Only insanity could confuse brute force with power.

And yet there is enough heroism on earth today to turn earth into a heaven. If the energy and time that have been wasted in warlike preperations had been given to preparations for peace, our nations would be stronger now than ever they were and infintely better protected.  The soul of a nation----the living essence of its being----is the aggregation of its thoughts, feelings, actions, and ideals, backed by the divine quality of the god within.  To the dergee that the people of any country nourish their national soul with thought of that spiriual and god like kind, to that degree their country is protected, beyond the reach of violation.  Look at it rationally and you must see that this is truth; but hug your mind and heart the old contemptible fallacy that moral victories can be won by force and you will go on being duped by foolishness and creating misery for yourself by sowing the seeds of war. 

Nation against nation, brother against brother, and family against family, we shall  be at war as long as we place dependence on our lower natures----on physical force or on selfish interest----for the adjustment of those affairs which can only be settled by the spiritual side of man's nature.  We are the progeny, spiritually as well as physically, of our ancestors as they are of theirs.  Century after century men have been living in ignorance and with faces, turned away from the universal plan of life, which is brotherhood----an ideal we might uphold, one would think, with at least half the interest we take in our narrow nationalisms and proccupations with war. The influence of the past lies dark on the present.  For ages humanity his been accustoming itself to unbrotherliness, selfishness, and injustice, and men have been growing, not nearer together, but farther apart.   

This is true of all, so that when war breaks out we have no right to blame this or that man or nation.  We must do way with this sitting in judgement on our neighbors if we are to find the divine light in our selves.  We cannot draw upon, we cannot support or awaken the soul, the part that is worthwhile, in our own nation while our minds are so busied concerning themselves with the faults and various failings of some other nation.  Those who have learded to distinguish between the mortal and the immortal within themselves are the most charitable people on earth: they know how easy it is for one unacquainted with his own divine nature to drift in the wrong direction. 

Many are ready enough to see the duality in another but are blind to it in themselves: they will not disciminate between the two sides, nor recognize as such the obstacles that eternally overthrow them, or they would be free from the vice of faultfinding.  There only adverce criticism would be for themselves, and hence they would have freedom of spirit and enlightment of the mind. 

Men and nations, it is this continual thought of self that is our undoing.  We excuse ourselves; often we believe that we would scrifice our very lives for humanity when really we would not sacrifice the smallest whim.  Sometimes some insignifcant personal desire may turn the whole nature and add unspeakable weight to the burden of the future, and we cannot see it and have no notion it is weighing us down.   We sow the seeds of our misfortions in the moments when we can not sacrifice the small things we have set our hearts on. 

We should not stand in awe at the presumption of our fellows if they excused in themselves what we excuse lightly enough in ourselves because, as we think, we stand well in others respects.  We lay up burdens for ourselves with little unexpected things we hide away in our mental life and think are of little moment.  We cannot imagine they can grow to anything in us, and so we hold onto them.  But it is the little disturbing influences that break down the most magnificent enterprises, and petty evils eat away the heart-life of man.  There never was a mob yet but one or two began it; then came two or three more, and then others and others, until what had gathered together you would think composed not of human beings but of lunatics.  And as it is with individuals so it is with nations.  Great empires have fallen disinegrarted by the small selfishtnesses of insignficant people; and the neglect of some duty by one man, may defeat the progress of a nation. 

Self-analysis should bring us to an inexhaustible compassion.  We should have it in mind always that every living thing is an expession of the infinite, no matter what its outward aspects may be.  Our suposed enemies, or men or nations that we blame, have been educated, as we have, to look on life wholly from the outside.  It has been impressed on us all, generation by generation, till the taint runs in our very blood and being, that conquest by force is sometimes possible and legitimate.  And now we have quite forgotten the spiritual powers by which alone success can be achieved. 

              Thank you Katherine Tingley.   One truth, many paths.  Be good, do good.

                                                         Louis DiVirgilio

Every family should know its heritage.

We are not brought into existence by chance nor thrown up into earth-life like wreckage cast along the shore, but are here for infinitely noble purposes.  All humanity should know its heritage, constantly striving to become and over come, yet never depending on force outside of self.  Rising in the morning, we should be conscious of the divinity within; retiring at night, we should be enfolded in the protection of the law.  For none of us is overlooked, left out, or forgotten in this scheme of life of whose sweeping beneficence each is apart.  In all situations from the most trivial to the most important, in all temptations from the smallest to the largest, a man can find in his own reflections and inner consciousness that which will convince him that he is more than he seems---a knowledge that leads not to egoism or self-importance, but to great simplicity, impersonality, and balance.  

For man is the soul, and there is no wisdom so divine that he cannot attain; the soul belongs to the beautiful eternities and we are here to make all existence beautiful.  Life would have nothing for us through a day, if it were not for the consciousness within that this apologetic bit of our self were not the temple of the soul, the shrine of a god ever pressing towards grander expressions of life. The soul can rest on nothing this side of Infinity: it loses its vitality if it seeks to do so.  All eternity awaits it; how should it be satisfied with the half-life we live and the many imperfections that mar us. The nature of the soul is to be winging its flight forever towards the boundless; to be working, hoping, and conquering; to be going forward forever and ever.

It is therefore no question or our likes and dislikes; advance we must, seeking with ourselves the secret of our god selves which sing to us eternally through the silence.  If the meaning and music of the song be lost before it reaches our hearing, it is because, our thoughts are too full of things of death and because we are weighted down by needless burdens and grow old in our youth with wrong thinking, filling our minds with desires that emanate from selfishness and allowing them to accumulate until they, and not we, become the living force behind our actions.  It is not only the mind but the whole being that  must be prepared for the search for truth.

And for this there are no rules that can be given, no precise direction nor yardsticks recipes.  But conceive, if but for a day, that you are greater than ever you dreamed you were, that in the essence of your nature you are divine and cannot suffer perdition; and remember that you never could have walked if you had not tried, that you never could have spoken if you had not made the effort to speak, that you never could have sung if you had not felt within you the urge of the living god. 

Where there is satisfaction with self, there look for danger because there, no growth can take place.  A certain conflict within, of thought and feeling, must be going forward, until we arrive at some knowledge of our own--at some perception of life's meaning and purposes, of our origin and destiny, our duties, obligations, and responsibilities.

No man can grow until he has trust in himself.  The successful inventers is the one who realizes that there is something more to know, that new knowledge is always accessible and waiting for him, that tomorrow will add to what he has today.  He was once a boy with tools clumsily and with no knowledge of mechanics, but after a time some inner whispering told him that he was to achieve something.  He  kept on because that which bade him keep on was above and beyond  his mind, until he came to be aware that his mentality was but an aid to him in the working out of his problems and that there is an inside something that uses it, discovering truth and acquiring knowledge, and this is the real man who may be inspired by illuminating ideas out of the universal mind or may have brought them with him as memories out of ancient lives.

He looks always for truth beyond his opinions and goes out seeking into the broad spheres of thought.  He frees his mind and advances, hoping and trusting.  He visualizes his aims and believes there are whole regions in his nature which he has not yet discovered and, relying on that underdeveloped side of himself, claims from it by trust of knowledge he seeks, and does not claim in vain. 

 So to the real artist, the lover of truth and beauty, is left in his moments of creation above all brain-mind limitations and carried on to a plan that transcends our normal thought-life, and feels there, throbbing and thrilling through his being the poetryscot and inspiration of the great silence---that divine light that is within and a part of us all and forever awaiting our recognition.  Such a one, artist or inventor, when he is in quest of that which should do good to the world sounding the deep resources of his nature, touches the fringe of worlds more wonderful, and strangely mysterious powers.  Whereas another man, with equal latent ability, approaching the some problems with doubt and hesitation, or again with presumptions self-sufficiency, would be ready not to succeed.  In proportion as a man worships the outer, he misses the inner truth.

We are the family of the eternal; we are the hightest expressions that we know of, of universal Deity.   Are we to think that the experience to which we have a right can be gained in a few score fleeting years of a single life time, before these bodies of ours cease to be useful and drop away following the laws of physical life and return to the storehouse of nature?  The material things have their place, but the essential and everlastionthing are in the eternal self.  They are the attributes and faculties of the soul,  and these are what we are here to develop, working in harmony with the mighty and compassionate heart of nature.

                        Thank you Catherine Tingley.  One truth, many paths.  Be good, do good. 

                                                                   Louis DiVirgilio        

 

Cosmically nothing is ever forced.

Oh! of course there are changing sequences of time, but even there nothing is forced.  It is us human's who continue to live under suppression; why?  because we  are socially conditioned to move with restraint, bypassing all conditions except those that are the most safe and familiar; we are locked into our cycles of behave yours. There is an old axiom, "there is nothing new under the sun."  Its meaning is, as the universe roles along, it does not manufacture new pieces of universality, but continuously crafts and rebuilds from the ruminant's left over, no matter what condition they may be in; the universe will find a way to conform them into use, evolutionarily.  So, used pieces of universality are reformed continually.  Nothing is ever wasted, because, "there is nothing new under the sun." 

Every thing within the universe is unitized, all within one.  That is, every thing in the universe is not separated, but unionized.  What that means is there no separation between our planet earth, and any other solar system; it is all universal, and lives, moves, and has its being, within the highest of spiritual values. This idea of cosmos universality is the savarin touch stone of spiritual conciseness, but is  terribly misconstrued by the many religious belief systems.  While the majority of religious believers place their immortal God as their immutable shield, thinking that no manner of harm will ever attack them, they forget that the highest, the most infinite of realms, moves and breaths through the universe.  So, throughout the universe there no standards, there is only one divine reality.  We find the our true peace and calmness comes from moving in step with Universal Nature.  We can find True Rhythm by listening to our heartbeat.  We blend our heartbeat to the pulse of the cosmos.  We move to the pulse as we live by the heartbeat, and in this manner we find and accept our path and place in the unity and interdependence of it all.  

 From where I came I will return, carrying the knowledge and understanding of my travels, were I can finally rest.

                                           One truth, many paths.  Be good, do good. 

                                                               Louis DiVirgilio                         

                                  

The way out is in.

Modern men and women, both older and younger, form a generation which we can be adequately describe as a lost generation, and the cause of it, the reason for our mental wanderings and emotional gropings, is the loss of our understanding and hold of a common or universally accepted ethical and intellectual standard.  This is shown by the bable of voices surrounding us everywhere, by the hunger of  human hearts, and even by the eager human minds searching for truth and not knowing where to find it, nor its guidance: human minds searching for a sufficient and satisfying inner light, for something that will guide us in solving the problems facing us. We are, indeed a lost generation, and it is not youth only who are lost; in fact it is the elders who are even more perplexed than are the youth of today.  Our whole generation is blind, walking in darkness, not knowing whether to turn for the light or not; and the babel of voices that arise from the immense human crowd is something frightening and significant in its clamor and confused insistence upon panaceas and schemes of various kinds, political and other wise.

One hearkens vainly while lending an ear to this turbulent babel, in order to find constructive suggestions which are of universal applications.  It is rare to hear voices speaking with authority of knowledge; and venture to suggest the reason of it all. 

If there is a common struggle or fight in progress and you go down into the arena of turmoil intending to fight those already fighting there and to out shout them, the chances are small that what you have to say will receive attention; the probability is that you are going to be hurt. This is because the would-be reformer simply descents to the level of the shouting squabblers.  Such is not the manner by which to bring about anything that is universally and definitely constructive ideas, or attractively new or helpful, or that will explain and solve the problems causing the universal disturbance.  You are simply descending into the battle yourself, trying to overcome violence with violence, force with force; and this procedure never has succeeded, and it never will. This does not mean to imply that force is always to be ignored in human relations.  Sometimes it is necessary but always without violence, to use force, and in order to overcome an evil. Such employment of force or power should always be a merely temporary event or procedure, and should never be used save in an impersonal and upright manner, and for good cause, and for the common weal.  Justice to all is never gained by descending into the arena of battle and "fighting it out" there.  Justice is rarely wholly of one side of a question.                                            

Our generation is lost, intellectually and morally, because it has lost its vision.  Without a vision the people perish---an old Hebrew saying based on a comprehensive view of human psychology as demonstrated in history, and therefore a saying which is full with truth.  It is invariably a vision or an idea, or a body of ideas, which guides men upwards to glory or downwards to the pit.  Plato was fully right; it is ideas which make or unmake civilizations, build up or overthrow established institutions; and it is grandly universal ideas, and the will to follow them--ideas which all men feel to be true---which men today lack.  It is just because we today lack vision, and inner knowledge of the right thing to do, or a clear way out of our troubles, that as nations' we are where we now are.  

We are presently at the end of one form of civilization which, like the Roman Empire in its time, has reached its term, its breaking up, and we are facing the opening measures of the cosmic drama which is now coming in.  It will depend upon the innate wisdom and sense of high justice inherent in men's hearts and minds, or whether our present civilization will go down in blood and despair, or whether it will take a breath and time in order to recover itself; whether, with the dawning of a new intellectual and moral perception of justice and reason, it will stop its decent down violence of justice and reason it will stop its decent down the declivity and begin to rise to new heights over topping the finest that as yet racially we have attained.  This latter can be done; and it is man's higher nature only, his intuitions and instinct for justice and reason, nothing else, that will bring it to pass with surety: man's innate sense of justice and of right, and the common recognition that reason and not violence is the way out---and upwards to safety, peace, and progress.

History with its silent but tremendously powerfully voice shows that there is absolutely no other way out for us; that there is no other complete solution, nor one which will be satisfactory to all types of minds, to all types of human character.  Freedom for all; each people seeking its own salvation on its own lines, but in ethical directions accompanied by reason and desire to do justice.  Even an enlightened self-interest, with its always keen eye for individual advantage, must see the universal benefits and securities of such a plane.  All the stable intuitions are founded on these intuitions, and instincts, and upon naught else; for were it otherwise, then our sense of order and law, our very respect for our courts of law, international or national, were collectively a monstrous deception, and an ignominious and miserable farce; and all sane men realize that our laws are based on rules of justice and impersonal mercy. 

Let us be reminded that man has the capacity to solve his problems adequately if he bends his will to the task.  We are approaching the end of our civilization, and are fascinated and hold our breath as we watch the phenomena of its breaking up; but all too often we forget that this has been a civilization of matter almost wholly, where things of matter are often counted as the only ones permanently worth while. There are no longer new lands to which we may send our young people to colonize, for they have been preempted almost universally, rather than the rules of international justice and common human rights.  For eighteen hundred years, more or less, it has been the rule: let everyone grab what they may; let everyone hold what he or she can.  The conduct of the peoples has been largely based on this purely materialistic and selfish foundation.  We sowed the wind; we are now as a body of spiritually bankrupt peoples reaping the whirlwind. 

 Is it not time that the more farseeing and superior minds of the world should see to it that calmness and reason and impartial justice shall henceforth prevail?  Is there any other and better way out of our troubles and difficulties than by solving them wisely?  If men refuse to wish or to will to do justice, then it seems certain that down we shall go, and our civilization, our great cities and manifold works and labors of millions of hands through the years, shall be dust and ruined heaps.  No good will step into the arena of human pain and willful ignorance and pull us wretched mortals out of the world mess that we have created for ourselves, mostly through rabid self-interest and through our willful turning away from the paths of justice and peace.  We alone must save ourselves; and when we begin to do this in a manner pleasing to the higher powers, then we shall make an undeniable appeal for their aid and guidance; and we shall receive it.  Hercules helps the wagoner, but only when the wagoner begins to help himself---and in the right way.

It is the sheerest of foolishness and the most blatant of all ethical and intellectual poppycock to aver that men's destiny, now that the waste places of earth have been taken, that there is no future for those who were not in it at the beginning.  Such an attitude is contradicted by every page in the annals of universal history.  We must remember that no thing, no institution, is unchangeable, eternally the same, and that the shifting and continuously varying scenes of human history in the past---a certain fact of truth--- promise that the future will be as full as the past has been with the shifting of cosmic scenery, and the changing of human interests and fields of activity.   The greatest peoples of the earth have not been those possessing the greatest extent of territory, but precisely those who have been foremost in the reception of ideas and in the application of progressive ideas to the up building of human institutions based on and usually proclaiming, if not always following, the ideals of impersonal justice and trained reason; for these are spiritual qualities---which in fact are universal.

Let us fill our hearts with eternal gratitude to the watching of though silent cosmic powers, that extent waiting horizons that the now before us in all parts of the earth, and without distinction of race or creed, are spiritual and intellectual horizons, beyond which there are for us unknown regions of infinitely vast extent waiting by human genius, when we shall give rein to the instincts and intuitions of the soul.  Look then at what lies before us if we will to bring justice unmotivated by self-interest and the love of honor and truth to work amongst us! 

One of the main causes, and perhaps the foremost, of our troubles both national and international is that men commonly---with many grand exceptions---are still holding to the belief in force, in violence, as  being the way to solve our troubles. Such procedure never has succeed permanently, and never will.  Hatred breeds hatred; selfishness breeds other selfness. 

It is to show men the simple precept of reason; that life should be governed by the grand ethical instincts of the human soul, which are based on no human conventions but on orderliness of  nature's own structure and processes.  Out of these ethical instincts spring the directing precepts of reason and our will to do justice, teaching us that the way out lies within ourselves: not in our armies or in our navies, or in all the dreadful methods of mutual destruction which man's evil genius has invented. These last are not even temporary remedies and bring no satisfactory adjusting of troubles.  At best, the machinery of defense should be used as police machines; for then their use becomes justified, then they would be employed in a cause of justice and used with reason only.   

Our problems will never be solved by our mad rush in competitive armament, bringing about universal distrust, fear, anxiety and crushing the peoples with taxation which threatens to grow beyond their power to meet, and almost making them hate the conditions under which they live their lives.  It is the old folly, now recognized by all, to arguer that by piling up armaments and inventing new devices of horrible destruction, and by increasing the use of violent force, by war will shrink in the fearsome terror from it.  Of all fallacies and stupid arguments, this is the worst that has ever been inflicted on the suffering minds of mankind.

You will never succeed in stopping war by organizing yourselves into associations, or society generations swearing to refuse service to your government, and defying it in case of war.  That procedure, is abominably wrong.  We may admire the idealistic and thoughts young men and women who it seems, are doing this.  But they over look the face that they are merely announcing their declaration to declare war of a kind upon their government and country, if war should come, thereby introducing disorder and strife among themselves.

Let the youth of the different peoples of whatever country set the example of fidelity and loyalty, each youth to his own government, thus proving the strength and worth of the moral idea of citizenship; yet on the other hand, as the world badly needs idealism and chivalry resident in the younger generation, let youth express these likewise by raising its voice loud and insistent, powerfully declaring itself for universal justice and reason, and do so by the measures of established law.  In this manner, the voice of the world's youth will penetrate into all places, closed and open; for their insistence upon their rights as a coming generation soon to shoulder the burden of the older, will reach sympathetic ears too numerous to count.

One may hope that the prominent men in the world today, those who hold the destines of the people more or less in their hands, will hear the heartbeat, the unexpressed and growing will of the peoples for a solving of their troubles.  If they do so down in history; they will be remembered not so much by statues and monuments in stone, but their names will be emblazoned by the fabric of human hearts.  Their memory shall remain for ages to come as the fire of love and gratitude burning in human hearts.  Way not therefore lay the foundation of it Now.

                              Thank you G.D.P.  One truth, many paths. Be good, do good.

                                                                    Louis DiVirgilio

 

The curse of dogma.

The philosophy of life accepted by the majority has constantly led us from our noblest possibilities.  We eat and sleep and suffer and die in our brain-minds and the lower and unreal portion of our selves, and keeps the chambers of the soul with doors locked against our own entrance. 

Look at the faces in the street, the general aspect of humanity in public places: they are beginning to fear death; the thought of death is with them always.  Fear is in our blood and it will be in the blood of our descendants.  Our young men grow old before they have been young, and our woman are bowed down and joyless.  We are limited in our intellect and heart-life and physically where many should be giants, they are now apologies for men----and all because down the though the centuries we have been presented with-half truths only.  The great and universal truths about life have been hidden away under forms and ceremonies and reasoning and argument and expectancy and faith, till we no longer know where we are.    

They borrow their opinions from outside sources and ignore the divinity sleeping within themselves.  Appearances pass for truth, the letter is preferred to spirit wile they are relying on their false righteousness.  

We hunger and thirst for the surface of things and will never rest long enough in the chambers of our souls, often taking no step forward in things spiritual because our minds are so immersed in books, often burdened with a kind of scholarship that tears out the heart of humanity, and explains the universe and all that therein is from the standpoint of matter and the brain-mind alone.  Even if we read and studied millions of books and had the greatest of teachers to instruct us, we would find no truth until we believed in our inner selves and that, being human, we are more than human---greater than the world imagines or than dogmas and creeds allow---because there is within us that which is capable of absolute knowledge and may not stop, without self-degradation, at faith. 

Many who desire truth are yet unwilling to give up for its sake any of their mental encumbrances that bear no relation to truth; preconceived notions lingering in the halls of their memory, opinions born of their own whims or the psychological influence of their neighbors' minds or the books they read or their environment, the conventional views they absorbed through their education when they were taught to accept cant phrases as substitutes for vital realities.

Consider the injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves.  We read it glibly in church on Sundays and repeat it with a certain vanity in the repetition, but what have we of it in our daily life?  Conventional phrases expressive of politeness and a conventional attitude of goodwill; lip-worn platitudes, in respect to which whoever violates normal usage is accounted rude and unfriendly.  It never or rarely occurs to us that talking about feelings loving our neighbor as our selves, unless real feeling capable of dominating our lives and actions lies behind the words, is all a vain repetition---lip service, cant, and even hypocrisy.  

No man or woman can walk in the light until they have freed themselves of superficiality.  The human mind must achieve its independence, stepping out and standing for greater things than mere societies slogans.  As long as we are unfocused and our thinking is all with the ideas of old religious systems, so long will it be impossible for us to understand the real nature of our humanity because the essentials for such an understanding lie all within our divine higher self, in the inmost sanctuary of live.

                   Thank you Katherine Tingley  One truth, many paths.  Be good, do good.

                                                                Louis DiVirgilio

Natives of eternity.

We know humans are religious by nature.  Every human being, even the lowest, has tendencies towards religion because all are sprung from a divine source.   Whatever the mind or even the life of us may be, the god is still sleeping within.  The basic knowledge that we are essentially divine can solve all the problems that have vexed us or our forefathers before us; by it, humanity may be lifted out of all its despair and limitations. The thought that springs from it immediately is that our evolution is in our own hands to create and direct, that our salvation can only come from ourselves and through our own efforts.  One has but to evoke one's own higher nature, perceiving and recognizing the resources of the god within one's being, and the response will come as surely as the rising of tomorrow's sun.  Was it not said the kingdom of heaven should be found within our selves?

We are wonder-seekers; the mind is curious and tends to reach after what is unknown and far away, so we set our thoughts and hopes upon remote regions, a point in space beyond the stars.  But we are not led to our highest duty by what excites in us the love of the marvelous.  Was it not the heart, in the chamber of the heart---there and there only that the kingdom of heaven might be discovered?  

Forms and creeds and dogmas can but obscure the light within.  As long as the mind is led by them---no matter how high the principles they may seem to inculcate it cannot but miss seeing at least one half of the meaning of life, it cannot but be put off with half truths and be deaf to the in voice. There can be no glory nor inspiration in the life: the soul like a lonely wonderer will go on seeking to touch the mind to growth and the life to nobler standers of character.  It will go on to flood the conscious self, the whole personality, with the fullness and grandeur of its power---and seeking in vain.  That is why humanity is drifting out now into the seas of unrest, and why the shadows overwhelm us and our sight cannot penetrate them: we do not understand ourselves.  

And know all antiquated theories are being overturned, customs and beliefs are being abandoned.  There is some force at work in the world today that compels us to acknowledge the poverty of our religious life and thought.  Before the World War (1914-1928) a large portion of humanity was half asleep.  Those of dogmatic faiths were complacently satisfied with their religion, but now we find ourselves everywhere stirred with a new unrest: the faith that seemed so abiding holds no such absolute sway now. Dogma and creeds are dying slowly, and there is such depletion in church attendance that the clergy every were are alarmed.  Why?  Because humanity is starving for the bread of life and can take no religion  more of the wretched husks that have doled out to it for centuries. 

The fact is that we are essentially divine, born to evolve.  That is what we are here for, and not to sit negative under a burden of errors.  The possibilities of human nature are not limited and is not difficult to discover truth if we only look for it unbiasedly.  But we must be without preconceived notions , we must have no belief in a personal God or that we live but one life on earth, for such ideas as these  cripple the mind and are bound to generate fear and unrest.  To find that infinity within us, we must start upon the quest aright, having forever prevent our realizing the goal.  

True religion can function only through the inner nature: only through it can we realize the relationship between us and the universe and deity.  Therefore he who is wise will clear his mind of dogma and let the soul sweep in on him as the tides cover the shore; that for things as they are, and with eyes concentrated on the inward life, he may have sight of the inner beauty; that he may have sight of the soul growing and evolving living as naturally as the flowers do; that the interior life of humanity, from which all our hopes, aspirations, and ideals come, may express itself through him as simply and perfectly as the beauty of a rose is expressed through its form and color and perfume. 

For we are warriors of the universal law to do battle superbly for the spiritual manifestation of we ourselves, that these cloudy things which prey upon the mind may be dispelled by the sun that makes all things clear; by the light of the soul, the illumination of the higher self, the eternal spiritual shinning of our own inward divinity.  What we see of humanity, even at its best. but the shadow of the real thing which unmanifest and forever striving towards manifestation, and this is the higher, the immortal part of us. 

    

     

Shifting of our center of consciousness.

The world is approaching the time when it realizes that the only way in which we can save ourselves is  by just being conscious every day in every way, and not by preaching --- whether it be preaching politics or philosophy or religion.  Politics, at lest such as we understand it today, will vanish away as an illusion, and the great secret mysteries that lie there: love and brotherhood and sisterhood, compassion and peace;  these are the great things that should come to the world, for the world's benefit.  After all is examined, it is ideas that rule the world; it is precisely because people misthink and wrongly suppose that money or property is a thing in itself of absolute value, and that politics is a thing in and of its self of absolute value, and that these feeble instruments and products of human endeavor have their grip on humans and wield their sway over human hearts. Let us then change our ideas, and follow ideas which are composite of good ideas, based on universal brotherhood ideas and sisterhood ideas of intrinsic moral beauty of spiritual and intellectual grandeur, ideas which in time will bring about a confraternity not only of the peoples of the earth, but of all the smaller social units that go to make up a nation.  Then, with these ideas permeating our consciousness, we shall not need to bother about politics and the rights or nonrights of private property.  The world of humans will then run as easily and smoothly as a well-ordered mechanism; and we shall have happiness and peace all over our globe. 

This is not the pipe dream of a vaguely visioning and idealistic dreamer.  It is an actuality which can be put into practical operation simply by a reorienting of our thinking and of our feeling of new standards of human conduct; and in such a new world men and woman will be judged not only by what they do or produce, but by what they think, because thoughts of brotherly and human benevolence will be carried into constructive action.  They will then not be judged by what they have or own.  Property will not be the standard of righteousness nor of the proprieties.  

We must shift our moral center of gravity to ethics where it rightly and truly belongs, and away from property where it has been falsely placed during the last few thousand years because of unfortunate  contributing historical causes.  It is easier far to make such shift of values to their natural, proper, and therefor legitimate sphere, than continue being involved through centuries of the future in struggles of an international or internecine character with their bitter animosities and unforgetting hatreds, their dislocations of social and political life and the consequent misery weighing so heavily upon us all.  There is not a single logical or reasonable argument to be urged against this shifting of our center of consciousness---except in the lose of ignorance, prejudice, and dense human stupidity, due to the  inertia brought about by this sleepiness and our empty disbelief in our own powers to carve our own destiny.  

It would seem to be undoubtedly true that unless there comes upon the world a new outlook and a change of our habit, mental and psychical, of envisaging events through the distorted lenses of our present-day sense of values, our already badly shaken civilization runs a danger of sliding down into a welter of confusion, despair, and human misery, such as the annals of known history have not yet chronicled. 

It is not the crises, when things crash or seem to crash; it is not the horrific noise of the thunder or the crash of its bolt, which govern the great functions of life, human and cosmic; but those slow, to us, always quiet unending silent processes which build all the time; and even in the human race carry it through folly after folly after folly after folly into the future.  

There is the ground of our hope; and it seems that all good men and women should rally to the defense of these primal, simple verities which every human heart, adult or child, can understand.  It is about time that men and women should began to look on the bright side of things, to see hope around us, to forget themselves and their petty worries, and to live in the Infinite and Eternal.  It is easy, infinitely easier than making ourselves continuously sick with frets and worries.  Within each one of us there is something divine to which we can cling, and which will carry us through. 

                             Thanks' G. D. P.  One truth, many paths.  Be good, Do good.

                                                             Louis DiVirgilio