had the pots filled with water before their eyes in order that they might see it and know that it became wine through Divine Power and not through magic.

"And they filled them up to the brim. And He saith unto them: ‘DRAW OUT NOW AND BEAR UNTO THE GOVERNOR OF THE FEAST.’ And they bare it. When the Ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was, (but the servants which drew the water knew) the Governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and saith unto him: ‘Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse; but thou has kept the good wine until now.’ This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His glory; and His disciples believed on Him."

The above sentence distinctly shows that the miracle of Jesus was not meant for the gaze of curiosity seekers, but was meant to enhance the faith of the disciples in God’s power over all things.

Wine and the human body are equally made of electrons. It is the different rate of vibration of these electrons that constitutes the endless variety of material forms. Jesus, being omnipresent in God, knew the metaphysical relation of matter to Divine Will. He demonstrated that one form of matter could be changed into another form, not only by chemical processes, but by the Universal Power of Mind. This miracle testifies to the fact that all matter is controlled by the one unifying and balancing power of Divine Intelligence and Will.

By reacting to this Divine Intelligence, Jesus changed the arrangement of electrons and protons in the water and thus turned them into wine, which has a different specific gravity from water. The law of causation of all material forms can be traced to the activity of electrons, but beyond that the sources of the law of cause and effect is lost. Scientists do not know why electrons and protons rearrange themselves into different forms and create different kinds of matter.

Herein lies room for a Divine Intelligence, says the scientist, inasmuch as it must be that power which commands the subtle electronic and protonic bricks and directs them to arrange themselves in different combinations, thus creating different substances.

"After this He went down to Capernaum, He, and His mother, and His brethren, and His disciples; and they continued there not many days. And the Jews’ Passover was at hand. And Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep, and doves, and the changers of money, sitting. And when He had made a scrorge of small cords, He drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; and said unto them that sold doves: ‘TAKE THESE THINGS HENCE; MAKE NOT MY FATHER’S HOUSE AN HOUSE OF MERCHANDISE’."

Jesus was not suffering from anger while He was using the whip or cords to drive the money changers from the temple. It was not the little cord, but the personality, the Divine vibration and the colossal Spiritual force behind it, which frightened away the money changers. Great prophets, though they are internally free from anger, may use the semblance of anger to admonish and correct those who respond more to fear and vibrations than to love vibrations.

Jesus, who tells you to love your enemies, shows by the above action that the Divine Saint also has power behind His meekness. No one dared to resist His Spiritual Power and determination, as was shown by the fact that a whole group of able-bodied money changers fled before the power of a single meek man.

Jesus said that the House of God should be free from the contradictory vibrations of material thoughts involved in buying and selling. He only meant that according to the laws of concentration we should center our minds upon one thing at a time. While in the house of God, we should concentrate upon Him, and there should be nothing there to awaken material thoughts. He meant that buying and selling should be carried on in the market and not in the temple.

There is a spiritual lesson in the above act of Jesus. The temple of mind, during prayer, should not be a place where the thoughts of material gain persist. Many people, during prayer, carry in the background of their minds the thought of buying and selling of material things and the profit thereof. Jesus says this is disastrous because it brings neither God nor prosperity.

During meditation, as often as the money changers of material thoughts come to your mind, so often should you make a scourge of calmness, formed out of the gathered will power acquired throughout life, and drive out the restless material thoughts from your temple.

"BE NOT weary in well doing." An injunction more difficult to heed was, perhaps, never enunciated. Have you ever been cast down and beginning to doubt the final value of constancy? "What’s the use?" you say. I’ve waited and worked and toiled and suffered and still things go wrong. Still the wicked go on flourishing like the green bay tree. I know I have been decent, upright, honest. I have borne patiently the heat of the day. Yet all my ships have come back empty. All my literary efforts bring only rejection slips; all the people I have applied to for work politely say no; no one comes into my store to buy; the elements and the grasshoppers have eaten my harvests; everyone misunderstands me and misjudges my efforts; I am—just now at any rate—a failure.

There is a proverb, attributed to the Japanese, to the effect that "he wins who can suffer fifteen minutes longer than the next man." "And, having done all, to stand," says the Scripture. There you have the hub of the question. It’s hard to keep on smiling, but it is not only much pleasanter for one’s neighbors, but still more profitable to oneself. Having done all, to stand.

There are in all lives moments of inertia, physical lack of "pep," which attack the Spirit. These are the moments when we must look to it most carefully that we do not fail. A famous general is quoted as saying: "My right wing is defeated, my left in retreat, my center is broken. I attack with my whole line."

The writer has always respected and admired the noble constancy, and the dignity, of a tree. Nothing moves it. No nerves, moods, or fears daunt it. God has planted it in the ground for His good purpose—which the tree knows not—and that is enough. Strong and abiding, it stands. No complaints come from it. If the elements uproot it or cast it down, no matter. It has stood firm in the carrying out of the purpose of its Creator.

When the dark days come, when we say: "I have no pleasure in them," what then? We may, perhaps, discipline and improve our dispositions. But what can we do when vexatious trials, irritations, come from without? When everybody gets up the wrong way, by the wrong side of the bed, as the saying is? The weather is depressing, perhaps. Mayhap there is storm in the air, storm psychological as well as material. Well, there is the Spanish proverb: "Always after the clouds, the sun."

Sometimes these evil days bring not only irritations and small trials, but real afflictions—death of loved ones, poverty, or ruin of reputation. And how often they come not singly, but together, as it were, provoking one another, leading one another along. Adversity is a great searcher of hearts. Showing us, as it often does, in unfavorable lights, it also as often discloses virtues unperceived before. One writer has put it thus: "In the happy monotony of untroubled days the spirit of devotion and sacrifice finds few occasions for manifesting itself, and, as though in an air too balmy and a soil too light, the noblest germs of our life develop but slowly. They need a firmer soil and the more rigorous and tonic climate of the dark days."

Not that it is easy for us mortals to stand firm at all times. No, indeed! There are moments when a lassitude not merely physical, but mental and spiritual as well, seems to overpower us. We wonder whether we will ever again feel forceful, sprightly, as full of courage as we once did. We doubt whether we can drive ourselves any more. We fear that we must sink back into a lethargy where nothing really matters. That is the danger point. Eternal vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of salvation. When we feel this way, we should pray that "eternal youth of body and mind may abide in us forever," and affirm:

"I am healthy, I am health,

I am strong, I am strength.

I am successful, I am success.

I am blessed, I am bliss.

I am peaceful, I am peace.

I am immortal, I am immortality."

The very setting down of those words on paper here and now has deepened the writer’s belief in their truth and the conviction of their depth of meaning. He feels it each day as he repeats them over and over at his morning’s devotions.

The supreme value of constancy, "hold-fastness," is beautifully expressed in a verse in Swami Paramananda’s translation of the Bhavagad Gita, where Krishna, the "Blessed Lods," says to Arjuna: "Thus, ever keeping himself steadfast, the Yogi of subdued mind attains eternal peace and freedom which abide in me."

"I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith," said the Christian Apostle. "Well done, good and faithful servant," said Jesus in the parable. "Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

About thirty years ago, an Alsacian pastor, Charles Wagner, a shepherd from the hill country between Germany and France, captured the heart of the world with his gospel of the "Simple Life." His philosophy of resurgence, what we Americans call "Come back," is trenchantly expressed in these words:

"You are a ruined man, or you are stricken by a great bereavement, or again, you see the fruit of toilsome years perish before your eyes. You cannot rebuild your fortune, raise the dead, recover your lost toil, and in the face of the inevitable, your arms drop. Then you neglect to care for your person, to keep your house, to guide your children. All this is pardonable, and how easy to understand! But it is exceedingly dangerous. To fold one’s hands and let things take their course, is to transform one evil into worse. You who think that you have nothing left to lose, will by that very thought lose what you have. Gather up the fragments that remain to you, and keep them with scrupulous care. In good time this little that is yours will be your consolation. The effort made will come to your relief, as the effort missed will turn against you. If nothing but a branch is left for you to cling to, cling to that branch; and if you stand alone in defense of a losing Cause, do not throw down your arms to join the rout. After the deluge a few survivors repeopled the earth. The future sometimes rests in a single life as truly as life sometimes hangs by a thread. For strength, go to history and Nature. From the long travail of both you will learn that failure and fortune alike may come form the slightest cause, that it is not wise to neglect detail, and, above all, that we must know how to wait and to begin again."

There is a fruitful thought here which generally escapes us. Perhaps—who knows—these hours and days, during which we seem to pass without accomplishment, when we just mark time, when we have, apparently, no moral energy to meet the battle shocks of life—perhaps these make up a sort of fallow time for recuperation, for developing or renewing the forces we need for new and greater achievements. God may be planting within us the seeds of new harvests. We must be patient, patient, patient.

Is my religion a good guide for everyday life, Pastor Wagner asks, and here is his answer:

"Your religion is good if it is vital and active, if it nourishes in you confidence, hope, love, and a sentiment of the infinite value of existence; if it is allied with what is best in you against what is worst, and holds forever before you the necessity of becoming a new man; if it makes you understand that pain is a deliverer; if it increases your respect for the conscience of others; if it renders forgiveness more easy, fortune less arrogant, duty more dear, the beyond less visionary. If it does these things, it is good, little matter its name: However rudimentary it may be, when it fills this office, it comes from the true source; it binds you to man and to God.

But does it perchance serve to make you think yourself better than others, quibble over texts, wear sour looks, domineer over others’ consciences, or give your own over to bondage; stifle your scruples, follow religious forms for fashion or gain, do good in the hope of escaping future punishment?—oh, then, if you proclaim yourself the follower of Buddha, Moses, Mahomet, or even Christ, your religion is worthless. It separates you from God and man."

Here, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter, says John Bunyan, putting the thought (if not the actual words) into the mouth of Christian in "Pilgrim’s Progress": "Holdfast greatly heartened the pilgrims by his patience and unwavering courage. No wind, nor storm, no heat nor cold, no pestiferous enemy or false friend, no trials or set-backs could prevent him from keeping on the way steadily to the Heavenly City."

Ayanasu cha sarbasu yathabhagamabasthita Bhismamababhirakshan tu bhabantah sarba abouoe hi.

Ayansau (the divisions of the army); cha (too); sarbasu (all of them); yathabhagamabasthita (in their right positions as placed); bhabantah (ye); sarba (all); aba hi (must); Bhisman (Bhisma); aba (alone); Abhirakshantu (guard).

King Material Desire (Durjodhana) speaks to preceptor Past Tendency (Drona).

All of you, being stationed in your respective places, in the divisions of the army, do protect Bhima.

As described in the previous Stanza, Bhisma, or Ego, is the principal Power which fights the forces of the Soul. Meditation relaxes the mind from matter, and shows the unlimited Kingdom of the Spirit and puts it on matter and the physical body. King Material Desire considers Ego consciousness as the primary power which deluded the Soul and caused it to be entangled in the meshes of flesh and matter.

The Ego is more powerful in exercising delusive influence, and defeating the soldiers of the Soul, than its preceptor, Past Tendency. Even Past Tendency can be killed by a good, strong, new tendency, but it is very hard to kill the Ego consciousness, which makes the Soul think of itself as a body weighing so many pounds, containing brittle bones, subject to poverty, sickness, and death, and many other limitations.

This Ego, which is conscious of being identified with a body, is carried in the heart of the Soul through many incarnations. That is why King Material Desire is strong and strives to protect the body consciousness by all means, for that consciousness, along with the army of limitations, can keep the Soul a prisoner of matter.

King Material Desire thinks that even if Past Evil Tendency is destroyed, other evil tendencies may be created to keep the Soul in bondage, but King Material Desire is afraid that if the Ego consciousness is slain in the psychological battle during the spiritual skirmish of meditation, the Soul will remember its state of Cosmic Consciousness and will be able, with its power, to annihilate all the armies of delusion and desire. King Material Desire’s existence depends upon the existence of the Ego consciousness.

The Spiritual Battle Array is as follows: The soldiers of the Soul are listed first. They are the power to follow prescribed rules, the power to follow prohibitive rules, self control, soul-controlled vital force and breath, and calmness and intuition, and they are situated in the coccygeal, sacral, lumbar, dorsal, cervical, medulla, and reflected Spiritual Eye Centers, respectively. The soldiers of King Material Desire occupy, together with he true forces of the Good, the coccygeal, sacral, and lumbar plexuses, plus the entire skin surface and the dugouts of the uncontrolled senses.

Another version of the above Stanza is that on one side are assembled

• (1) the Spirit as Christ Consciousness (Krishna, of the Bhagavad Gita),
• (2) the power of Samadhi (or intuitional Oneness with God) in the medulla and the point between the two eyebrows, and
• (3) King Calmness (Yudhistira) centered in the cervical skiey plexus, as Divine Devotion, and
• (4) Bhima, or Vital Breath and Power, in the dorsal breath center, and
• (5) Arjuna, or Life Force, Patience, and Self Control, in the lumbar-fire center, and
• (6) Nakulor, or power to follow good rules, in the sacral-water center, and
• (7) Sabedeva, or power to follow prescribed rules, in the coccygeal or earth center.

Then on the other side, the senses also are assembled in the coccygeal, sacral, lumbar, dorsal, cervical, and medulla centers as Bhisma, Drona, and Kripa (as Ego and its inclinations); Material Pride, or Shalya; Material Attachment, or Shakuni; as Greed (Karna and Bikarna); Anger (Duhshashan, hard to control) and Jayadratha, (fear of death) and King Material Desire, (Durjodhana) respectively.

The passing years

Contribute each their part

To that experience which we call Life.

To some they bring rewards

Of joy and friends—

That fill still fuller yet

Their brimming cup.

To others comes

An added weight of care

Too great, it seems,

For mortals to endure.

Both Wealth and Want,

Abiding side by side,

Till Wealth is sobered

By the sight of Need,

And Need is heartened

By the sight of Wealth.

Between these two

There lives another class,

Which neither rich nor poor,

Is kin to both.

From one it takes,

And to the other gives.

They do the world’s great work

And make of Life

A something more than living

—More than Want,

Or Wealth with gilded eyes,

Has power to see.

To all of these,

Life has its different sides,

And yet it takes them all

To make a world.

If all were rich,

Then soon would men decay.

If all were poor,

No progress could be made.

But working all together,

Sifting out the gold from dross,

The golden wheat from chaff,

From out the Crucible

There comes at last

The residue of effort,

Good and ill,

The final proof

And test of Life itself—

The thing by which

All mortals stand or fall,

Our CHARACTER

—Life’s aim—and final goal.

Rationalist: I have a primordial instinct in me to vivisect life, to tear it into shreds and look at it in its nakedness. This instinct in me is as sharp as reason and as aggressive as youth.

Lover: I also have been endowed with an urge, prompting me, not to dissect life, but to appreciate and love it. Unlike yours, this urge in me is as blind as love and as restless as the butterfly.

Rationalist: I want to find the roots of life. I want to discover its meaning and significance. As letters, alphabets, words and books are mere symbols expressing an idea, so must be all seasons and songs, all branches and leaves that beautify the tree of life, only trying to say a word or express an idea, the meaning of which lies hidden under its foliage, growth and decay. Therefore, with reason, I want to search the history of every leaf, biography of every flower, heredity of every pollen, ancestry of every root, and chemistry of every drop of sap that keeps it alive. I am in search of knowledge and for the sake of knowledge, I will keep on searching. Life is indeed a mystery. Failing to unriddle the riddle of existence, people surround it with illusions and vagaries. For my part, I am as cold as death; so with a spirit of detachment I want to find what life is like.

Lover: Well, as for me, I want to befriend life. I want to make myself acquainted with it. So, I approach her not as a critic but as a lover. Oh, it bores me to dissect life like a butcher. If you only knew how much I crave to know more of its youth and risks, loves and motives, songs and sighs and their implications and meanings, so that I could be as irresistible as life is, unsubdued by storm or stress, unscathed by cyclones and emotions or unimpeded by mishap or mistrust. I love to chat with life on moon-beams and sunshine, noble achievements and glorious defeats, honest sorrows and joyous ecstacies, martyred crucifixions and happy resurrections. I want life to tell me the exuberance of spring and sports of winter and also how summer sweetens fruits and autumn kills the old leaves making way for the rejuvenation of the tree-life. I love to love and by loving, want to know what life knows.

Rationalist: Well, that is well and good. But such is my nature that I love to reason and through the logic of reason, want to know how far love is reasonable and how much of life is rational. I find that both life and love are irrational unless checked by reason. Undoubtedly reason educates both love and life in the field of wisdom, whereas wisdom balances irrationalities of love and life into a rational process. Otherwise, both of them fall into anarchy and move to chaos. Reason alone can bring them to understanding.

Lover: It is true. Love and Life can neither hide nor check. They are always self-exposed and self-betrayed. They come out of the dizzy heights and run into the deep seas. They are utterly blind to the moanings of stones and rocks as well as the groanings of creepers and trees. With a momentum they come and with a momentum they go. Unless reason intervenes they are liable to commit suicide. Reason stops and thinks, deliberates and discriminates. Yet, when I love and love with the fullness of my heart, I reason not and find no reason for reasoning. The supreme act of loving is reason unto itself. While loving, I reason, if my love is all-giving,—if I love fully, unreservedly, unconditionally.

Rationalist: Then, you may love to the detriment of your self-interest. The ones you love may cheat you and lead you to destruction.

Lover: No self-interest is higher than love and the act of loving. Apparently love may seem to be blind, but essentially love has all-seeing eyes. It sees into the heart of the universe and knows the exact meaning of the ultimate. For this reason, I love and love, even if it leads me to the cross. How can love show its contents and conquests unless it follows logically and dangerously the path of love, unafraid of the consequences or unmindful of the costs? When love ponders over expediency and gains, it is no longer called love. Love swallows up all expediencies and dangers. Because it is vast, immeasurable, infinite.

Rationalist: You are right. We must love even when we reason. We must reason or shallow dogmatism will rule the earth. However, our reason needs a safeguard. It leads us to narrow selfishness. In all our domestic social, national and international problems we reason without love, so we reason without reason. Without love reason is irrational; it is selfish and self-seeking. All selfishnesses and narrownesses ultimately defeat their own purpose. Because they are against the scheme of life and nature. I thank you for the illumination. Henceforth I will love and reason together, reason alone never. Generally we love our reasoning rather than the principles we reason about. From now on, my reason will walk with the lamp of love in its hand.

AN entirely new concept of human life as electrical energy derived altogether from solar radiation, (the rays of the sun), was brought before a gathering of medical men in Memphis, Tenn., May 17, by Dr. George W. Crile of Cleveland, Ohio. He presented the paper before the American Association for the Study of Goiter, a group of specialists devoted to the study of life’s processes of growth.

Under Dr. Crile’s theory, food no longer can be considered as mere substance. "What we eat is radiation," he said. "Our food is so much quanta of energy."

This all-important radiation, which releases electrical currents for the body’s electrical circuit, the nervous system, is given to food by the sun’s rays. Atoms, Dr. Crile says, are solar systems. Atoms are the vehicles that are filled with solar radiance as so many coiled springs. These countless atomfuls of energy are taken in as food. Once in the human body, these tense vehicles, the atoms, are discharged in the body’s protoplasm, the radiance furnishing new chemical energy, new electrical currents.

"Your body is made up of such atoms," Dr. Crile said. "They are your muscles, brains, and sensory organs, such as the eyes and ears."

WE ARE compelled to admit that with each step in progress noise has become worse. Civilization destroys the silence of Nature with ever fresh forms of clamor, but Science has now begun to take the problem seriously by making it the subject of systematic study and research.

The curious thing about noise is man’s helplessness in its presence. The eye can protect itself against variations in light. We have our remedies against the discomforts of the senses of touch, smell, and taste. The ear alone lacks any efficient means of escape.

The first attempt of a thorough investigation of the physiological and psychological effects of noise has been made by the New York Commission on City Noise. The conclusions it reached were that constant loud noises impaired hearing, reduced the efficiency of workers, and that the effort to overcome the effect of noise puts upon the nervous system a strain leading to neurasthenic and psychasthenic states.

The verdict of physiology, psychology, and medicine, is unhesitatingly to the effect that noise is not merely disagreeable, but also actually harmful.

People can have quiet if they will pay for it. In considerable degree they can have quiet by merely demanding it, for just as soon as the makers of automobile trucks, or owners of office buildings, or sellers of vacuum cleaners, realize that these articles will sell or rent better if they are noiseless, just that soon will they become quiet.

NEW evidence that people "think" with their muscles as well as with their brains, and that, therefore, complete relaxation helps to relive such things as fear, worry, and emotional strain, was presented in Washington, D.C., May 11, to the American Neurological Association by Dr. Edmund Jacobson of the University of Chicago.

Dr. Jacobson described experiments that showed that when people think about performing an act with some particular part of the body, the muscles in that part register a small electric current on a delicate machine. He found that merely thinking about the act of raising a ten-pound weight with the right arm set up a small electric current in the bicep muscle of that arm. The current was measured by inserting a small electrode in the muscle. When the subject thought about doing a rhythmical task, such as turning an ice cream freezer crank, the electrode registered a rhythmical series of small currents.

This shows, Dr. Jacobson said, that the muscles are involved in what usually is thought of as "mental" activity, and if a person’s muscles are completely relaxed, his mind actually does not work. These discoveries, Dr. Jacobson believes, can be applied to the treatment of many mental upsets. He told to treating a man, who had a "phobia" for jumping out of high windows, by teaching him how to relax the muscles that would be involved in jumping from a window.

THE curative properties of sunlight have been closely approximated by the electric current, and since then it has been determined that gas light has the same properties. This knowledge has started an immense research in the gas industry. At first, experts concentrated upon producing gas lamps of this type for hospitals and clinics. Now one manufacturer previously engaged on these lines has brought out a new type gas fire which is rich in the valuable short infra-red rays. It means that a room so equipped will enjoy not only the fresh warmth of an ordinary gas fire, but also the beneficial rays of home sunshine.

The curative properties of these gas rays are beyond question. In his London clinic, Sir Leonard Hill, F.R.S., the famous authority on the treatment of disease by radiant energy, has successfully used gas lamps for the relief of rheumatism and for the treatment of wounds, boils, carbuncles, acne, and similar affections. The lamp gives off a fine red glow, whence the penetrative rays enter the body. In the case of rheumatic joints, these rays penetrate to the core of the pain, soothe, warm, and finally dispel the irritation.

Remove a large clove of garlic, which has been cut in halves and placed in 1/2 cupful of butter (covered) the night before. Melt and brown the butter and one tablespoonful of finely cut green onions. Mix gently with one cupful of spoon-scooped avocado, being careful not to break the pieces; salt and pepper to taste and serve on toast.

Cream 1/3 cupful of butter and 2/3 cupful of sugar; add one egg, mixing thoroughly; then dissolve 1/4 teaspoonful of baking soda in one teaspoonful of water. In this mixture stir gradually one large cupful of rice flour. Make into one-inch cakes about 1/2 inch thick, and sprinkle a few Sesame seeds on top of each cake. Place in a well-buttered pan and bake in a moderately hot oven, (about 375 degrees) for 35 minutes. These little cakes may be stored away in glass jars and will keep nicely for many days.

IGNORANT people, like animals, do not heed the lessons which accompany pain and pleasure. Most people live a life checkered with sadness and sorrow. They do not avoid the actions which lead to suffering, and do not follow the ways which lead to happiness. Then there are people who live their lives consciously over-sensitive to sorrow and happiness when they come. Such people are usually extremely crushed by sorrow, and are overwhelmed by joy, thus losing their mental balance. There are very few people who, after burning their fingers in the fire of ignorance, learn to avoid misery-making acts.

Many people wish to be happy, and yet they never make the effort to adopt the course of action which leads to happiness. Most people keep rolling down the hill of life, only mentally wishing to climb the peak of happiness. They sometimes wake up if their enthusiasm for happiness survives the crash to the bottom of unhappiness. Most people lack imagination and never wake up until something terrible happens to arouse them from their nightmare of folly.

People seeking happiness must avoid the influence of bad habits which lead to evil actions. Evil actions produce misery sooner or later. Misery corrodes the body, mind, and soul like a silently-burning acid, and cannot be endured long. That is why it should be strictly avoided.

Cure yourself of evil habits by cauterizing them with the opposite good habits. If you have a bad habit of telling lies, and by so doing have lost many friends, start the opposite good habit of telling the truth. It takes time to form either a good habit or a bad one. It is difficult for a bad person to be good, and for a good person to be bad, yet, remember that once you become good, it will be natural and easy for you to be good; likewise, if you cultivate an evil habit, you will be compelled to be evil, in spite of your desire, and you will have to pray: "Father, my Spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak." That is why it is worthwhile to cultivate the habit of being happy.

Remember: No matter how much you are accustomed to being unhappy, you must adopt the antidote of happiness. Each act of being happy now will help you to cultivate the habit of always being happy. Pay no attention if your mind tells you that you can never be happy. Just remember to start being happy now, and every moment, every day, say: "I am happy now!" If you can continuously do that, then, when you look back, you can say: "I have been very happy," and when you look at yourself now you will say: "I am happy," and when you look ahead you will say: "I know I shall be happy." Since all of your future happiness depends upon how happy you are now, start being happy NOW.

Our present year, 1933 A.D., is the 235th year of Dwapara Yuga, and world progress has made greater strides in those two and one-third centuries than in all the twenty-four centuries (comprising two Kali Yugas) that preceded the modern Age of Bronze. Man’s intelligence has become attuned to the subtler vibrations of the new Age; knowledge pours in like a flood; discoveries and inventions have transformed the world as if by miracle or magic.

• (1) Atomic Form, Patra or Anu, the world of gross material manifestation, wherein the One Substance appears as innumerable objects;
• (2) Space, Desh, whereby the idea of division is produced in the Ever-Indivisible;
• (3) Time, Kal, whereby the mind conceives of change in the Ever-Unchangeable, and
• (4) Vibration, Aum, the universal creative force which obscures our realization of the Ever-Uncreated. In Kali Yuga, the knowledge and power of man is confined to the world of gross matter (Bhu Loka, first sphere), and his state or natural caste is Sudra, a menial or dependent of Nature. During this Yuga, his mind is centered on the problems of material objectivity, the Abidya of Atomic Form. In Dwapara Yuga, man gains a comprehension of the electrical attributes, the finer forces and more subtle matters of creation. He now understands that all matter, atomic form, is in the last analysis nothing but expressions of energy, vibratory force, electrical attributes. During the course of this Age of Dwapara, man is given the power to annihilate the Abidya, Illusion, of Space, and the second limitation of Maya is thereby conquered."

Has time not proved the worth of these classifications of the ancient Hindus? Has not history substantiated the accuracy of the time-periods allotted by those inspired rishis to the various World Ages as these are marked out within the 24,000 year cycle of Equinoctial Precession? Are we not now indeed in Dwapara Yuga, as testified to by the extent with which we have

Dwapara Yuga has been the story of man’s growing power over structural materials, particularly important in the case of iron and its derivative steel. Thus have we literally triumphed over the Iron Age of Kali. "Today in the electric furnace one may see tons of incandescent steel swirling about like boiling milk in a saucepan. Nothing in the previous practical advances of mankind is comparable in its consequences to the complete mastery over enormous masses of steel and iron and over their texture and quality which man has now achieved. The railways and early engines of all sorts were the mere first triumphs of the new metallurgical methods. Presently came ships of iron and steel, vast bridges, and a new way of building with steel upon a gigantic scale. . . . In the old house or ship, matter was dominant—the material and its needs had to be slavishly obeyed; in the new, matter has been captured, changed, coerced. . . . It is in this great and growing mastery over substances, over different sorts of glass, over rocks and plasters and the like, over colors and textures, that the main triumphs of the mechanical revolution have thus far been achieved. . . . Concurrently with this extension of mechanical possibilities the new science of electricity grew up. . . . Suddenly came electric light and electric traction; and the transmutation of forces, the possibility of sending power, that could be changed into mechanical motion or light or heat as one chose, along a copper wire, as water is sent through a pipe, began to come through to the ideas of ordinary people. . . . By 1909 the airoplane was available for human locomotion. There had seemed to be a pause in the increase of human speed with the perfection of railways and automobile road traction, but with the flying machine came fresh reductions in the effective distance between one point of the earth’s surface and another. . . . The science of agriculture and agricultural chemistry made quite parallel advances during the 19th century. Men learned so to fertilize the soil as to produce quadruple and quintuple the crops gotten from the same area in the 17th century. There was a still more extraordinary advance in medical science; the average duration of life rose, the daily efficiency increased, the waste of life through ill-health diminished. Now here altogether we have such a change in human life as to constitute a fresh phase of history."

We have not as yet traversed one-tenth of the Ascending Bronze Age. What modern science has already accomplished, then, is less than one-tenth of what it will accomplish by 4098 A.D. Professor Soddy, speaking of radio-activity, said, "It sounds incredible, but nevertheless it is true, that science up to the close of the 19th century had no suspicion even of the existence of the original sources of natural energy. . . . The vista which has been opened up by these new discoveries admittedly is without parallel in the whole history of science."

Only very recently have scientists succeeded in the transmutation of elements and in the splitting of the atom. "Professor E. O. Lawrence, head of the University of California radiation laboratories," writes Harry M. Nelson, "states that when man has finally learned how to harness the power that is unleashed when an atom is smashed, he will have at his command a tremendous force, a giant that will revolutionize all present means of transportation, heat, light—perhaps our very existence. . . . Although knowledge of the atom is confined mostly to its outer structure, recent experiments which resulted in the disintegration of the core or nucleus of the lithium atom literally open a new world to science. And judging from progress made in other branches of science as a result of experiments of a similar magnitude, it is within the realm of probabilities that the future will see an advance in the life of man such as was little dreamed of in past ages." In short, the practical use of atomic energy will render obsolete all present forms of power. "Cosmic rays," says Professor August Piccard, "may be the energy of the future, harnessed energy which will light cities, motivate industries and drive airplanes through the stratosphere at tremendous speed."

As for man’s present knowledge of electricity, he knows only that it exhibits, in motion, magnetic, thermal and chemical effects. He understands little of its true nature and nothing of its source, which is Chittwa, the seat of universal magnetism, and which will not be fully known until the next Age, the Silver or Treta Yuga. Though scientists from the days of Benjamin Franklin have observed that electricity appears in two ways, positive and negative, they do not properly understand its third or neutralizing manifestation. That the ancient Hindus were not mistaken in their electrical classifications is proved by the fact that it is known today that thermions or electrons emitted by a heated substance, may show an electric charge, either positive or negative, or may be uncharged (neutralized).

Further, modern scientists do not understand that there are five different kinds of electricities, each with three modes of manifestation. These are Pancha-Tattwa, the five root-causes of creation. The five electrical energies have their correspondence, in man’s body, in his five different sensory nerve impulses, which are purely electrical in nature.₅ A vast world of new interest, new research and new discoveries awaits those scientists who will study and demonstrate the grand eternal truths of universal creation laid bare so many ages ago by the ancient Hindu rishis. Dr. George W. Crile of Cleveland offers recent confirmation of very old ideas by his statement that "The human brain is governed solely by electricity, and is composed of a complex generation and distribution of power systems. It consists of no less than four quadrillion of individual dynamos, with the adrenal gland acting as the power house."

It will be of interest here to point out the applicability of the term "Bronze Age" to our present electrical era. Bronze is an alloy of metals, chiefly copper, and it is on copper, due to its excellent conductivity and rust-resisting properties, that the electrical industry rests. Iron, ruled by Saturn, the heavy planet of limitations, was the most important metal during the two Iron Ages which preceded our present epoch. Silver and gold will doubtless be the peculiarly distinctive metals of the future Silver and Golden Ages.

Copper and bronze are under the rulership of the cooperative planet Venus, and during the centuries of the Bronze Age that lie still before us, we may reasonably expect to see the practical realization of the ideal of the Brotherhood of Man. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be" (John 3:2). The Silver and Golden Ages will be ruled, respectively, by the two luminaries, the Moon and Sun.

The power offered to the men of Dwapara Yuga, that of conquering the second Maya Illusion, of Space, has already manifested itself powerfully in the opening years of our Age, chiefly through radio-activity. We can send a radio message completely around the world in less than one-seventh of a second. To a less perfect degree, space has been mastered through the telephone, telegraph, ocean cable, television and by the airplane. Thus far, only two of the five kinds of electricities, corresponding to sight and sound, have been developed. Three more remain for the future, when we may reach across the world to touch beloved friends and to smell and taste objects in their rooms.

The seeming limitations of space have already, in other ways, been overcome through the invention of the spectroscope. Astronomers now understand the structure and chemical composition of all the planets of our solar system and of the fixed stars, and can determine the extent and direction of motion of the solar systems beyond our own. The identity of the composition of the earth with that of the universe, the single origin, similar properties and interdependence of all the worlds of creation, have been established. Spectrum analysis has also brought to light the presence of many hitherto unsuspected elements, and science now claims the existence of ninety-two elements as the basis of cosmic creation. In the field of electro-chemistry, man has succeeded in bridging the gulf formerly supposed to exist between organic and inorganic substances; carbon, the keystone of organic compounds has been made, under electric furnace heat, to combine directly with the metals.

Other inventions of Dwapara Yuga have served the three-fold purpose of the Electrical Age; through the use of the microscope, telescope, photography and the X-Ray, man has extended the realm of his observations from the finite to the infinite, and has gained knowledge of worlds which are, respectively, otherwise too small, too remote, too transient or too dense for his sensory perception.

The student will reread its pages many times, receiving fresh inspiration and illumination with each perusal. The chief object of the volume has been to reveal the true significance of the scriptural statement that the human body is the "Temple of God." A dazzling flood of light has been shed, in these pages, on this little-understood statement. The Scriptures of the world are shown to be compilations of scientific facts, not only metaphysical, but also physiological, anatomical and chemical in their significance.

The ancient Hindu science of Biochemistry, destined soon to assume a leading place in the curative or healing sciences of the future, is the basis on which Dr. Carey founded his allocations between the twelve zodiacal signs and the twelve essential minerals or cell-salts of the body. His discoveries are of paramount importance to humanity, and the results of his findings are given, with a wealth of fascinating corroborative evidence, in these pages. The reader is enabled to understand clearly why Biochemistry is a key to physical regeneration and spiritual illumination, and why the Bible states, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood—for it is the blood that maketh an atonement (at-one-ment) for the soul."

This volume presents God to us as the Great Chemist, Master Mason, and Architect of the Universe. "God made man from the dust (minerals) of the earth." Saints and sages have stressed the sanctity of the bodily temple; these pages tell us why. We understand for the first time the profound wisdom embedded in the following chemical language of Shakespeare: "His life was gentle; and the elements so mixed in him, that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, ‘This was a Man’."

No knowledge of chemistry or the zodiacal signs is required to understand this lucid and simply written work. It is beautifully bound, and contains two unique and valuable charts. The intelligent student will consider this volume among the chief treasures of his library.

AN amazing drama involving the rights and social welfare of millions of people and the stability of a great Empire has just passed its climax, for the present at least, in India. That drama centers around the wizened little figure of Gandhi, whose hunger-strike sent frock-coated diplomats scurrying about, caused the rulers of the British Empire to sweat through midnight emergency conferences, and literally stood the British lion on its ear.

We of the Western world may look with small concern on India and the struggle of her teeming millions, but there is being enacted there an object lesson whose profundity deserves our attention and understanding. Western civilization, we say, with its mighty mass industrial machine and scientific progress, leads the world, yet our civilization has not progressed so far that we do not depend upon force.

England, France, and Italy, and the other so-called superior Western nations, are right in line, yet there in India a little, sick, scrawny man, weighing less than 90 pounds, without guns, without soldiers, without warships, without force, accomplishes by refusing food for a few days what would cause "civilized" peoples the lives of countless soldiers and billions of dollars. With all our vaunted progress, we still supply the law of the jungle—the law of force. We still seem to believe in Napoleon’s cynical diction: "God is always on the side that has the largest battalions."

Leadership? Power? Definition of these terms must be revised in the light of Gandhi’s passive victory against great odds. This queer little man, weak and sick, by the measuring stick of history is a greater leader than all of the captains and generalissimos of fire and sword that ever lived. And how does the great power of great armies and navies compare with the power of Gandhi, whose threat to starve himself to secure just treatment for his lowly followers brought the British Empire to its knees? Little Gandhi junks the old concept of power, and proves that there can be a purpose, a moral staunchness, which all the force in the world is simply powerless to touch.

Supreme force that encounters resistance can always win. Force that meets no resistance is a loss. A Gandhi leading an army in the field could be crushed over night. A Gandhi in an Indian prison starving himself to death for an Ideal is beyond force, and vastly more powerful. Gandhi is a disciple of peace—the accomplishment of great deeds and works without the iron heel of force. The Western world can learn much from him.

Friends of mine, would you do me a favor?

Then, when I shall be free of this body,

When in silence I pass from your presence,

Provide a feast for the occasion

And rejoice in my peace and my freedom;

For, though I expect to be happy,

The only thing that might disturb me

Would be to behold you in sorrow.

So make a great feast at my passing,

That I may look down on your gladness

And know that you honor and love me,

As I shall still be loving you.

Long, long have I lived in this castle

That men call the physical body,

And long have I loved the sweet magic

Of Nature, great weaver of dreams.

I have not despised the dear visions

My Lord has so graciously granted.

I have eaten the fruits of this eden,

I have tasted the wine of our vineyards,

I have plucked every blossom of beauty

That I found on the highway of life.

I have laughed, I have loved, I have danced

And have sung down the bright lanes of time

Until I am sleepy with singing.

And soon I shall rest for a moment—

Yet not for long shall I be silent,

For deep in my spirit is hidden

A wellspring of joy that forever

Must find its expression in music.

I shall not be less when I leave you,

But I shall be more of myself.

I shall race with he winds and the waters,

I shall smile

In the star-gleams and moonlight;

I shall sing

From the throats of enraptured birds,

I shall dance with the leaves of the forest.

Yet I shall not give up my Selfhood;

I shall not abandon my Being—

I shall only expand the heart of me,

I shall only be living more fully,

So make us a feast at my passing—

And I shall be there to enjoy it,

Though I shall have wakened into the dawn

That awaits every lover of light.

Deliverance from evil, the cleansing of the Body Temple, the transforming of the mind, and the development of wisdom and God’s love in the soul, is the Sign of all Signs. This was their Sign, the last and greatest of signs, of which Jesus spoke when He said: "Then shall appear the Sign of the Son of Man in Heaven." Man returned from his alliance with Satan, to have his covenant with death and agreement with hell annulled—to become again that which he was made in the beginning, Man, the image of God, redeemed to happiness or heaven—as Jesus said of Himself: "No man hath ascended into heaven but the Son of Man, who is in heaven," and peering into the future, He said: "Hereafter, ye shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." Yet again, He said, and this is evidence of the true theory of reincarnation: "Ye which have followed Me, in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit upon the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."

The Scripture is of no private interpretation. It does not refer to any one particular personality, but to man in general, to all who, realizing their sorry plight, as bound hand and foot in the prison house of matter, in bondage to evil, death, and all the limitations of mortality, gratefully accept the Way of Deliverance and run with joy in the Path of Self Realization.

This Light, like all former revelations of true value, comes out of the mysterious East, and, "As the lightning cometh out of the East and shineth unto the West, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be."—and, remember always that the materialization of spiritual and occult Truth, such as the allegory of man’s fall in the Garden of Eden and the six days of Creation, has been the cause of much confusion and turned many people away from the Scriptures in unbelief and doubt, so, also, looking for a man to descend in the atmosphere is ridiculous and childish. The Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world is an occult light that never shone on land or sea. It shines within and through us. It shines as we purify, refine, and polish our souls. Like the diamond, it radiates and gives light to all around about. "Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily."

This, we testify, is the Light of Yogoda, the Way of Salvation—a scientific technique involving the redemption of the body from sickness, fatigue, and death by compulsion, the mind from inefficiency, and the soul from ignorance, to wisdom, love, and power. It is now made plain to mankind, so that the wayfaring man, although a fool, shall not err therein.

The coming of this Light proclaims that the Kingdom of God is at hand. We first sought that Kingdom in the gray dawn of a lesser light, through starless skies and dark stormy seas. Through God’s mercy we kept the course, guided by the chart of the Law and the testimony, until over the dark waters flashed the radiant beams of Yogoda, in whose harbor of meditation we may find that beatific state of Self Realization in conscious, everlasting, ever-new Bliss in Christ Consciousness and Omnipresence.

Thus it is to awake from the deep sleep of Maya, which fell upon Adam. Those dread sentinels—depression, worries, losses, and crosses—are blessings in disguise. Sorrow is the kind sentinel who halts the approach of too much prosperity for the body at the expense of the soul, and oftimes rouses the slumbering soul to redemptive activity. So we may truly say:

"Sorrow! Thou art God’s angel;

Tho thy face, veiled by shadowy wings,

Is hid awhile:

Sweet is the message on thy scroll we trace;

A holy rapture hath thy parting smile.

Upon thy path I trace the footsteps bright;

Of one, who, for my sake,

With thee hath trod:

His tears still gem the thorns,

‘Til the Light

Blends into radiance

—Leading on to God.

Smite; lay on thy rod,

Thou shepherd of the fold,

That we all may meet;

Redeemed, cleansed,

Purified—brought forth as gold;

And in the body know, that all evil,

All bitter is sweet."

The reason that losses and crosses build up the soul, is that: Whereas, the body is built up by receiving food, sunshine, and Cosmic energy, not so the soul, but contrariwise, by giving, by expressing, we aggregate the spiritual entity. An understanding of this dual law of growth, involving the physical and spiritual entities, furnishes the key to many problems and explains many of the paradoxes of life.

This knowledge it is which gives the soul power to be mirthful in adversity, to rejoice in tribulation, to be patient in suffering. It is this consciousness within the soul that enables the martyr to go smiling to his doom with a prayer of forgiveness on his lips. Tears of contrition and true distress quicken the germ of eternal happiness into life in the human soul, so, when sorrow comes, be not dismayed. It must needs be that we quicken our pace, and "Forgetting those things which are behind, press forward toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ."

So the Messenger shows unto man his uprightness, that he is Man and not beast, that henceforth he "Shall not live be bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the Mouth of God," that he "Might have life, and have it more abundantly." "You fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead; this is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die." This is the sign: "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," and this fact is attested to by the mouth of many witnesses, and written records to the same effect.

Paul spoke of this great mystery nineteen centuries ago. He said: "Behold! I show you a great mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. This mortal shall put on Immortality." Such instantaneous dematerializations and translations, without death in the ordinary manner of decomposition, are no longer a great mystery to the enlightened, the Illuminati of India.

So the Messenger not only shows unto man his uprightness, but also saith: "Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom; his flesh shall be fresher than a child’s; he shall return to the days of his youth." This also is an attested fact. We live in a wonderful Age! "And when this mortal shall have put on Immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying: Death is swallowed up in victory; O, death, where is thy sting? O. grave, where is thy victory?"

How much longer, then, will heedless men remain dead to knowledge of the real, and blind to these potent Signs of the Times? Organized religion is helpless when it comes up against a world situation like the present. The old dogmas sound ridiculous. They have suddenly become myths. Twenty centuries of paganized Christianity has miserably failed to create one city where righteousness is practiced and sin is not known.

The American missionary, with his Bible, goes to India to teach the heathen the story of the Creation in six days and the fall of man in the Garden of Eden for eating an apple. He is soon followed by the merchant of the East India Company, with greedy eyes upon the vast wealth of that land, and then in turn comes the army with machine guns and bayonets to enforce the religion and rule of the Christian upon those with whom the doctrines of Christianity were old thousands of years before the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, of Judea.

Thus has righteousness been put away, and the way of death made justifiable for patriotism’s sake and called a necessary evil. Hundreds of thousands of helpless innocents have thus been slain. Aqueducts have been maliciously destroyed, bringing death to hundreds of thousands by famine. It is an astounding fact of history that 7,000,000 souls were put to death by tortures indescribable in order to establish State Christianity in Europe. Then think of the late World War among the Christian nations, and I ask you: "Has there been a falling away from the teachings of Jesus or not? Has there been an apostacy? Has Babylon, the great, fallen in her drunkenness, with the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus?" This abomination of desolation now revealed was a Sign foretold by Jesus. "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."

Are we not then ready for a return to the teachings of the lowly Nazarene? Not the idolatrous adoration of His personality, but to honor Him by that obedience and humility of the little child, which He so simply advocated. Can we feel aught but the profoundest humiliation as we review the prodigious blasphemy of the past nineteen centuries? So, "Remembering the rock from whence we were hewn, and the hole in the pit from whence we were digged," let us bestir ourselves to hearken unto the wisdom of the ages, brought unto us by an accredited Representative of Divinely-Appointed Custodians—the Master Minds of India—India! Land of Romance.

"Where Ganges, woods, Himalayan caves,

And men, dream God;

Hail! Mother of religions, lotus,

Scenic beauty, and Sages;"

We welcome, with joy, your blessed Son of choicest selection, with gratitude, loyalty, and love, to our shores.

Not with faltering tongue will I plead the just cause of India’s freedom, but with a tongue of fire born of sincerity and inspired by the recurrent memories of cruelties, injustice, indignities, tortures, and ignominious death suffered at the hand of the idolater in generations past.

Freedom is indeed written in the skies for India, and within the burning souls of her emancipated sons there burns the eternal fires of freedom. These sons of India have reincarnated as fast as they were slain, being strong of Soul; and have taken Western bodies. They have been Israelites, Persians, Hindus, British, and American, and they will come to the help of the Lord against the mighty in the great Spiritual warfare now waging. I have heard "the sound of a gong in the tops of the mulberry trees," as of old, and so bestir myself for the fray.

The sign of the consummation of evil’s reign in Church and State, and the return of God’s dominion, was the inhabiting of the earth from East to West. With the founding of California in 1848, the great work was initiated. The gold rush followed in 1849 to bring the people out here to settle this promised land, so well adapted to the redemptive work of body, spirit, and soul. Here shall the children of the light come. The wise who understand will come from afar to the Rising Light of Yogoda, and the fact of this Light, namely, its coming for the first time in organized form to this Western world, furnishes a most potent Sign of the Times. It proclaims deliverance to the captives, the opening of the prison-house of matter to those who are bound and appointed unto death.

"This shall be written for the generation to come, and the people which shall be created shall praise the lord; for He hath looked down from the height of His sanctuary; from heaven did the Lord behold the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to LOOSE THOSE WHO ARE APPOINTED UNTO DEATH."

Yogoda reveals the path of righteousness and how we may attain to the realization of all our ideals.

"With my soul have I desired Thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek yearly; for when Thy judgment are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. Let favor be shown to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness. In the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly and will not behold the Majesty of the Lord."—Isaiah 26:9-10/

We see the Signs of the Times. We see the Light of Life Immortal. We have heard the Message of the Masters. We know the scientific technique of salvation and the spiritual technique of Self Realization. Let us then, one and all, determine to do the same diligently with all our might—actively calm and calmly active, for, as Jesus said: "He who DOETH the DOCTRINE shall KNOW," and the doing of the doctrine, and the increment of knowledge such activity produces, is the greatest "Sign of the Times" to the human soul.

GEORGE Washington’s great prayer for the United States is as follows: "Almighty God, we make our earnest prayer that Thou will keep the United States in Thy holy protection; that Thou wilt incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, and entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another and for their fellow citizens of the United States at large. And, finally, that Thou wilt most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy Nation. Grant our supplication, we beseech Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

Who is it that,

With a lavish hand,

Sprinkled the firmament

With countless stars?

Who is it

That gave to the rainbow’s arch

Its brilliant color

And touched with light the firefly’s wings?

Who is it

That put a limit to the speed of light,

And who guides the pace of a crawling snail?

Who is it that called into being

An Eternity without beginning or end,

And set the span of life for Man?

As for me, I see Him in the lightning’s flash,

No less than in the glitter of the evening star.

I hear His voice in the thunder’s roar,

And He proclaims Himself

In the whirling pool.

He, in our mind,

Created the mystery of thought,

And gave to the eagle

The power of flight.

He gave to the tides

Their ebb and flow,

And He directs the rill

On the mountain’s brow.

He sounds the depths

Of the ocean’s floor,

And marks the path

Of the speeding meteor.

He adjusts our sight to near and far

And made for our use the human ear.

In the avid light of the seething volcano,

I see His hand no less

Than in the mystery of healing a wound.

In the sun’s bright splendor

I see His care

And He expresses Himself

In the silver moonbeams.

In the wailing cry of the new-born babe

I hear His voice.

All Nature proclaims

A living God.

IT HAS always been the custom for the incoming President of the United States to take the oath of office on a closed Bible, but when President Roosevelt took the oath of office on March 4, the 300-year-old Dutch Bible, handed down by his ancestors, was opened, at his direction, at the 13th Chapter of the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, which reads as follows:

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil.

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

I AM THAT I AM—though a son of man:

The Christ in man unfolded the Law;

Through the gate

That is straight and the narrow way—

Through the Heaven within,

Came the light of day.

My soul is a link in the chain of Life—

In the River of Life that through me flows:

Through my Inner Self, I AM THAT I AM,

And should do great works, as Jesus can.

Yet I am to be as I drink from the flood:

From the bounteous flood

That through me flows—

To do as I should, is to drink my fill,

And be One with God as it is His Will.

My life is a part of His conscious dream—

A vivid projection of forms—of thought:

And being a part of this ALL IN ALL,

How can I stumble or fail or fall?

By failing to make His Will, my will-

Yea, thus overcoming the gross concept.

Oh! let me awaken the centers within,

And drink deep of joy, in the love of Him.

I AM THAT I AM—though a son of man:

The Christ in the Father exalted the Law—

Through the Heaven within

And the narrow way—

Comes the turquoise blue

And the light of Day.

Did you know you were strong.

Did you know you were brave,

Did you know there was one leaning hard,

Did you know that I waited,

And listened, and prayed,

And was cheered by your simplest word?

Did you know

That I longed for the smile on your face,

For the sound of your voice ringing true,

Did you know I grew stronger and better

For merely

Having touched shoulders with you?

THE chemical properties of all the various substances in Nature, and in the most exact proportions, are congregated and centered in Man. In the composition of his body are involved all the mineral and vegetable substances of the globe, even from the grossest matter, step by step, up to the most rarefied and fine, and, lastly, to finish this masterpiece of Creation, the brain is invested with a living Spirit. This living Spirit is ELECTRICAL. It is a part of Infinite Life. It is the substance which possesses self-motion, intelligence, sensation, and power.

Spirit is a union of two grand forces. The first is voluntary; the second in involuntary. The first is the grand magazine in which is stored up all voluntary powers of INFINITE INTELLIGENCE. All the schemes, plans, and arrangements that appertain to all worlds and their countless inhabitants, after having been created, are controlled through the fixed laws of Nature.

The first plans, arranges, and creates through the Law of its own OMNISCIENT BEING, which becomes the Law of the Universe; and the second controls, moves, and governs all worlds and their countless inhabitants through the fixed laws of Nature. The first is the positive force; and the second is the negative force. The first is male, the second is female. The first begins in the voluntary, and the second in the involuntary power of the INFINITE SPIRIT. They both run through every department of the universe, and thread through universal Nature. The laws of Nature are but the unchanging laws of God.

The eternal substance, from which the Universe and Man were created, is electricity. It contains all the properties of all things in BEING. Hence, all worlds and their splendid appendages were made out of electricity and by that powerful, all-pervading agent, under Deity, are kept in motion from age to age.

"A commonplace life", we say as we sigh.

But why should we sigh as we say?

The commonplace sun

In the commonplace sky

Makes up the commonplace day.

The moon and stars are commonplace things,

And the flower that blooms

And the bird that sings.

But dark were the world and sad our lot,

If the flowers failed and the sun shone not.

And God, who studies each separate soul,

Out of commonplace lives

Makes His Beautiful Whole.

FREQUENTLY, the desire is expressed for knowledge of a spiritual and psychological nature in order that the one possessing this knowledge may accomplish great things; for instance, demonstrate wonder-arousing miracles along some line of achievement, but upon a careful inquiry into just why these aspiring souls wish to make such demonstrations one is often appalled at the ulterior motives behind the desire.

Man expresses his life in a three-fold manner; namely, through his thoughts or reason, his desires or emotions, and his actions or demonstrations. His conduct is governed entirely by his motives. In the spiritual spheres the motives of the soul play a very important role, but in this material world they play practically no part, as we have a tendency to judge by what we hear, by appearances, and by worldly results.

In striving for spiritual unfoldment, and in the acquisition of occult knowledge for the development of the latent powers in man, it is of paramount importance that the motive be kept pure and noble. The seekers after esoteric learning should ask themselves most earnestly what their motive is and what they wish to accomplish through spiritual powers, which should never be used for oneself, but always for God, and others.

"What?" exclaims the aspirant. "Are spiritual gifts never to be used for material and personal purposes?" "Are they never to be used for the accumulation of worldly goods, or for control over one’s fellow man?" If so, it were best to leave the entire study alone, for the moment materialistic and selfish motives intervene, in that moment, although temporary success can often be attained, yet the end will be the supreme tragedy of the universe—the loss of the soul’s freedom. In other worlds and incarnations the unhappy one must make amends, and learn the lesson of Truth over again, for Truth alone can make one free, and give one real understanding and power.

"But," asks someone, "am I not to strive for comfort, beauty, mental peace, for the lovely things of this earth?" Indeed you are! But not as the primary achievement. That is not necessary. In seeking and attaining God first, you have everything.

In developing our inner centers of consciousness and thus gaining the spiritual power of clairvoyance, let our motive ever be—not to penetrate the secrets of people’s lives for advantage over them, but to see God; not clairaudience in order to discover the world’s hidden treasures, but the hearing quality to understand God; not the emotions to enjoy mad pleasure, but the intuition to know God and true Bliss, and realize the true meaning of that beautiful promise of Christ: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

SOME day, when I remove the mystery cork

From this bottle of flesh,

I will slip this long-caged,

Wistful sigh of life

Back into the ocean of breath.

Yet, oh, Mystery,

I will tear aside Thy long deluding veil

Which has hidden from me

The liberating knowledge

That the all-solacing Bliss Sea

Lay just beneath my life’s wave.

Long has this little Wavelet been tossed

And buffeted by the storms of rebirth,

Moving from shore to shore, from clod to clod,

Hiding in the phosphorescent bosom of pearls,

Throbbing beneath the subterranean algae,

Or dancing with the amoeba and sea urchins,

Or gliding among the silver-finned flying fish,

Or dashing past the bubbles of stars

In the skiey ocean, or dancing

On the many shores of planetary life.

Many times this Wavelet tarried for a time

In the heart of the Great Life and yet,

After a short slumber, mischievous and spritely,

It became truant again,

And bounded out

Onto the rocks of shattering sorrow.

"Come back, my little prodigal Baby Wavelet.

Return and sleep in my cradle of Eternal Calm,

" Said a Voice, but I replied:

"I cannot rest for so long,

And do not want to fall asleep

Never to awaken again. I am Life. I must live

And not sleep only. I must dance, I must throb,

And move o’er the Ocean of Everywhere."

Then I heard the roaring Wisdom call again,

Bounding over Infinity.

"Little Wavelet,

You can never be happy without Me,

For the big waves will dash and sweep over thee.

Come, little Wavelet,

You need not sleep all of the time,

But may dance with Me anon,

The dance of Omniscience

On the Sea of Omnipresence,

Clasping my arms of starry rays,

Or holding my petaled hands in the flowers,

Or clasping Me in the bosom of human friends.

We will dance o’er the windy waves,

Or hand-clasped,

Trip along the billows of incarnations."

"Little Wavelet, learn to dance, but with Me.

Dance, feeling the joy of my One Vastness

In your bosom, while dreaming the dream

Of this charming, decorative,

Magic Hall of Creation. Little Wavelet,

Imprison yourself not in a little tract of Life,

Or in a portion of fleshly selfishness,

But dance this Cosmic Dance

O’er all my Bliss Sea of Infinity."