The duality of man's nature.

 There is a great discovery which each must make for himself:  that human nature is dual and that a battle is ever going on between the higher self and the lower, the angle and the demon in man.  When the higher immortal, part dominates, there is knowledge and there peace.  When the lower rules, all the dark despairing elements of human life rush in upon the unguarded soul. 

Man, in his inner nature, is a being with a divine inheritance and immeasurable possibility of things should evolution.  

This is a strange duality, and how do human weaknesses creep in?  First of all we turn the key of selfishness in some closed door of nature; then, before we know it, the door is open and in walks a stranger, an obsessive, potent force of evil, often, with power enough to destroy the very being.  No lens has as yet been made that can show you what this is, but it nevertheless exists.  

And the door of selfish desire once ajar, the incoming stranger is welcomed, entertained, permitted to enjoy the bounty of the intellectual life, where only higher and splendid things should be, 

This door may be open in any of us, but know that it can never be shut, until our feet are planted on the eternal rock of knowledge and of trust, until we have the power-- and absolutely know that we have it- shut out the faintest tinge or touch or thought or vibration of anything that would mar the purity of that inner realm of mind that the soul works in and through. 

In the name of justice and of karma I say;  Woe be unto those who willfully entertain such visitors as these!  Woe be unto those who dare to desecrate their own mind or touch the mind of another with anything but the loftiest, the noblest, the purest and the best.  

Once the duality of human nature is admitted by science, our asylums will become great schools of study from which a deeper understanding and a larger compassion shall come.  For without a study of the self in its duality, disorders cannot be understand.  A volume could be written b this one line alone, and the half not then be told.

How wonderfully farseeing was that old teacher of  by gone days who left us this injunction:  Man, know thyself!  That is the key to the whole situation.  Let man take the first step boldly in honest self-examination, with a daring that stops before nothing that may impede his path, and he will find soon that he has found the key to wisdom and to the the power which redeems.  Discovered through his own efforts , by the law of self-directed evolution, this key will open before him the chambers of the self.  

For when a man has the courage to analyze himself-his purposes, his motives, his very life; when he dares to compare the wrong things in his life with the right ones, in the spirit of a love for humanity sufficient to make him willing to lay down his life for it if need be, he will find the secret of living.  This is what I mean when I say we are ever being challenged----challenged by the better side of our natures to stand face to face with ourselves, to reach out it recognition to the within. For this divinity, this knower, this spiritual companion is ever pleading to be listened to, ever waiting to be recognized, every ready to help and serve that may bring the whole nature of man to its standard of godlike perfection. 

These two forces: the physical dominated by the spiritual treasures of truth and inspiration from the highest self, these two, working together, will bring results that are unbelievable.  Nor will it take all eternity to bring about these things.  The very atoms of our body can be touched by the fire of divine life and bought into harmony with the mind and soul, controlled as the master musician controlled controls his instrument by the higher self.  

For life is light and light is life, and the Christos-spirit is in everything in degree.  Could we sit at the feet of the Law like little children, could we free our minds from misconception and learn from nature and listen to the Christos-voice within, what revelations would come to us!  We should then be able to say: this is immortal and that is mortal; this belongs to the animal nature of man, and that to the spiritual.  The power to do this is the power that we need, arousing us from the dead, so two speak, and bringing to us light and illumination.            

   

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

                                                              Louis DiVirgilio

  

      

Open the door of silence.

It is in the silence that we shall find the key, if we choose to search for it, that will open books of revelation in our natures.  We shall find there a strength that has never been ours before and never could be until we sought this path. We shall find there the peace that passeth understanding.  It may not come in a moment, nor in accord with puny wishes and desires, but if the motive is unselfish, it will come.  It steals into the life, into the heart and mind, like the grandest symphonies in music.  It carries you above and out of and beyond your difficulties and your trails, and prepares you for the real life.  The silence!  The one touch of silent prayer!  

When a man in silence becomes conscious of his own divine nature, he realizes if only for a moment that he is different from what he seems; he begins to feel that he is a god; he begins to let the imagination pulse through his heart, telling him of mighty things beyond comprehension, to feel something of his few words to humanity.  

Discipline comes in many ways, and without the help of books, many may yet find his own inner power, being no longer a mere potentiality.  He will dig into the depths of his being that he may find wisdom.  He will discover within himself a new quality if intuition and, at last, when touched by the 'feel' of this diviner life, the one of power of self-discipline will come to him, and he can stand and say: I know.  The more we are united in the silence, in the attempt at self-purification, the nearer we are to the light.

Never can we lose sight of the light, never of our obligations or our divinity, if we are to realize the sacredness of our calling.  There is so much in these few words: the sacredness of one's calling!  There is something growing in our hearts and in our daily lives that cannot be described, that can only be felt.  But once felt, deeply, profoundly, we are then moving along the true path.  We are rarefying the air; we are sanctifying life. 

Let us not forget that we are working together for the purpose of severing humanity and bringing to it the knowledge that it needs; that this is not a commercial effort, nor simply an ordinary educational effort, but that it is a spiritual effort in the highest sense; and for that reason we must be spiritually endowed with those qualities that make for true nobility.

"There is no idleness for the Mystic. He finds his daily life among the roughest and hardest of the labors and trails of the world perhaps, but goes his way with smiling face and joyful heart, nor grows too sensitive for association with his fellows, nor so extremely spiritual as to forget that an other body is perhaps hungering for food."

For we are one in essence; there is the interblending of forces so delicate, so subtle, that they cannot be perceived on this plane, yet they are ever at work, making or marring the destiny of a soul.

There is self-destruction, even on physical lines, in carrying an atmosphere of wrong thought. We have it in our power not only to build our bodies into health, but to retain that very much longer than, the allotted threescore years and ten.  I hold it a duty to work towards this end, by right thinking and thoughtful living.  Moreover, in such an effort, if it is made unselfishly, we can positively temper our bodies, much as metal can be tempered, so that they are unaffected by things that would put a strain upon them ordinarily.  

You must take time for self-analysis.  There must be time for calm, reflective attitude of mind.  Study the conditions surrounding you, the motives that actuate you in this effort or work, and determine with absolute honesty whether  they are selfish, unselfish, or mixed.  This will be an up lifting, a clarifying process, for the conscience is at work.  It is a confession, really, to the higher self, the divinity within you.

You invoke in such an effort the magic power latent in the silences of live.  False ideas are gradually eliminated under a process, and true ones find their way in.  Things once deemed necessary to the personal life becomes no loner so; and in thus moving out into a larger field of thought and aspiration you move towards self-adjustment.  

In such thought you eliminate your weaknesses, and you learn also one great truth, a truth accentuated by the Nazarene: that you cannot serve two masters.  You cannot move in opposite direction at one and the same time; you cannot ride two horses at the same time; and those who try it are certain to find themselves, sooner or later, arriving no where and more than likely trampled under the feet of both. 

Think on these things in the silence; and remember that when a selfish or personal thought creeps in during  silence, the door is shut and the light cannot find its place; the soul is barred, and the day will bring little to you that will satisfy the bitter side of your nature.

In the true condition of mind and heart there arises a sweet peace, which does not descends upon us from above, for we are in the midst of it,  it is not like the sunshine, for no transitory clouds obscure        its rays, but it is permanent and ever-abiding through all the days and years.  Nothing can move us when this condition is reached.

We have but to take the first step in the true spirit of brotherliness, and all other steps will follow in natural sequence.  We have to be warriors and fight the old fight unceasingly. but leagued, with us in this ancient are all the hosts  behind man, back of all things old fight unceasingly, but leagued with us in this ancient fight are all the hosts of light.  Behind man, back of all things, broods the eternal spirit of compassion.

Humanity has long wandered though the dark valley of bitter experiences; but the mountains heights are again seen, suffused with the glow of dawn and shown to that realm where the gods abide.  

See the gates of life and peace standing open before you, if you have but faith and trust to enter in.  But none can enter alone; each must bring with him the sad and sorrowing.  None can cross the threshold alone, but must help to bear the burdened of the overburdened, must aid the feeble steps of those who are discourage, must support those who are bowed down with sin and despair; and as he sends out the radiation of the of that joy and strength which he receives from his own aspirations and devotion to the higher self, joy and strength and power shall enter into the lives of these others, and together they shall pass through into Life.   

                 Think you Katherine Tingley  "One path, many ways."  Be good, do good.

     

          "Oh thou golden sun of most excellent splendor, illuminate our hearts and fill our minds, so that we, recognize our oneness with the Divinity which is the heart of the Universe, may we see the pathway before our feet, and spread it to those distant, goals of perfection, stimulated by thy radiant light."   

                                                                  Louis DiVirgilio

  

           

The average man and woman seems to have lost their sense of moral responsibility.

 If men and woman could realize what is going to happen to them after death, it would awaken a certain sense of a needed renewable behavior of a responsible kind.  Let us try to restore to mankind the teaching of the ancient wisdom: "as you live so will you be after you die."  It is a simple teaching and it is so logical, it brings massive appeal. So let us try to restore to mankind the wisdom of the ancients, it is a simple teaching and it is so logical, it brings with it great appeal: "it goes, as you live so will you be after you die." 

If you want to understand what happens to you after death you must just study your self now, and you will know what you are going to get.  You are going to get a continuation of precisely what now you are. If a man indulges in vice, what is going to happen to him?  He reaps the consequences of his evildoing.  He learns by it the lessons that come out of his suffering.  If a man fills his mind with gross thoughts and evil dreams, he learns by it in the long run through suffering, for the effects and  consequences on his mind and character will ensue.  He suffers, he is in torture, he pays the penalty, he has poisoned his inner system and he won't have peace until the poison has worked itself out, until he has become what is called re-formed, or re-shaped.  Then he will have peace again; he will be able to sleep in peace again. 

Your dreams are from your own mind, and therefore are apart of your own consciousness.  A man during his waking hours has evil dreams, evil thoughts; when he sleeps he has nightmares.  He learns by them when he sleeps; he certainly is not going to have a heaven of dreams because he has filled his mind with horrid, hateful, mean, degrading thoughts.  He has not yet built the substances of heaven.

There is an important spiritual component throughout the universe that is being over looked.  It is a state of consciousness which man encounters after death because man himself has made during his life time to have that kind of consciousness.  It is called: "kama-loka;"  and there is a coordinate state called: "devachan."  Kama loka and devachan are attached via the universe, and are the overseers of directing the value of the contact of man's actions, either for the suffering they bring or their peace full dreams. It works itself out, and then a man rises or sinks into whatever is his destiny: a weak devachan, or no devachan at all, according to the individual. In other words if he has made of himself a character which is X, he will have that character, what ever it is, after death.   He won't have character Y, or Z or A, or B.  Contrariwise, a man who during life has kept himself in hand, has controlled himself, has lived manly, experienced the same law precisely: then after the death state will be unconscious in the kara-loka, or very nearly so, because evil has no kama-loka biases in himself; probably there will a blissful devachan.  

Suppose a man has no marked character at all, is neither particularly good nor particularly bad.  What kind of after-death states is he going to have?  He will have a colorless kama-loka nothing particularly bad; and he will have a colorless devachan, nothing particularly bad. What kind of after death states is he going to have?  He will have a colorless kama-loka, nothing particularly bad; and he will have a colorless devachan nothing particularly beautiful or blissful.  It will be like a sort of vague, intangible dream.  It doesn't amount to much, and consequently he won't amount to mush, after he dies.

Or take the case of a young man of evil ways who reforms, let us say, at about middle age, and spends the rest of his life in deeds, of virtue, of self-improvement.  What will his fate in the worlds to come? As stated, the kama-loka and the devachan are simply a continuation of what the man is when he dies.  So consequently an evil young man becoming a good old man has practically no kama-loka of an unpleasant kind at all.  He will have to pay to the uttermost farthing for any evil he did as a youth---but in his future life; his evil deeds are only thought-deposits.  But as he reformed at about middle age, and lived a clean decent life thereafter, his kama-loka will be very slight because it will be simply a continuation of what he was when he died, and the devachan will be in accordance likewise.  And here is another very important deduction we should draw from this fact; if we have kama-loka while embodied men and women, we shall have it after death; and precisely according to the same law, because we have spiritual yearlings, dreams of a spiritual type or character while embodied, we shall have the devachan after death.  To repeat, the kama-loka is a prorogated or continuation, until it is worked out, of what you have been through in your life.  If you set your thought and mind and heart on things which bring you pain, which make you suffer because you are selfish, and stiff-necked in pride and egoism, you will assuredly continue the same bending of consciousness after  death.  It cannot be otherwise.  It is simply you. Therefore, the devachan and the kama-loka are prolongations or continuations of the same states of consciousness respectively that you have gone through on earth, with this difference: that being out of body, which is at once a blind and a shield of protection, you are, as it were-thought, naked thought.  And if your thought has been during life on things of horror, or if you have allowed your thought to bend in those directions while embodied you won't be washed free of stain merely because you have cast off the body.  Your thought, which is yourself, will continue and you will have to pass through kama-loka and exhaust that phase of thought.  It will have to die out as a fire will burn itself out.  

Similarly, indeed exactly: if in life you have had beautiful, grand thoughts, you will assuredly have the same in the devachan, but a thousand fold stronger because no longer smothered by the body you have cast off.  

So if you want to know what your destiny will be after death, just study you self now and take waning.  There is a very important and pertinent lesson that we can learn from this fact, just in that. You can make your postmortem condition what you will it to be now, before it is to late.  Nothing in the universe can prevent the bliss of devachan coming to you, or rather your making it for yourself.  

There you have the teaching of kama-loka.  There you have the teaching of devachan.  It is very simple.  All the intricate, abstract questions arise largely in failing to understand the elementary principles of the teaching.  When you lien down you dream, or you are unconscious. When you die you dream, you are unconscious.  You have, when you lie down at night, evil dreams or good dreams, or you are unconscious. When you die you will have evil dreams or beautiful dreams or you will be unconscious--all depending upon the individual and the life you have had.  So the kama-loka and the devachan, and indeed the avich, are not things that are going suddenly to happen to you; but because your consciousness has been that way while embodied, they, one or the other , will continue after you die. 

You see now the importance of ethics, and why all great sages, seers through out time have tried to teach men to spiritualize and refine their thoughts, to live in the heart-life, to cast out the things which are wrong and evil. The devachan is not waiting for you; the kama-loka is not waiting for you---I mean as absolute conditions now separate from you.  If you had them in life, you will have them you will have them after death.  The man who has had no thought of hatred or horror or detestation or venom toward another, in other words whose heart and mind have never been nests of evil, will have neither an avichi in life nor after death, nor an unhappy kama-loka in life or after death.  He will have an exquisite devachan, and will come back refreshed and vigorous and strong and renewed to begin a new life with everything to begin a new life and with everything in his favor.     

 After death you continue to be precisely what you are when you die.  There is the whole thing.  There is the secret of the kama--loka and the devachan and of all the intermediate states of bardo, as the Tibetans call it.  All the rest is detail, and that is why I keep emphasizing in my public lectures and in my writings that death is but a sleep.  Death is a perfect sleep and sleep an imperfect death.  It is literally so.  When you sleep you are partly dead.  When you die, you are absolutely asleep.  If you grasp these simple ideas you will have the whole teaching on your thumbnail, a thumbnail picture.  Now another point: I have  heard people say that they don't want to remain in devachan, it is a was of time.  This is a misunderstanding.  You might as well say, I don't want to have sleep tonight, it is a waste of time.  As a matter of fact, you need the rest, recuperation, assimilation of the experiences of the past.  You are strengthened by it, you grow by it.  So by building, for reoccupation, for assimilation, for inner digestion, for strengthening, an is just as mush needed as a night's rest is for the body.

There will come time in human evolution when even the devachan is no longer required, because the man has learned to live in the higher part of his being.  Devachan, however beautiful, is an illusion.  The time will come in the future when men will no longer have to sleep at night;  they won't require it.  They will have different kinds of bodies and thus learn to do without the devachan, and will reincarnate almost immediately in order to help mankind---which is the thing they love most of all---and all other beings.  These men are what we call masters, in all their grades.  But for us ordinary human beings the devachan is a necessary episode.  

The devachan, however, while a beautiful experience of the consciousness, is an experience of the higher personal consciousness, the higher part of us human egos, the higher part of the personal man, its aroma, so to speak.  In this fact lies the training bringing about the shortening of devachan.  If you learn to live outside of the personality and in the Eternal, while you are embodied, if it becomes habitual with you, your devachan will be correspondingly shortened because you won't want it. You won't need it.  The bent of your mind is not in selfish beatific satisfaction of the soul. That is what the devachan is, a fools paradise.  When compared with reality, it is an illusion. But because men and women strain for those things and suffer to attain them, the devachan in nature's infinite pity becomes the time when they have it, the resting, relaxing time, the time of recuperation, digestion, assimilation.  As we grow, as the ages pass, in future ages we won't long so desperately to have these beatific satisfactions of the soul.  We shall find our happiness in impersonal attachments to things of beauty, things which belong to higher spiritual man, and not to hungry human soul. 

Rise out of the personality so that you learn to use it as a willing, acquiescent instrument, and live in the spiritual part of you, which means impersonally; live universally so that you are not swayed by your own hunger for the things that please and help and rest you;  but live in the spiritual, in the universal, and all these other things will be added unto you.

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

                                                    Louis DiVirgilio

  

  

Until you discover the power within, you cannot serve the light of the world's mirror on you.

Restriction is the great keynote of effort at the present time, of new things, new light, and very great help, if we invoke it.  The reconstruction of humanity!  How shall we set about it!  The first step, I, hold, is to declare to man; You are divine! There is in your soul life , and if you will to bring out that life it will reveal to you truth; it will make clear every step that you take. Greatest of all it will reveal to you your duty; it will make clear every step that you take.  For humanity at present is working largely on mistaken lines of duty.  

Duty is misunderstood, as are justice and equity.  Yet if we could free ourselves from the limitations of preconceived ideas---ideas that are literally riveted into the mind----we could move out into the free air of harmonious thought and action, and would know what duty is.  The things we believe in yesterday we should believe in longer; the false gods we have worshiped in our home life and the life of the nation, would vanish in the new light.  

For the light is only waiting to be perceived.  You need not go to India, nor wait for the touch of a swami's hand, in order to find the light.  You can find it for yourselves, although since all have evolved different environments, under different conditions, and up to different points of view of understanding, one cannot say when or how.  To establish a set rule for reformation would therefore be unwise.  This we do know, however, that with the motive pure and the soul ever urging one upward, one moves forward naturally on lines of simple duty, and thus into the light of the higher nature and of truth.  

This need not remain the age of darkness, nor need you wait until another age arrives before you can work at your best.  It is only an age of darkness for those who cannot see light, for the light itself has never faded and never will.  It is yours if you will turn to it, live in it; yours today, this hour even, if you will hear what said with ears that understand.  

Arise then, fear nothing, and taking that which is your own and all men's, abide with it in peace for evermore!

Wisdom comes not from the multiplication of spoken or written instructions; what you have is enough to last you a thousand years.  Wisdom comes from the performance of duty, and in silence, and only the silence expresses it. 

 Let us bring into life as an active, potent factor that knowledge which is not to be purchased, for it is only to be won by the surrender of the lower nature---the passionate, the selfish, the lustful nature---to the Christos-spirit, the god within. Then let us call forth this inner, divine self, that it may illuminate the mind and bring man to the heights of spiritual discernment, to knowledge of the higher self.

We shall never possess the courage that rightfully belongs to man as part of the divine law, until we know that we are souls, until we have opened new doors of experience in our lives, interpreting life according to this law and there higher knowledge of our being. 

When with great effort a man has clarified his nature, when he can say: Get thee behind me, Satan!--then has he entered the path of self-developed.  Though his lower nature may meet him at every turn of the path, never can he fail if his purpose is pure.  The godlike qualities of his nature are disciplining him, because he has said: It shall be so.   

Greater than all Christ knew was the divine compassion that he felt;  and it must have been when on the heights, sounding the harmonies of the soul in his compassion for humanity, that he looked into the future, beheld the divine possibilities of those who were to come, and said;  Greater things than these shall ye do.

The mentality of man will never be fully developed until he has made his own the enlightenment that comes that from the soul-knowledge.  And yet each holds this rare possession within his heart has heart of hearts.  It belongs to all men ; they have but to claim their own. 

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

                                                            Louis DiVirgilio

 

Music is the song of the soul.

Music is one of the cornerstones of true education.  The world has not yet awakened to its value as a factor in refining and purifying the character, especially during the early and more plastic years of life.  Man is essentially a creator, and he can be considered in no other way.  It brings the soul into action, ennobles the nature, frees the mind and inspires, so that naturally it finds expression, directly and indirectly, in both art and music.

There is an immense correspondence between music on the one hand, and thought and aspiration on the other, and only that deserves the name of music to which then the noblest and purest aspirations are responsive.  One who really desires to understand the soul of things is ever careful in the selection of music, ever heedful as to what notes are sounded in the hearts of men, lest some harm be done instead of good.

There is a science of consciousness, and into that science music can enter more largely than is usually supposed.  A knowledge of the laws of life can be neither profound nor wide which thus neglects one of the most effective of all forces.  

Let us bring our children, therefore, close to the refining influences of the best in art and music.  In doing so, however, let us realize that the power of beautiful expression in these things is not an affair of the intellect alone, or of custom or convention. Nor can it be learned from books.  It comes from the awaking of the inner powers of the soul, Those qualities of nature which are in sympathy with whatever is high and pure.

Music is the song of he soul, and well we know that it has not yet fulfilled its function.  Had I had the millions that are yearly given out to charity, my first work after I had fed the hungry and clothed the naked, would be to give such help to the families of the poor as would lead to the establishment of a musical life in even the humblest household. For when the soul is stirred by music, when we feel ourselves within reach of the higher ideals of life, then we  find the light.  Do you not know how deeply we can be moved even by the old church hymns, in spite of the old-fashioned theology that pervades.

Music!  What a wonderful power lies in it to swing us out into the universal life!  To realize its power is to realize that when self is forgotten, when personalities disappear, we are free---out in the open air of thought and love and the higher purposes.  And yet even the best that we have today, is but a  materialistic expression in comparison with what it will be.  Everything in music is so imperfect as yet: we are but touching the fringe of the real harmony. 

If we could hold ourselves in the attitude of mind that is created when true music touches us;  we could bind and fasten ourselves to the larger views it opens out and broaden our comprehension of what life really means, we could tear down the veil that divides the seen from the unseen, the seeming from the real; we could look at life as it really is, at ourselves as we really are.

I have always believed that music should be a power among the masses; that the god of music should  rule every household, and that the little children, indeed the whole family, should give as much attention to music as to other duties in life.  If that were only the case, what a beautiful world this would be!  Were we only taught the simple, fundamental laws of music we could throw ourselves upon soul-resources when under the shadow of sorrows and trails of life, and sing ourselves once more into harmony and usefulness, into the light and joy of life.

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

 

Altruism

Human nature is so prone when hearing or reading about altruism to imagine that it is something foreign to us, lugged into human life as a most desirable thing to follow, but, after all, highly impractical----that it is not inherent in the characteristics of human beings to be altruistic.  In other words, they are all fascinated with the idea of isolated self-interest. Is not this supposition utterly unfounded in nature?  For wherever we look, whatever we consider or study, we find that the indvidual working alone for himself is helpless?  In all the great kingdoms of the universe, it is union of effort, cooperation in living combines, is which is not only what nature herself is working to bring about and therefore which we find everywhere, but that anything that runs counter to this fundamental law of the universe---unity in action---produces disharmony, strife, and what in our own bodies we call disease. Health is that condition of bodily structure where all parts work to a common end in what we my call friendship, union.

What is civilization but the combined efforts of human beings to produce great and noble effects in human life; increasing, comfort dispelling danger, bringing about the productions of genius from greater men which rebound to our comfort and use.  Show me a single instance where pure self-interest has produced anything.  If we consult nature in all her kingdoms, we find naught but a community of working brought about by multitudes of individuals cooperating to a common end.  And what is that but altruism?  Altruism is the word we give to this fact when we see its ethical significance, and its significance is in no wise, nor in any great way nor in any small, different from what we see in the world physical.  Altruism means the one working for all----nature's fundamental law in all her grand structures----and all standing as guard and shield and field of effort of the one.  Think of the deep moral lesson, the deduction to be drawn from this greatest of universe's----not mysteries but verities; so common around us that usually we pass it by unseeing, with unseeing eye.  Show me anything that can endure soly and alone for a single instant of time.  

Any single entity essaying to follow the very noble path of isolated self-interest sets its or his puny will  against the force which keeps the stars in their courses, gives health to our bodies, brings about  civilization, and produce's all the wonders that are around us.  

There is a point of teaching in this connection which it is important to introduce into the world today, and that is hope.  You probably know the old Greek story about a certain very curious and inquisitive person who opened a box and all the evils in the world fled out, and there remained only hope.  I think this contains a great deal of truth which indicates a practical bearing on life's problems.  As long as a man has hope he does not despair.  Weak or strong, it matters not; if he has hope, something to look forward to, if his inner spirit, the spiritual being within him, teaches him something of hope, he not only will never despair, but he will become a builder, a constructor, a worker with the universe, because he will move forwards.  And this is altruism.

We are all children of the universe, of its physical side and of its spiritual and divine side.  This being so, there is in every human breast an undying front not only of inspiration, but likewise of growth, of hope, of wisdom, and of love. So that world today, although apparently in parlous condition, in a desperate state, still contains in it men and women enough to carry the evolutionary wave of progress over its present turmoil and strife; for the majority of mankind are essentially right in their instincts, especially the higher instincts. 

Therefore, I do not see anything horribly hopeless about the world's condition today.  I believe not only that there is ground for hope, but that the undying spark of spirituality, of wisdom, and love of altruism, always living in the human heart, will carry the human race not only of its present series of impasses, of difficulties, but into brighter days, which will be brighter because wiser and gentler.  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; build when we wake, build when we sleep, build all the time; and even in the human race carry it through folly after folly into the future.  

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

Altruism is not something foreign or exotic, it is the only thing that lives, and which endures.  When any single element or part in a human body begins to run on its own, we have disease.  When any single element or part in any structural combine which helps to compose the world around us begins to run on its own, i. e., what we call self-interest, there we see degeneration and decay. 

Deduction and question: which of the twine should we follow---the pathway of the cosmic intelligence bringing us health inner and outer, peace inner and outer, strength internal and external, union inner and outer?  Or the teaching of tawdry and isolated self-interest which seek its own to the prejudice of all?

Is it not high time that we give the world a few of the simple inner teachings of the god-wisdom of the  ancients?  Will you show me more sublime, more appealing to human intellect and to the dictates of human conscience, than that of altruism, which puts us in intimate union with the throbbing of the cosmic heart, and which idea, if we can pass it over into the minds of men, will than justify all the work that the great masters of wisdom have been doing for mankind since time immemorial?  Ethics above all!    

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

                                                            Louis DiVirgilio

 

 

Mind, Body, Spirit.

Mind, body, spirit, so the argument rages, which has the importance on this evolving stage ?  Some say, "mind superior."  Its an accumulation of total directing mass, computerized for life's tasks. Think in an impulse or two, and that heavy bear acts the fool, like a puppet on a string, the mind controls how and where the brute sings. In a world of abstract dimension what need ye of lumbering intervention?

The spirit hypocritically apes the body, whatever alias or delight the swollen oft, vibrates the soul's song. Valuation then should follow, the mind surpasses the other two classes. 

Others contend, that spirit's the end.  Its the source that drives the body to a friend, That compels the mind to bend.  Spirit sores with the Muses, sponges their art, and drips its nectar out like juices.  Marvel the painter's form sublime.  Marvel the minister's words touch time. Marvel the scientist's un-complicated find.  Spirit's the current than, that turns the head of the limbering river to its final bed.

A great many agree, the soma affects instantly.  Mind and spirit focus in when the belly cries out hun-gr-y.  There is no soaring nor abstraction until panging satisfaction.  Mouth dry, and coughs cry, "thris-ty."  Mind and spirit zero in until quenching moistens parched skin.  Heart in pain, mind and spirit leave attraction, and attend to the infarction. Body then significant of all.  The argument has ended the other must fall.

Three arguments well founded, but I am still confounded; which priority should be?  Which has superiority?  The three it seems from vintage view, with equal weight when involved in the interaction with man.  Take the act of love, _when shuddering in your lovers shadow does mind alone pronounce the quack?  Does separate spirit, alone feel the fire?  Does body singly transpire the desire? 

One it seems acts on the other, developing a union as a son with his mother, combining parts to more than their sum, like blending strings, and reeds, and a big kettle drum, then hearing the mix in a symphonic, symposium.  

Mind, body, spirit, severely thought gives vague significance as hot water without tea.  However, grouping the three produces dynamic compression, releasing meaning in combining sympathy. 

Which is superior, the argument absurd, who could find a naked king, amid a naked herd?

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

                                                             Louis DiVirgilio

 It is impossible to gauge the significance of the present time or to realize what is in store for humanity during the next hundred years, merely from our own experience and from recorded history.  For this is no ordinary time.  It is not simply the culmination point of the past hundred years, but of thousands of years; the night of centuries has passed, and with the new dawn comes the return of memories and powers and possibilities of an age long past.

The soul of man still cries out, the darkness is still so close about him that he knows not the dawn is so near.  But those who have claimed to the hill tops have seen the glow in the eastern sky and the rays of golden light in the heavens; and with the suddenness of the day in the tropics, in the twinkling of an eye, the light will come, the scales fall from our eyes, and we shall see----not in the uncertain gloom of night, but in the glorious sunlight.

As the light of day scatters the shadows and the powers of darkness, so will the effulgence of the new cycle break through the dark places of ignorance, prejudice and unbrotherliness in the age now so swiftly passing.  The great heroes of old will once more return to earth, the great musicians, painters, poets, wise statesman, lovers of the race, will again take up the task, and the earth shall blossom as a garden.  The ancient wisdom taught by the sacred Mysteries will be revived; the earth, the air, the ether, all nature will reveal their secrets to those who have prepared themselves through purification and by service to humanity.

Such is the outlook into the future. To measure it, go back to the glory of ancient Egypt and to the yet older civilization and vaster achievements of ancient America.  Such a future awaits us and our children and, if we are faithful, shall be ours in new time when, after a brief night of death, we return to take up our work again upon earth.

Thanks' Ktherine Tingley.  One truth, many paths.  Be good, do good.                           Louis DiVirgilio       

Where are the Masters, the Sages and Seers?

The great sages and seers, the masters of wisdom and compassion, belong to no race, and especially to no creed.  They are the children of the spirit, awakened men, whose familiar thought is truth itself; and hence their sympathies are universal.  They need no frontiers of race, of caste, of creed, of color. They are truth seekers, truth-teachers, that existed before the foundations of the mighty mountains were laid, ay, even before the sons of morning began to sing, to chant their hymns celestial.  For truth has no age.  It was never born, it never has not been.  It is timeless because universal.  Its appeal is to the hearts and minds of all men.  It matters not a whit from what part of the world a beautiful truth may be drawn; and hence when ever any human has so attuned their self to the whisper of the winds, and when the winds blow upon him and wring, then, for the time being and as long as he can hold his or her plane of consciousness, they are  one of the sages and seers, whether they are recognized or not; and this means you and me and all men, at least any one of us who may have attained this much.  

I know first hand that the Masters, Sages, and Seers, exist, and they never will ever burdened us, as long as we stay faithful to truth, by never abandoning truth, no matter in what form it is experienced.  This ask by the Masters, Sages, and Seers, is no small task, it takes the will power of a saint, to push back against those who will attempt even to entertain death to any and all who will not comply.  

My recognition is that the Masters, Sages, and Seers, keep a watchful eye over all humans who would called out sincerely for help.  I will tell you a true experience about my encounter with the watchfulness of the Masters.

My daughter Nikki and I were on a three day weekend trip up north to Lake Superior.  Our goal was to  view the largest waterfall in Minnesota, which was named, Pigeon Falls.  We walked up the steps to better view the gushing water falling gracefully over the falls.  It was a wonderful sight.  Our second quest was to view a second waterfall a little further south with an ominous name, "The Devil's Keitel."  It was called the Devil's Keitel because as the water flowed down word the falling water seemed to disappear into a separate chamber on the left side of the falls. However, on the right side of the chamber the water flow seemed to be normal, with no apparent abnormal variances.   This mystery caused great speculation about where and how the water on the left side of the Devil's Keitel had seemed to disappeared.                             

My daughter and I had made our way to the Devil's Keitel water fall, and began to move up the stairs.  I was fallowing my daughter, when I became very dizzy.  I was having trouble steading my self and I was afraid of falling.  I walked back down very carefully holding on to a wooden banisters, and made contact with the earth, still very dizzy.  I was very frightened by my instability.  As I shuffled my feet very slowly, I no tested a bench, and a small full leaved tree hanging above me.  I immediately sat down on the bench under the tree, still very shaken. I then called out to my spiritual father, "Father help your son."  No sooner did I ask for help, a state of safety quietly melted into every ware I looked.  The fear I was having vaporized and a feeling of complete safety, every ware I looked I was completely envelope in safety.  There was a swipe of tranquility no matter where I looked.  I felt so great full I began to cry.  Every were I looked life was throbbing and me with-it. here 

                      

             Where are the Masters, the Sages, and Seers?    Right ware they are supposed to be.     

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

                                                               Louis DiVirgilio

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