, 1904-05-26
PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES.
knowledge and Law.

infant humanity, men lived in con
slant dread of eclipse Of the sun and
change of the moon, but when the
law under which the phenomena oc-
Cured became known, the mystery
was unravelled and there was nc more
dread and fear.
Dangerous, terrific and mysterious
was the lightning hat flashed down
from a stormy sky striking turret or
tower, and 10. they fell in ruins. Tn
! curbed and unbridled was the flash
of fire. Humanity cried, ''can infant
man face the fire OF the skies7" Ages
rolled on and he has learned to har-
ness the lightning as he would Il tur-
bulent steed and make him to do him
service. The same force before which
in his ignorance of the law. he trem-
bled. is now his willing servant to
obey his slightest wish. He has yok
ed the Lightning by the yoke of know
ledge and the same force carries his
messages over mountain and under
sea till there is no place in the earth
hid from another. 1t is no longer the
lightning but the electric tluid-no
longer dealing death and destruction
but carrying messages of love and af-
lection and good will to the remotest
corners of the earth.
Nature is conquered by obedience.
Know the law and obey it, work with
it and all will be well. In every
force in the universe both above and
below, and in every field whether Wis
ible or invisible the rule of law is
seen. When man knows the Law he
is the master but when he is ignorant
he is tossed hither and yon by the
forces he may one day chain to his
service. So in the Higher Life we
must know the Law ere we would
live it. Know the laws and they will
carry us on to the goal ;but let us be ig-
norant of them and our every effort
will be frustrated-our every endeavor
come to naught.
The next step is for It's to see what
is meant by the Higher Life. We
have "A glimpse of what Law is and
now we must know what the Higher
Life may be. In the broadcast sense
Of the term it means all manifesto
tons of life abovethe physical. Itwould
include the manifestation of man i'll
the various worlds invisible to the eve
of the flesh. To those regions which
in Theosophy are spoken of as
"planes"-the astral, manasic. bud
dhic and atmic planes all in the vast
universe that lies beyond physical
plane.
What is meant by Spiritual"
Here the novice in the study of Theos-
ophy may find himself ON unaccus
toned ground. Ordinarily the word
spiritual covers the exhibitions of the
emotional nature of a man, especially
if they are dominated by IA desire to
serve God and a kindliness towards
his frllowman. We sometimes say a
man is spiritual if he speaks of his
desire to reach heaven with a tinge of
earnestness in his voice. In Theoso-
ply, because our language is so i'm.
perfect, we often have to give a spe-
cialiZed meaning to a word which
must be borne in mind when thinking
about it. All manifestations of the
Higher Life are not necessarily spirit
ual. There is a difference between
Consciousness itself and the form in
which it is embodied. Nothing that
is of the form is spiritual in its nature.
The life of form on every plane be
longs to the manifestation of matter
and not to the spirit. The manifesta-
ton of life nay be ON the astral
plane or on the mental plane, the one
being the world of desire and the
other the world of thought, but this
life in form is no more spiritual on
these planes than on the physical.
All this is purely phenomenal and
nothing thai is phenomenal can be
spiritual. a man may possess an eye
that can pierce far into space, even
into the outer universe, he may hear
the singing of the angels and the
chanting in heaven, but all that is
phenomenal and transltory. The
Spiritual and the Eternal is not Of the
life of form.
What then is the Spiritual? 1t is
alone the life of the consciousness
which recognizes Unity in all things,
which sees the one Self in everything
and everything in the Self. The Spir-
itual life is the life which looking in
to the infinite number of manifested
things pierces through the veil of