Sense and intellectual natures are both focused on personality and seek to obtain pleasures and happiness at the expense of other souls. Flee from this false sense of things; happiness is not attained in this way. No harmony of mind can come to the individual who dwells in this false thought of personality. The kingdom of heaven is harmony, power, peace, wisdom, and these things are born of something higher - the love of the good, not of a part, but of the whole; the recognition of the indwelling of God, not alone in our souls, but in the soul of the universe. We are members one of another; an invisible union exists between us which we now fail to perceive, owing to our wrong conceptions concerning the personal man. We talk of the oneness of life and intelligence, but do we realize what this means and how much it means? Oh, that we might, for such realization would awaken in the soul of man a higher, truer and a purer love than he has ever known before, Instead of the narrow love of self, love of family, friends or nation, the soul would overflow with boundless love, not limited but limitless. And as that love takes possession and reigns in our hearts and souls, we shall find this to be true, that we love not family, friend, or nation less; but through loving the whole, we become more capable of loving each part of the whole, we become one with the whole.

And there is this entering into the universal, becoming one with might, becoming one with power, becoming one with the intelligence of God. Out of this condition of life come all minor conditions, comes the psychic development, this ability to see just as clearly in what is called the invisible world as in the visible world, to hear in the invisible just as much as to hear people speaking in this visible world.

One enters into a new consciousness of life, one realizes for the first time that this outer world is not the all important world that we make it. One is no longer influenced, no longer controlled by external things. He realizes that he is superior in every sense of the word to all the external; that the soul of man is greater than the world; that man has dominion and power over every external thing. The soul is superior to it all, the soul makes all true conditions of life, whether they be inner or outer.

Do not let us deceive ourselves about these things; it is easy to be deceived. People can so locate authority in the outer world that until there comes the spiritual awakening, the whole life will be guided by the external, and they will never live, and never can, the life that man was intended to live. Remember, that the truth shall make ye free. Then shall ye be free indeed.

Jesus said, "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." In order to live on a higher plane of existence, we must die to a knowledge of the personal self, instead of perpetuating it through the gratification of purely personal desires. The caterpillar dies that the butterfly may live. The personal man must cease to be before the soul can become fully alive to the spiritual man. Death is but dying to one state that we may live in another. When we die to the sense nature, we shall awaken to the psychical.

The mind of man has been so engaged in the study of the visible world about him, that to a marked degree he has overlooked the invisible forces, both within and without. We have reached an epoch in the world's history where many are turning away from the study of the seen; where the mind, having wearied from oft-repeated endeavors to find the solution of life in the world of form, is turning to a study of the unseen. Evolution in itself can never disclose to our vision the spiritual realities of the universe. We must go back of all existing forms to arrive at eternal verities. We must see beyond the world of effects, because all causation lies within the realm of the unseen. Medical men study the pathology of the body, and there are mental healers who study the pathology of the mind. It is barely possible that they are both necessary states of evolution, but they are only necessary to those having no higher knowledge of the truth. A study of pathology of either mind or body is but going down into the shadows, the dwelling in things that contradict the good and the true. If we would carry light to souls who sit in darkness, we must dwell in the light ourselves. If we are groping about in the shadows involved in the contradictories of truth, how is it to be expected that our light will become manifest to them? In order to reach and be beneficial to other souls we must have a recognition of the possibilities inherent within them, and how can we have such a recognition if we ourselves have not unfolded to the possibilities of the power and goodness that is contained potentially within our own being.

The study of truth, beginning in the deepest recesses of our own consciousness, making itself first manifest to ourselves, will eventually become manifest to those about us. We can never discover or throw light on the way that leads to life for another, until we have first made that discovery for ourselves. The goodness that we see in others we see only in proportion as we have unfolded to a knowledge of goodness in our own souls. The seeming evil, the lack of truth that we see in others, is but, after all, evil and lack of truth in ourselves. Of course we would express in our own way the goodness or lack of goodness we see in others. No two persons express things exactly alike. While one person may judge and condemn another for what he considers pride, for instance, if he makes a thorough examination of himself, he will find the same quality of mind, or rather lack of quality, expressing itself in other ways in exactly the same proportion. The yardstick by which we measure other people is the only one that we can use in measuring ourselves. We can, therefore, see the necessity of finding the good and the true within our own consciousness, in order that we may judge righteously. If we could thoroughly understand the lights and shades of our own being, it would not be possible for us to condemn or sit in judgment on any other soul. It is not as tho there were many ways that souls could take to reach a more perfect state of being, so that there might be differences of opinion as to the better way to take; the way that one soul treads in its unfolding is the way that all souls must tread.

When Jesus said that the way was a strait and narrow one, and also added: "and few there be that find it," he did not mean to imply that the way would not eventually be found, but simply meant that the minds of those about him were so taken up with thoughts of this world, its cares, and its pleasures, that their eyes were blinded to the true way; in other words, that the great majority of mankind was bent on seeking pleasures and happiness in the world without them, while few were seeking it in the kingdom that lies within.

We stand to-day on the very threshold of spiritual knowledge and its consequent power, knowledge that surpasses any that the world can offer, power that pertains, not to things of this world, but to our own spiritual well-being. Self is the barrier that stands in the doorway and bars our entrance. He who enters that doorway leaves self behind. Human will must accord with divine will. "Behold I stand at the door and knock." The indwelling Christ would point the way of life. That Christ is seeking to attain the ascendency in the hearts and minds of all people, and yet we turn away. We are not ready to forego the pleasures of the world for the peace that the world can not give nor yet take away. We are blind about many things now; sometime we will see clearly. The spiritual senses have been hid; covered up by the physical. When we have subordinated the lower self to the higher will, then will joy and peace and rest flow into our lives, and the things that have been hidden will be revealed. The love of God and the love of man will then become a living spring, flowing through our thoughts and words and deeds, blessing every one, throwing a light upon the path of life that will enable others to more clearly discern the way that leads to everlasting day.