Acknowledgements and appreciation are expressed to
the following authors and publishers for permission to re-
produce passages from their books.

Harper and Brothers. A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly
Time Must Have a Stop by Aldous Huxley
Training for the Life of the Spirit by
Gerald Heard
The Hills Beyond by Thomas Wolfe

The Macmillan Company. The Candle of Vision by AE
Imaginations and Reveries by AE
Beyond Personality by C. S. Lewis

E. P. Dutton and Co. Cosmic Consciousness by Richard Maurice Bucke
A Search in Secret India by Paul Brunton

G. P. Putnam's Sons. Alone by Richard E. Byrd

Covici, Friede. The World As I See It by Albert Einstein

Longmans, Green and Co. Personal Religion and the Life of Devotion by W. R. Inge

Reynal and Hithcock Flight to Arras by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Charles Scribner's Sons. A Stone, A Leaf, A Door by Thomas Wolfe

The Marcel Rodd Co. Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood

Princeton University Press. Illumination in Islamic Mysticism by Edward Jabra Jurji

## Foreword

It is man himself who makes the world we live in, its farms and cities, its systems and institutions. More than that - it is man who, in part, makes man. But what is man, and what our full potentialities? Some of us are more or less satisfied with these present products. Some are not. They have vision of a nobler creation, and would press toward it.

This book is concerned with the development of human beings beyond these present people, with the possibility of attaining a Being and a Consciousness considerably beyond the limitations we habitually impose on ourselves.

It is addressed particularly to those who do not want to remain as they are in the world as it is; who would solve their problems by outgrowing them; who know or at any rate firmly believe that even the so-called adults of the race can change and change radically; who have some realization that the egotistical self is a blind alley; who are of the opinion that religion is not chiefly aimed at reform or even at the good life but is, in essence, the fire and the forge of transformation; who desire firsthand religious experience, and the means thereto.

I have tried to indicate how an understanding of ourselves may serve the aims of religion, and how religion in its true meaning and application works for the re-creation of man. Our eyes are pointed to the evil in us, that it may be cleared away, the better to see the deity in us.

- 2 -

While writing, I had in mind especially those who
might be going over some of these matters for the first time.
Though I would not call it a beginner's book, it is an intro-
duction. The main statements refer to life-experience, and
are to be understood by becoming aware of oneself and by pon-
dering the daily experiences that are common to all of us.
Born of my experience, the book is addressed to your experience,
and to our search for the meaning and purpose of life, and
the way out.

It consists of three inter-related parts. Part I
states that as we ordinarily exist we are in exile. We are
out of what we should be in, in what we should be out of.
Hence, all the trouble. I say this briefly but not lightly.
I have suffered exile most of my life, have been an exile
among the exiles in most of the regions, racial groups and
classes of America, and have at least seen the condition as
it exists in Europe and India.

The idea is advanced that it is possible for us to
outgrow exile and grow into a higher state, namely, into our
normal and proper condition. If and as this is done, we be-
come right. We become right by outgrowing what is wrong with
us. How else? The uncommon experiences that come occasion-
ally to everyone are interpreted and shown to mean that within
us there is a source of such experiences, a center which we
may enter and live from. Some men have done it. Others ap-
proach doing it. Examples are given. Most of those cited
are contemporary.

- 3 -

In Part II, I describe an experience that befell me, thanks to which I passed from exile into Being. Something is told of what I experienced in that other condition; how I saw and felt myself, men, life, the universe, and the mysterious Deity, from that unsealed vantage-point. An attempt is made to show the bearing of those findings on our everyday realities and problems.

In Part III an outline is given of certain psycho-religious means and methods whereby we may promote our catharsis-development, sooner or later to experience an awakening, transformation, new birth. This part deals specifically with What To Do, and How To Do It.

All three parts, it is hoped, variously express the desire that we may overcome the evil in us, recover our souls, discover one another, and grow up to God.

Each and every book is the product of more than one person. Though one man may do the actual writing, and his name alone appear on the title page, many others have had a hand in it. This is the place to express my enduring appreciation to all those who helped to shape this book, and indeed, the author of it. My particular thanks go to the people who read an earlier draft of the central part, gave me invaluable suggestions as to how it might be improved, and the incentive to undertake the always difficult task of rewriting what one had thought to be finished. But for them I would not have felt the need either to say less or to say more.

- 4 -

My thanks to Herbert J. Seligman, Eugene Exman,
William Hubben, Denver Lindley, Gerald Heard, Felix Greene,
Gorham Munson and, last and first, my wife.

N. J. T.

# I Captive Exiles

Some years ago I became curious to learn if others shared my feeling of being cut off, out of the life that should be ours, With this in mind I read autobiographies, journals, novels. As occasion permitted, I asked people. Those asked, as it happened, ranged in age from sixteen to sixty, in occupation from farmer to banker. I have yet to find a single human being who does not share it. All acknowledged having what we may call the exile-feeling. Those who for the time were happily circumstanced felt it less. Those unhappily circumstanced felt it more. Naturally; but all felt it to some degree. The fact that it is experienced by people of diverse types and situations seems to indicate that the feeling is more deeply rooted in the human race at large than might be supposed, and that it has a meaning of far more significance than is generally recognized.

One person said that as long as he could remember he had had a sense of being an orphan. That was his way of expressing it. Another said on the sidelines. Another said shut in. Thomas Wolfe's expression was the wall of loneliness. Richard Wright says cut off, cast out, kept out, doubly cast out. We use different words; we may differ as to what it is that we are out of; we agree absolutely in the feeling itself. There it is. My findings lead me to think that it is present in people everywhere, whatever the race, color, class, nation: that it is experienced by all except those who have developed

- 2 -

beyond it; not that it is always to the fore, but that it is
one of the major feelings that underlie our lives, beginning
at an early age and persisting in most cases until death.

Thomas Wolfe conveys the feeling itself:

Naked and alone we came into exile.
In her dark womb
We did not know our mother's face;
From the prison of her flesh we have
come
Into the unspeakable and incommuni-
cable prison
Of this earth.

Not only is it present but actively present as a moti-
vating force. In my opinion it is one of the powers behind
much that we do and more that we dream of doing. We do not
want to feel cast out, we want to belong. We do not want to
be separated, isolated, but joined. This moti√ation is as
potent as sex in the urge to marry. It is one of the forces
that combine to produce the desire to join groups, to support
causes, to be acknowledged as a member of a business, of a
church, of a community, race, nation. It is back of the drive
of minority people to be accepted by the majority, of segre-
gated people to be included in the larger world. It plays its
part in the compulsion to write books, paint pictures, compose
and play music. It is a basic element of the reliquious urge.
So powerful is it, particularly in these days, that many a
person will give up his "individual rights" and willingly be-
come a member of a total State - yes, even of a total war -
if he is persuaded that by such membership he will cease feel-
ing cut off and will really belong.

Nor is the feeling peculiar to modern times. Doubtless

- 3 -

we of this mechanized era are more divorced from Nature,
more alienated from our society, more separated from our
own deeper beings, than were the people of earlier periods.
Men have advanced in the art of setting traps for the human
spirit. But those of biblical times used similar words to
express what must have been similar feelings. In Isaiah we
find the striking phrase, "the captive exile". The line
reads: "The captive exile hasteneth that he may be loosed,
and that he should not die in the pit, nor that his bread
should fail."

A feeling of this historical depth and contemporary
breadth should enlist our most earnest consideration. We
would do well to ask - What does it mean? It has, of course,
an obvious meaning. It signifies the existence of an actual
condition. Thomas Wolfe felt surrounded by a wall, and he was.
Richard Wright felt cast out and kept out, and he was. Husband
and wife feel cut off from each other because they are. Chil-
dren feel separated from parents, parents from children, be-
cause they are. In these and other everyday experiences which
readily come within the compass of our consciousness, we clear-
ly see that the feeling arises from the fact.

But how explain the fact? What causes the condition
we are aware of? Why are members of the same family, not to
mention those of different groups and races, cut off from each
other? It is true that some of us deliberately cut ourselves
off; but what we are actually confronted with is not only our
deliberate behavior but a deep-seated involuntary state that
underlies our intentional actions and determines the course of

- 4 -

most human relationships. What is this underlying state?
Is there, behind the facts we are aware of, a more basic
fact which we do not readily see? I think there is. I am
sure of it. There is a root-cause which we may never grasp
because, for one thing, it is below the level of our ordinary
consciousness; also because our usual explanations and pro-
posed solutions seem sufficient and we feel no need to trace
the exile-feeling to its hidden source.

The root-fact, as I discovered thanks to an experience
which will be described in the second part of this book, is
that all of us, as we habitually exist, are cut off not only
from each other but each one from himself. We are exiled
not only from a human group or nation but from the mainstream
of universal life. We exist in a backwater, in a pocket.
Human life, as ordinarily lived, is a pocketed life, a life
surrounded by stubborn brackets. Instead of being Life-
Members, we are dismembered into little separated selves.
This, I think, is the basic split from which arise the in-
numerable separations encountered in almost every phase of
daily living. The split is within us; therefore it is be-
tween us.

A man, partially aware of his external relationships
but quite blind to those within himself, becomes progressive-
ly divorced from his own real being, barred from his own soul.
Inevitably, then, he becomes cut off from other souls, he pre-
vents them from meeting him, he blocks them from their souls.
Himself being in exile but not really understanding that he

- 5 -

5

is, he tends to keep himself in this condition and to keep
all others in it. Apply this to everyone, and you have what
I believe to be a true conception of the framework of the
human situation.

Isaiah was right. We are exiles in the profound sense.
It is true also that we hasten; but as we do not properly see
what we should hasten from and what we should hasten towards,
most of us race around in the pit. Bread fails. Science
fails. Religion fails. Civilization fails. Destruction
succeeds. The gist of it is that men fail. The pit claims
those who might be a free and creative people.

"But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out
into the outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnash-
ing of teeth." Shall be? The prophecy has long since come
to pass. We are out of the kingdom. We are in darkness.
Therefore there is a weeping and gnashing of teeth. And we
know it; and yet we don't.

We know that frustration and suffering exist wherever
men exist. Having come through two World Wars, having ex-
perienced man's cruelty to man off and on through the years,
we cannot help but know it. What we do not realize is that
all of this is due to the fact that the human race at large
is out of, and, by itself is kept out of its proper life. We
experience the consequences but are blind to the cause. Hence
we do not recognize that we will remain in this plight - in a
backwash that is by turns stagnant and violent - as long as
we remain outcasts. The atom bomb will not scare us out of
it. Nor will atomic energy, put to so-called peacetime uses,

- 6 -

lift us out. The splitting of the atom will not mend the split
in man. Atomic energy in the hands of exiles (for exiles read
egotists) is most likely to result in total enslavement or to-
tal destruction.

We know we are in darkness; yet we do not realize how
very dark it is, or that there might be light. When we face
ourselves, as we are forced to do now and again, we become
aware of the unpleasant fact that we are but fractions of what
we might be, partial men, partial women. We say that if it
were not for the things that hold us back we would round out
into whole men and women, grow as human beings ought to grow
and create a world fit for human beings to live in. But what
precisely holds us back? We see some of the things; we cannot
help but see the greed, the hate, the prejudice, the fear that
constitute our common shackles. But the root of the trouble
we do not see. Our sight is not keen enough, our understanding
not deep enough, our darkness too thick.

In our minds there is no great light, in our hearts no
wonderful kindling. Looking outward, if the sky is not over-
cast, we see the sunlight; but there is a perpetual haze over
our inward sky. Looking inward there seems to be nothing but
fog or twilight or utter blackness. Occasionally a glow ir-
radiates our psychic dusk. The herald is fleeting. Sometimes
a flash pierces the blackness, a swift light of knowledge or
feeling that apparently comes from a mysterious source con-
cealed behind the dark form of our ordinary selves.

Clear days in our inner world are rare; and the outward
world of men is to our eyes a maze. Even those who think they

- ? -

7

know the world and what is actually happening in it know they don't. Yes, they know that so-called human society is neither human nor a society but is an anarchy or an inertia. War overcomes the inertia. But the result of war is a more acute form of chaos. Our social planning has yet to convert the chaos into an intelligent order. Our religion, art, and science have yet to overcome inertia by a full release of the creative force.

The ability to smile is one of our simple everyday abilities, but rather amazing at that. How is it possible for us, conditioned as we are, to smile so often and often so genuinely? But underneath we are irritable, easily distempered, quick to fly off the handle and strike at our neighbors, even at those at the other ends of the earth.

People in America strike at people in Germany and Japan, those in Germany and Japan at those in America. White people strike at Negroes, and at white people. Negroes strike at white people, and at Negroes. Capital at labor, labor at capital; political party at political party; government at big business, big business at government; members of the same family at each other. How often have I struck myself, you yourself?

No doubt of it, one of our dominant interior states is that of Ishmael. Our goodwill breaks down and, more often than we want, we feel against everyman, everyman against us. Ishmael was an outcast and at war with society. He was at war with society because he was an outcast. The immediate causation is obvious in his case. The deeper cause?

Modern psychology and social science give due weight

- 8 -

8

to the Ishmael state and its causes insofar as these pertain
to an estranged relationship between the individual and the
human community. It has been ascertained, as most of us know,
that criminals and maniacs are in large measure the results of
a breakdown of personality brought on by a progressive aliena-
tion of the given individuals from the larger social group.
May it not be that all of us are suffering a more basic est-
rangement from a divine community, and that this is why all
people tend to be aberrant? AE, for one, was sure of it. His
views of the human situation, based upon an uncommonly illu-
mined life-experience, centered around this theme. He wrote,
"We are outcasts from Deity, therefore we defame the place of
our exile."

The exile-feeling arises from the fact. We are out-
casts, and this is why we feel we are. Two other feelings,
present in most men, are also true to the facts - that of im-
prisonment and that of unreality. We feel caught, confined
in ourselves, imprisoned in our circumstances - and we are.
We feel we aren't quite awake. There is an unreal, dreamlike
quality to much of our life, a numbness, a lack of electric
perception. Even our horrible experiences, which are enough
it would seem to shock us awake, are more like nightmares
than real events. The truth is that we are more asleep than
awake. That hazy feeling, that sense of being muffled and in
a daze, arises from an all too actual condition.

As we habitually live we are exiles, but not only that.
We are captive exiles. And not only that. We are captive

- 9 -

exiles more asleep than awake. We move about in our captivity like somnambulists. This, as I understand it, is the three-fold condition of our so-called normal existence; and it is because of this condition that we hate instead of love one another, fear instead of hope, destroy more than we create, and not only defame but defile our place and ourselves. It is because of this condition, in fine, that men are not men, human beings neither beings nor human.

If true, this is a terrible - and yet, as we shall see, by no means a hopeless situation. But do my statements correctly describe it? As we go along I shall present such evidence as I have. Meanwhile, if we grant that what has been said is true, certain questions arise. Let us briefly consider them now.

The first thing we want to know is - Is there a way out? If so, what way? Is radical change possible? If so, by what means? Precisely how can we hasten so that we may be loosed, and so that we will not die in the pit?

Or are we doomed to remain as we are, except insofar as the human race may make some advance in the next million years by process of gradual evolution? Some people are thoroughly convinced that there is no immediate way out. They show us the fix we are in but have no good news. Others are as thoroughly convinced that we who live today can be liberated. And there are some, indeed, who know there is a way out because they have succeeded in getting out. They have told us how they did it.

- 10 -

If we are exiled, from what are we exiled? What and where is the mainstream of life? Is there, in reality, another life, a higher world? It is of course not enough to believe vaguely in some heavenly sphere. If the kingdom of God exists, if it is possible for us to enter it, we should have some real knowledge of it, know something of its detailed features, become clear as to whether it is a "here-now" or a "here-after", or both. Everyman and woman the world over, every young person growing into adulthood, should have a growing understanding of these matters. I say understanding, not fancy, not superstition.

Is it sound to expect that if and as we outgrow exile we shall at once find ourselves in a divine state, or are there a number of intermediate conditions through which we must develop before we can enter the kingdom of God? If so, what are these conditions? What, for us, is the next step up?

If housewives and diplomats, bricklayers and bankers, farmers, generals, in short if all of us - except those who have gotten out - are captive exiles, why do not more of us realize it? What blinds us to our situation? It is because we are more asleep than awake. Those who are conscious enough to realize that they are in exile are already on their way out of it. Those who are deep in are not sufficiently aware to know it. Somnambulism, as said, is one aspect of the three-fold condition. Each aspect supports and, as it were, cements the others. If, then, we can change one we will change the others. If we can loosen one we will loosen all, thus freeing ourselves. It so happens that the most strategic of the aspects is the one we can most readily lay hold of: I mean such

- 11 -

awareness as we may have. This gives us the first clue as to
what we must do if we would get out. We must increase our con-
sciousness. We must somewhat awake. We must awake enough to
recognize that our awareness needs be and can be, by our own
efforts, enlarged.

Nothing is possible unless we do wake up. For, obviously,
if we are unaware that we are captive exiles we will surely
remain so. If unaware that there is a way out, we will not
seek it. Instead, we will strike out, not properly knowing
what to strike against and what to strike for. Will do it?
This is what we are doing. We strike and fight - each other;
we push each other down; we maim and kill - each other; and
remain captive exiles.

It is possible for human beings themselves to increase
their awareness. Man's consciousness, in fact, is capable of
outgrowing its limitations and developing, in this life, into
a state as far above the human average as the human average is
above that of cats and dogs. We can be taught, by ourselves
and by others, how to do it. We can be trained in the way.
We can be shown how to open ourselves to the liberating forces.
This is the fundamental teaching. It was begun, as the records
show, before the days of Christ, before the time of the Buddha.
It continues today. Those who reject it reject their main
chance for actual liberation through actual development. Those
who receive it, use it, pass it on to others, do the only sen-
sible, practical, effective thing that captive exiles can do.

There are other teachings. The world is full of in-
structions as to how to do this and that. If these teachings

- 12 -

pertaining to the lesser affairs of life are related to the
fundamental teaching and made to contribute to the aim of
freedom-through-development, they will serve us well. Other-
wise we shall but use them to decorate our captivity, to make
the pit look attractive, to reduce our discomfort in it. And
if ever we become quite comfortable in the pit, we shall never
get out.

Liberation will not be attained by those without desire
for it, without will, without force, without resourcefulness.
We must desire emergence from this habitual condition with the
intensity of a man wanting to escape from a concentration camp.
We must desire entrance into that other condition more than we
have ever wanted anything else. In a word, we must be empowered.
One source of moving-power is the very discomfort we feel in
this situation. The greater our discomfort here, the better
our chances of getting there, provided of course that the energy
derived from the discomfort is rightly directed. Another source
of power is the feeling that we are cut off and want to belong,
that we are in a daze and want to wake up. These feelings will
give drive to our aim if, instead of repressing them we welcome
them; if, instead of misdirecting them into by-ways and blind-
alleys we direct them to the true way.

But we will not welcome these feelings at full strength;
we will repress or futilely express them, unless we are con-
vinced that individual human beings have it in them to promote
their own further growth, transformation, new birth. Disbelief
on this score emasculates us and seals us in the pit. Profound

- 13 -

change is brought about only if, believing it to be possible,
we work for it.

We shall now proceed to see that within our own ex-
perience there is sound basis for such faith.

- 14 -

## II Signs of Another Life

Unusual experiences do occasionally occur to us. Something happens! Since the experience is uncommon, we have no ready words for it. Since it is nonhabitual it may seem unaccountable. Our eyes suddenly open and we behold the world with stark clarity. Power unexpectedly enters us and we do what we believed we could not do. Deep feelings arise and our lives are touched with beauty and meaning. Sometimes it is love, as Thomas Wolfe says, "that breaches the dark walls of all our loneliness and restores us to the fellowship of life, the family of the earth, the brotherhood of man."

The experiences are varied, some seem magical. They enable us to recover the promise of human existence. What promise? We may not be sure. But again we feel a yearning for a more generous and noble life, a homesickness which by its very intensity assures us that there must be a home, far away if not near, to which we can go, to which we should be going. Too long we have accepted small roles, persuading ourselves that these little men and little women are all that we can be. Too long we have dallied in the by-ways, been wayward along too many detours. Now we are called to the highway.

But when such experiences pass, as they do, we relapse and forget. Or, glancing back with the narrow eyes and hard mind of so-called common sense, we may even turn against them and resolve never again to let ourselves be upset by fancies, lured by false promises. Some people, in their fight against

- 15 -

these uncommon happenings, label them abnormal and warn others away.

The word "open" or "opening" appears in the Bible. Open the understanding. Quakers, beginning with George Fox, have used it with such meaning that it has become one of the chief terms in the Friends' language. I find it a most appropriate word by which to signify what happens to a person when, of a sudden, his shell is pierced and some aspect of reality strikes into him, or when he emerges and makes contact with the real. Is there any human being who has not experienced openings? No one is absolutely shut. No one is completely caught in his ego-prison. The opening may be small. It may be large. It happens. We do open now and then. AE says, "Others I could tell of, too, who had their moments of awe when the spirit made its ancient claim on them."

It is true, as we have noted, that most of the time our interiors are unlit; but occasionally they glow. Whence comes this radiance? We know it does not come from the outer world, though contact with another person may have evoked it. There our knowledge ends. We do not inquire as to the source of the brightness. We do not ask if the radiance might be sustained. We are untrained to ponder such things. Our attention is elsewhere, as are our values - largely externalized. Even the introverts are extroverted when judged by standards of true inwardness. Nevertheless the brightness comes, takes us by surprise, and swiftly goes.

But, the light having come and gone, we know one thing more vividly than we knew it before. We recognize how unlit

- 16 -

we usually are. The perception of darkness is likely to plunge us, for a few days, into a deeper gloom, or it may kindle our desire for another advantage of the light. Then this reaction also passes. Again we passively accept our dark condition as normal and unchangeable - until again we unexpectedly glow.

As a rule we are filled with unimportant activity; but sometimes we are stilled. We do not do it consciously. What stills us? Into the silence another kind of fullness comes. It is a superior activity to which our real beings contribute. We expand to a new largeness, and are balanced and at peace. Such experiences have come upon me, and upon others I am sure, in the most varied circumstances, sometimes when alone, sometimes when in a group or even in a crowd.

The Quakers go into their meeting houses for the purpose of becoming still and, as they say, to watch and wait upon God. Particularly in the early years they were often successful. In the living silence they found a living presence. From quietness they were lifted into soul-shaking experiences (hence the name Quaker). Robert Barclay wrote, "Many are the blessed experiences which I could relate of this silence and manner of worship." However, it is one thing to intend to still yourself, quite another to actually do it. Relatively few can put themselves in a state of creative stillness by exercise of the will. So of the others, be they Friends or other people who would be quiet in preparation for a higher action, we must ask - what stills them?

- 17 -

For several months I have had the pleasure of observ-
ing at close range a young mother with her child, When in
her teens, this young woman had felt cut off from life, un-
sure of herself with people, generally insecure and without
satisfactory purpose. In short, she had felt herself in ex-
ile. This feeling decreased, a feeling of belonging sprang
up and increased when she became a member of a dance-group.
Then she married: the sense of exile diminished still more,
the sense of connectedness became stronger. Now she has a
child. More than ever she feels she beongs. This is not
said in words. It is expressed substantially in her every
attitude and action. Through motherhood she has come into
her function, her biological function at any rate. Through
her function she is connected with the earth-rhythm, with the
life of the race. Whatever she does, wherever she goes, if
the child is with her, she has a deep, quiet, unassuming as-
surance that she is part of the essential life-process and
hence belongs in the living world.

Though men are not supposed to know much about such
matters, it may be surmised that every woman, including the
social outcasts and those whom wealth has exiled in another
way, experience a marked decrease of the cut-off feeling and
a marked increase of the sense of connectedness, throughout
the period of pregnancy and the first year or so of mother-
hood. Then, as the child grows in independence, a separation
occurs between mother and child. As this happens, a reverse
tending sets in. In the woman - and in the child too - the

- 18 -

sense of belonging decreases, the feeling of disconnectedness mounts. For the woman, the solution would seem to be to have another child. For the child, what solution? What solution for the woman when she can no longer bear children? For those who do not have children? And - for the men?

As a matter of fact there are ways to union, means of opening, methods of self-transcendence, usable by all. "For every bondsman in his own hands bears the power to cancel his captivity." Through religious training, through the disciplines and methods of art and science, through self-taught techniques of human relationships we find it possible, for short periods at least, to strip off our insulation and touch reality, to gain release from our ego-prisons, to break through our habitual separateness and feel kinship with all that lives - even with the stones.

Experiences of emerging may occur to us in churches and in kitchens, in studios and public squares, in laboratories and offices, at sea and on farms. Varied they are, but it may be well to note that each and all are interior states, however they may have been brought about. Whatever the immediate cause, the crucial event is the change within us. In last analysis, all meaningful changes are changes of consciousness.

Usually we do not speak of such events, not even to our close friends. But we do write of them. One finds them expressed in letters, poems, novels, journals, and in books such as William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience". Any number might be quoted. Here are a few.

- 19 -

When I was growing up, I used to steal out of the house at night, and go walking in Glass's woods, which were a little way up the road from our place. In the heavy shadows of the Shenandoah Valley hills, the darkness was a little terrifying, as it always is to small boys; but, when I would pause and look up into the sky, a feeling that was midway between peace and exhilaration would seize me. I never quite succeeded, as a boy, in analyzing that feeling, any more than I did when it used to come to me as a naval officer, in the night watches at sea, and later when, as an explorer, I first looked upon mountains and lands which no one before me had ever seen. No doubt it was partly animal: the sheer expanding discovery of being alive, of growing, of no longer being afraid. But there was more to it than just that. There was the sense of identification with vast movements: the premonition of destiny that is implicit in every man; and the sense of waiting for the momentary revelation.

The day was dying, the night being born -- but with great peace. Here were the imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! That was what came out of the silence--a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres, perhaps.

It was enough to catch that rhythm, momentarily to be myself a part of it. In that instant I could feel no doubt of man's oneness with the universe. The conviction came that that rhythm was too orderly, too harmonious, too perfect to be a product of blind chance--that, therefore, there must be purpose in the whole and that man was part of that whole and not an accidental offshoot. It was a feeling that transcended reason; that went to the heart of man's despair and found it groundless. The universe was a cosmos, not a chaos; man was as rightfully a part of that cosmos as were the day and night.

The Universe is not dead. Therefore, there is an Intelligence there, and it is all pervading... For untold ages man has felt an awareness of that Intelligence. Belief in it is the one point where all religions agree. It has been called by many names. Many call it God.

Richard E. Byrd

- 20 -

The most beautiful thing one can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this reaction is a stranger, who no longer can pause to wonder and stand wrapt in awe is as good as dead, his eyes are closed.

... in these (exceptionally gifted individuals or especially noble communities) there is found a third level of religious experience, even if it is seldom found in pure form. I will call it the cosmic religious sense. This is hard to make clear to those who do not experience it, since it does not involve an anthropomorphic idea of God; the individual feels the vanity of human desires and aims, and the nobility and marvelous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought. He feels the individual destiny as an imprisonment and seeks to experience the totality of existence as a unity full of significance.

Albert Einstein

It was in the early spring, at the beginning of his thirty-sixth year. He and two friends had spent the evening reading Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, and especially Whitman. They parted at midnight, and he had a long drive in a hansom (it was in an English city). His mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images and emotions called up by the reading and talk of the evening, was calm and peaceful. He was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment. All at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around as it were by a flame-colored cloud. For an instant he thought of fire, some sudden conflagration in the great city; the next, he knew that the light was within himself. Directly afterwards came upon him a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Into his brain streamed one momentary lightning-flash of the Brahmic Splendor which has ever since lightened his life; upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic Bliss, leaving thenceforward for always an aftertaste of heaven. Among other things he did not come to believe, he saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things

- 22 -

The physical beings forsook the tribal abodes,
And yearned with passion for the ancient dwelling.
Much as though a lightning flashed,
Then passed away, leaving no earthly trace.

O you weary one with bodily journeying,
Circumambulating the world in your perplexity
of mind;
Come, seek Him whose consciousness your essence
contains,
O man,
For you are the object of all journeying.

If you were a heavenly chair, or a throne, or a
garden
Or fire or heavenly bodies running their course,
And if of theo whole you were a copy
And knew this to be a reality,
Why then should you abide in your debasement,
With those who are prisoners? Is not your turn
come that you should go home?

abu-al-Mawahib, a North African
Sufi of the 15th century

Now let us see the meaning of such experiences - those
mentioned in the earlier part of the chapter as well as those
just quoted. Are they of passing significance only? Must
they be infrequent, never continuous? Are they, as some say,
escapes from reality? Are they, as others maintain, abnormal?
They are of essential meaning. They can occur with increasing
frequency until they become expressions of our regular mode of
living. Rather than call them escapes from reality it would
be truer to say they are escapes into reality. They point to
our normal life. It is the *repression* of them that makes us
abnormal. In my opinion, the repression of these extra-ordi-
nary stirrings is more a cause of aberration than the repression
of sex.

The fact that a glow occasionally illuminates our dark-
ness means that behind the dark forms of our ordinary selves
there

- 23 -

there is a source of light. The fact that we sometimes tap
an astonishing power means that such power is coiled within
us. That we are sometimes silenced means that in our deeper
beings there is a magical center which is eternally quiet
and in peace. That we sometimes belong to the living world
means that there is a life in us which has never been sun-
dered from the living world. That we now and then awake and
are free means that there exists a condition of consciousness
and freedom which we can enter.

As surely as this habitual condition of darkness, cap-
tivity, somnambulism exists, so does another condition of
light, liberty, and a greater awareness. The two conditions
co-exist. If one alone seems real to us, the other nonexis-
tent, it is only because we inhabit the dark world so con-
tinuously, the other rarely or not at all. What is real to
me depends upon where I locate. The truth is that there are
two lives (if not more), two selves, two worlds within each
and all of us - and this is why we sometimes experience that
other, why it is possible to pass from the one to the other.
The uncommon experiences we have been considering issue from
and point to our own uncommon-to-us reality.

There is a life and world above the pit. Part of each
man, the part in which he habitually locates and with which he
usually identifies, is in and experiences pit-life. This part
is in exile, and he is in exile because he is attached to it.
Another part, from which he is separated, which therefore he
hardly knows exists, is not and never has been pit-bound. It
is in the mainstream of universal life.

- 24 -

I could not make these statements with such certainty
which will be
were it not for the experience described in the second part
of this book. I once passed, as I call it, from exile into
Being, and, while in Being, the existence of the Being-life
was made as real to me as the existence of life in exile.
Thanks to this experience I discovered that we can outgrow
exile and grow into Being because, though we habitually exist
as exiles, we are beings. We can awaken from the one condition
into the other because our consciousness is inherently capable
of such awakening.

However, these possibilities and their significance will
not vitally affect us if we merely consider them in the ab-
stract, feel happy about them, and put our trust in "inevitable
progress". It is not belief in general progress that gets
people out of a pit; it is their own wisely directed efforts -
aided, at strategic moments, by a hand from above. The climb
is difficult. Most of those who write and speak of these mat-
ters, including myself, tend to make gross underestimates of
the difficulty when we use words, even though our daily expe-
riences point us squarely to the facts. Uncommon experiences
come unexpectedly; we may as it were stumble upon them; but
we will not stumble into that higher condition as our continual
mode of living.

We must aim to go there if we are to get there. We
must make effort. We must use effective means and methods.
These are the three essentials.

- 25 -

III That Life Into This

There is a way out; there is a way in - one and the
same way. The way out of exile is the way in to Being. It
is possible to "go in and out, and find pasture". Possible,
but difficult. Difficult to become able to do it. Once you
are able it is, presumably, easy. Ordinarily, the way is
blocked. Thus the difficulty. It is because of this obstruc-
tion that we will not stumble into that higher condition as
our regular mode of life and experience. This is also why
progress is not inevitable or even likely beyond a certain
point unless we fulfill the three essentials. Individuals,
nations, civilizations, the human race at large tend to stop
at the barrier, stop developing, become arrested, and begin
retrogressing.

But why is the way blocked? And by what?

For what conceivable purpose would God, Nature, or man
himself deliberately obstruct the way between darkness and
light, the false and the real, ignorance and wisdom, the outer
person and the inner being? Who or what would so contrive it
that, by interposing a barrier between the condition of exile
and the condition of Being, we not only live in exile but are
kept in exile except as we make special effort, and suffer
much, to get out? Or is the stoppage an unforeseen result,
an accident? I have asked these questions of men wiser than
myself. I have searched the scriptures and the philosophies,
and no satisfactory explanation has come forth. Most of the
ideas offered as explanations - such as the one that men, of

- 26 -

their own free will, choose darkness and shut the door on
the light - simply do not make sense. You can depend upon
it that any being with free will, if offered the choice be-
tween pain and joy, will choose joy.

Precisely what blocks the way? Neither is this under-
stood. About this too I have asked, and have searched within
myself. Is it the evil in man? Doubtless; but there is more
to it. In a child, even in those children who later become
arch criminals, the evil (if we may so call it) is not greater
than the good. What then upsets the balance in later years?
Or, to put a different but related question, why is it that
in the process we call growing up the outer person waxes while
the inner being wanes?

I agree with those who think that a fissure occurs in
us at some time between early childhood and the adult status.
Each one as he grows up tends to split so that there gradually
comes to be an outer person and an inner being, with a "gap"
between them. The gap tends to widen as the years advance.
A "veil" or "wall" forms between man and reality, both inner
and outer. I sometimes use the phrase "the great divide" when
referring to this. These are figures of speech, not exact
terms; they but indicate the existence of a sufficiently mys-
terious and puzzling situation. There is no doubt, however,
that the situation exists. That something, in its psychologi-
cal effect, acts as an obstruction, is the only conclusion I
can draw from the facts of experience.

- 27 -

Many people, it is true, see nothing in themselves that they recognize as an obstruction or gap or wall. Signs of another life have been so few and infrequent that they have no sense that another life exists and might break in upon them if it were not impeded. There has been so little inflow that they do not know there could be a fullness if the channel were not blocked. The very fact that they do not know an obstruction exists indicates that it does exist and proves how effective it is. The barrier is so effective that there seems to be nothing back of it; hence it is not recognized as a barrier. The gap is so wide that nothing can be seen of the other side; hence it is not recognized as a gap. So long and unremittingly have these people located in the outer self that they assume this self to be their only and total self, this location their only possible one. Consequently they do not and at present cannot see any grounds for thinking that the inner being exists and that there is a way into it and a way out from it.

Consider the matter of water supply in the country. Suppose you know that the well and tank are full of water. You turn on the faucet and nothing comes out, or only a trickle. There are several possible causes which prevent the water from reaching you. There may be a disconnection, or some other fault that results in considerable leakage. There may be insufficient pressure. The pipes may be clogged. You know it is one or more of these. So you check, find, and correct the trouble. I, among others, know that the human well is

- 28 -

full of living water. The water is of ample volume, and
pure. So it is at the intake. So it is in man's deep re-
sources. But available to the majority of us there is only
a trickly e - and often this trickle is polluted. What is the
matter? A disconnection? Leakage? Lack of pressure? Clog-
ged conduits?

Despite the fact that the gap may be so wide that there
seems to be no other side, something from that side does oc-
casionally leap the gap and fill us. Though the wall may be
so thick that there seems to be nothing back of it, we are
sometimes invaded by transforming powers. The wall is breached
and something of our inner wealth is given us. Disconnection
there may be, or leakage, or lack of pressure, or clogged
pipes, or all four, but there are times when the living water
has such force and magic that it clears the way and comes to
us plentifully. These are instances of _that_ life coming into
this, unasked for, unexpectedly. These are gifts.

The gifted person is one who receives from his own deep
resources, from his being, from his spirit, from the great re-
servoir of the human race, more of these gifts than do the
generality of people. For this very reason it is the gifted
person who has grounds for knowing that a life greater than
his ordinary life is within and all around him. Having ex-
perienced it, he wants it. He wants more of it than comes of
itself. So he begins to work for it. So he begins to live
for a greater life. So he begins to live what we call the
creative life.

- 29 -

By working and living in this way he discovers and makes use of certain facts. He finds, for one thing, that the inner life, by some called the subconscious, is without doubt the source of creativity. The outer self, left to itself, is rather dry and rind-like. Only when there is some degree of marriage of inner and outer, subconscious and conscious, is the outer given sap, fire, power, originality. He finds that by working in a certain way he can induce what is in him to come out and flow. If he is lax, nothing happens. If lax he lets himself down. If nervously tight and tense, nothing happens; he locks himself. Only when he is able to set up the right kind of inner tension does he succeed in unlocking his resources. Yet not even then does he always succeed. Though the resources are his, and are within him, they are not entirely subject to his will. Though he aims to release them they may not respond.

Those who would create, in whatever field, know the difficulties as well as the possibilities of tapping their hidden powers, of bringing something of that life into this, by conscious effort. So they learn from others and teach themselves how to make their efforts as effective as possible. They develop ways of working. They acquire and use methods and techniques. All for the sake of releasing and guiding the flow of the deep power which alone is able to create. Every time a painter is at his easel, a writer at his desk, a musician at his piano, a scientist in his laboratory, this is what they are trying and hoping to do. By establishing a certain relationship between themselves and their outward

- 30 -

materials, they aim and hope to open the way to their inner
resources. If and as this happens, if and as the real power
takes hold, then and then only are true art and science made,
and the people themselves in some measure remade, regenerated.

There are a number of illuminating books that explore
the creative process. A remarkable one is Constantin Stani-
slavski's "An Actor Prepares". Stanislavski sets forth, as
clearly as anyone has, the role of art as a means to and an
expression of the inner forces. He examines the relation of
the subconscious to the conscious. Not many artists or tea-
chers of art have grasped, as he has, the various methods,
techniques, devices by which we may introduce something of that
life into this. Though he writes particularly for those pre-
paring to be actors, his findings are of use to all who would
prepare to be creative human beings in whatever sphere.

Among those who realized that there is a life and world
above the pit, one of the outstanding was George Fox. An often
quoted passage of his reads, "I saw also that there was an
ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light
and love which flowed over the ocean of darkness." Having
seen that bright reality he wanted it to flow in him and through
him to others. It may be said that he had two aims. One was
to bring that life into this. The other was to lift this life
wholly into that. Though related, these are quite different
aims, as we shall see.

Of those who are gifted and would become more so by
making conscious effort, outstanding are the genuinely religious

- 31 -

people. Like all creative people they know by experience
that there exists what Albert Einstein calls a supra-indivi-
dual life; and they try to facilitate more frequent contacts
with it, and, if possible, a permanent union. They aim, as
Rufus Jones expresses it, "to hitch on to the eternal powers".
The methods used by members of a religious group may be quite
different from those used by poets, just as the poet's are
different from those of the scientist. Yet even in method one
may find similarity among them all. The uses to which a re-
ligious man may put the deep power, if and when it enters him,
also differ. But the aim is the same: to draw that life into
this, to spread the influences of that life among the people
of the world.

When the Friends, for example, settle down in their
Meetings for Worship, they endeavor so to re-order themselves,
so to orient and open themselves to that "ocean of light and
love" that something of it will break in upon them, transform-
ing them momentarily and leaving an afterglow which radiates
to others through actions. This at any rate is the Quaker
ideal, though they find it sufficiently difficult to achieve.
Many a Friends' Meeting of the present day is explicit proof
that the way is blocked and that the obstruction often outwits
the most determined efforts to remove it.

If there are any real results from their religious prac-
tices, the people of other faiths and churches must have much
the same aim and do substantially the same things as the Friends,
as the artists, as the scientists, as those many anonymous
human beings who are touched with a sense of the meaning and

- 32 -

possibility of life, Dean Inge says:

> God sent us into the world to create some-
> thing, and to enrich our own personality in the
> process. In our wrestling with intractable material,
> we have to draw on what is *above* ourselves. We have
> to rely on God's help to make anything worth while.
> And in drawing upon this power above ourselves, we
> take this higher power *into* ourselves; we raise our-
> selves above ourselves. This is how creativeness
> and inner growth mutually condition each other.

Now when something of that life enters into this,
whether of itself or in response to our efforts, we change
but we remain in this life. It may be and often is a wonderful
change, but not radical. It occurs within our habitual condition;
it does not lift us sheer out of this condition. When
sunlight streams down into the pit, pit-life becomes brighter
and warmer; but the pit remains the pit and we remain in it.
Changes of this kind I call minor transformations, to distinguish
them from the more profound alteration that occurs when
we transcend this life and enter into that. Certainly they are
not felt to be minor when they happen to us, nor are they minor
in themselves. Valuable in themselves, they are invaluable because
it is by and through them that we unfold, grow towards,
and are made ready for the great passover.

There are of course all sorts of minor transformations
with a ride range of effects, but there is a common mark by
which we may recognize them as a class. The sign is this:
however remarkable the experience, we remain these present
selves; we are not radically changed, we are not transported
into another being. Our ordinary consciousness expands, but
we are not taken up into a higher consciousness. This life
glows, but we do not pass into the life that is light. It may

- 33 -

seem that we are not in exile any more, but we have not en-
tered fully into the world beyond. (When George Fox beheld
the ocean of light, we know from his description of his con-
dition that he was still partly in the ocean of darkness. Fox
subsequently ascended into the radiant life.) We may become
of real service to others, but neither we nor they transcend
the limits of our ordinary frames. We may and often do create
things of beauty that will outlast our present lives; but we
ourselves are not born anew, there is no birth and growth of
a new man as different from the old as fruit is from the blos-
som. We may even make contact with what we feel to be God;
but we do not merge into Him; we remain separated creatures.

In giving the marks of minor transformations I have also
pointed to some of the marks of major ones. Certain other cha-
racteristics of major changes will be noted when we come to
consider instances of such experiences.

Minor transformations are by no means everyday occur-
rences, but they do happen more often and, we may therefore
assume, more readily than major ones. Something of that other
life more easily penetrates us than we can penetrate it. You
may say that this is only natural. I wonder. At any rate it
is a fact. In my own case, there have been a number of minor
transformations, each remarkable to me at the time. So far I
have been graced with but one passover. Some human beings have
been more fortunate but even with them the minor ones greatly
outnumber the major ones.

The same is true with regard to what can be accomplished
by aim and effort. We more readily and therefore more often

- 34 -

succeed in inducing something of that life to come into us
than in entering that life. Many times a year we may draw
the inner out; not often do we move ourselves into the center.
We can more readily open ourselves than transcend ourselves.
Daily there are thousands who in some measure tap their re-
sources. Rare is the man who more than once in a lifetime
makes his way into the Source.

- 35 -

## IV Towards The New Creation

The indwelling power has a purpose for man. It is that man continues growing. It is that man acts to promote his right development up to and beyond what we call maturity; that, having grown from infancy to adulthood, we establish conditions favorable to the germination of another seed whose sprout will be a new creation. It is that we become beings in whom Nature's purpose is accomplished, God's purpose begun.

We grow by actions, by exercise, by effort. The growing force itself, as long as it is active in us, moves us to act, to express, to strive. We are placed in situations that provide both aids and obstacles, spurs and resistances. In acting for something, we must act against something else. In striving towards whatever it may be, we must press away from what holds us back. Herein are the dynamics of growth, the drama of development. Thus it is with men and, to a less extent, with all growing things. The sprout of a grain of wheat must move up through the weight of soil in order to reach the world above. It must press through a crust of earth to meet the sun.

In human life, the struggle to survive should be superseded by the struggle to develop. Physical survival, insofar as men can assure it, should by now be assured to every human being on earth. Overpopulation need be no problem. Excessive reproduction is, in my opinion, one of the results of social and spiritual frustration. There would be no such problem

- 36 -

were people developing. Our main energies can and should be released from the struggle to survive so that they may be used for developing and transforming. For it is work to develop, hard work, and some of it is dirty work, and it can't be done unless we have energy available for this purpose.

That the majority of people are held to a grim survival level is due, I think, to three chief causes: the internal barrier for which we know not who or what is responsible; because our cunningly abetted greeds and lust for power make and perpetuate these outer forms of bondage; and, third, an insufficient number of men and women evolved to the point where they are really able to help others break the deadlock.

For the world's people who are blocked within and bound without, food has excessive meaning; clothing, shelter, sex and money have disproportionate meaning; debt, pain, and the great burden of living. Notwithstanding, I speak of developing, growing to maturity, being born anew.

Development must be stressed, and accomplished by some, or it will be forever denied to all. Unless some people and more people develop greatly there will continue to be insufficient help for those who are arrested. Unless some get out of the pit, all will surely remain in it. Because so many are held down it is all the more necessary that those able to rise, do so. At least these must continue growing. It is their duty to themselves and to others, their double duty. Because millions are warped and stunted it is all the more urgent that some unfold as befits human beings. The fact that the majority are

- 37 -

frustrated and thus primed to hate, makes it all the more im-
perative that some and more become able to love.

Recover contact with your force of growth, release it
into your life so that it charges the adult as it charged the
child, and you discover the positive force that answers the
world's negative. You recognize and make explicit the meaning
that was implicit in your growth from cell to child, from child
to man or woman. You discover purpose. As long as you hold
firm to this purpose you are empowered. When you fall away you
lose power. Make common cause with your growing power and you
have found an ally who backs you up in your efforts to overcome
obstacles, those within and those without.

Some of us are able to choose. We can choose to clamp
down on our inner growth and sell our lives for other ends, or
we can choose to invite the force of growth to turn us to its
purpose, drawing us away from other ends. This is the decision.
You and I are but two among two thousand million. It would be
foolish to think that by exercise of personal will we can change
the world, but we can change ourselves, and we are part of the
world. What one man does has multiple effects. The decision
of each individual affects man as a whole.

If the inner force does take hold of us again, if it
decides to turn us to its way, we are under orders. We are in
the sway of a force greater than any we can call our own, and
greater than our weaknesses. Thereafter we may forget the or-
ders, but we will be reminded. We may try to break away, but
will be recalled. We shall walk into unsuspected traps, and
shall have to labor to extricate ourselves from what we so

- 38 -

easily entered. Momentarily we may attain new birth, only to
relapse into the old death. We shall ask - How often must we
be born anew so as to stay reborn? We shall slow down and even
long to turn back, but will go on. I think there is no stop -
and but few resting places - short of the goal.

Set against the force of growth and its purpose are,
among other things, the denials which arise from habitual ex-
perience. People who have stopped growing are likely to deny
that they can continue growing. Those who seldom experience
openings, who have forgotten their own minor transformations,
are prone to maintain that it cannot happen. What they say is
true to their present experience, false to their possibilities.
Others are doing what they say is impossible - and some day
their turn will come. They will be turned from the pocket to
the mainstream; for life, not death, is the power. They too
will be invaded. They too will taste the water and thirst for
more. They will feel the life and desire it. They will touch
the fire and begin burning. And they will become as all be-
come who are invaded.

Moved by the same disposition to deny the possibility
of whatever is not within the range of our present conscious
experience, there are some who know that minor transformations
occur but reject the possibility of major ones; who know they
can open themselves but deny that they can transcend themselves;
who see that they are continuing to grow but dismiss the idea
that a new man, a radically different being, can arise from
the old. A friend of mine is a case in point. He works hard
to be creative; he flatly refuses to believe that he himself

- 39 -

might be thoroughly re-created. In line with his aim in life,
he makes himself forego many of the worldly things he is dis-
posed to want; he thinks it quite improbable that he could ever
let go of the very self that wants those things. He is willing
to grant that Nature might some day produce a species superior
to man. He hopes it will happen, happen soon, for men, in his
view, have demonstrated their tragic incapacity to be the lords
of creation. But that Nature or God or any other power can
evolve new forms in us, can make of us, in being, in consciousness, virtually a new and superior species? No, says he. Not
on your life. Why hasn't it happened? What is God waiting for? -
until all the nations get hold of the atomic bomb and start
blasting each other?

Why indeed? If it is possible, if moreover it is the
life-purpose, why do not more human beings succeed in adding
that cubit to their statures? In view of the situation today-
which is, that unless more people do rise superior to themselves
the race of man may be wiped out - no question could be more
vital or more timely. Answers are suggested by what has been
said. The possibility is not sufficiently known, accepted,
prized. If mentioned, it is more often denied than affirmed -
and by our own denials we stop ourselves. If affirmed, there
is not enough desire and will behind the affirmation, not enough
sense of urgeance, not enough conviction that this is the way.
Too few people work for it. Too few know how to work for it.
And, even under the most favorable circumstances, attainment
is difficult. Due to the inner barrier, and to other factors
of our habitual condition including the tight congested con-

- 40 -

dition of our bodies, it is not easy to open oneself, but it
is still more difficult to transcend oneself. It is not easy
to create new forms in art, in government and industry, but it
is ever so much more difficult to create new forms in ourselves.

Yet difficulties are not absolute; they are relative to
strength and skill. Obstacles that are large to a child are
small to a man. Impediments that stop the powerless and un-
trained, yield to those of force and training. Skill, as we
know, is as important as power, sometimes more so. If your
efforts are implemented by effective methods, you can accom-
plish what a more forceful but less skilled man cannot. In
last analysis it is not the difficulties that stop us; it is
our lack of desire, and ability to cope with them. We will at-
tempt to attain any goal we prize. From this point of view,
then, the questions are - Why do not more of us know of this
goal, accept it, desire it? Why are not more of us trained
in this way?

I think that art, science, and religion, all three, are
or should be agents of the force of growth. They are means of
releasing and directing the actions of the inner forces. Their
function is to make known, by example and by evocation, that
it is possible to open ourselves, to draw something of that
life into this, to induce minor transformations. Their func-
tion too is to arouse the desire to do these things, and to
provide the training whereby the desire may become effective.
All three, in fine, enable us to prize the creative life, its
ends and means. Considering the chronic tightness of most
human beings, and the rigidity of the human situation, all

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three may be said to do a fairly good job in these several respects.

The same cannot be said of them as regards making the possibility of major transformations known and valued. Nor is it the function of art and science to do this. The artist's proper work, I think, is to draw upon and express human resources. Art trains and enables men to induce and express minor transformations. It can express major ones, as poetry in the hands of Dante did, but it cannot induce, nor does it primarily train for them. Individual scientists, like artists, do occasionally transcend themselves, but that is not what they are chiefly aiming for, that is not why they are scientists. Science, by definition and intent, steers clear of the immeasurable changes of the human consciousness and spirit.

Of the three large ways, religion alone is designed as a means to major transformations and new birth. In part, as we have noted, it too is concerned with minor transformations. But essentially it is or should be a way to the Source. Religion particularly is charged with the responsibility of making known, by example and by evocation, that it is possible to transcend ourselves, to transform out of this life into that. Its unique function is to kindle the desire to do this, and to provide the training. Is it so functioning today? Since the great founders passed from this earth, has it ever so functioned to any impressive extent?

As I understand it, each of the great teachings began as threefold instruments. They were instruments of good conduct, of social integration on an ethical basis. They were instruments of minor transformations, that is, of the creative life. And

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they were instruments of major transformations, that is, of
the peculiarly religious life. The third mentioned function
was actually the first. It was the heart and the power. It
gave an overall meaning and a long-range purpose to the others.
As for the religion founded by Christ, no one doubts that it
had an ethical function of the highest order. The evidence of
a creative function may not be as explicit, but I am sure that
it also was there. That the essentially religious function ex-
isted is made unmistakably clear by certain passages in the
gospels and epistles, for example, John's report of Christ's
sayings to the uncomprehending Nicodemus: Except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Except a man be born
of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom
of God. Ye must be born again.

It would seem that once Christianity left the hands of
its initiator, all three functions lost some of their purity
and power, and one or another of them was from time to time
discarded and forgotten. The one most often discarded was the
essential one. To be sure, Christians often failed to employ
the moral instrument, failed, that is, to practice the ethics
they preached; but they did at least continue to preach them.
Not so with the doctrine of new birth. They stopped preaching,
stopped teaching it, forgot it - or, they so misinterpreted it
that it would have been better had they forgotten it.

Through the centuries, as the records show, there have
always been some, relatively few, who kept the uniquely reli-
gious function alive by living it in their personal lives. At
intervals, it was rediscovered by a larger number, restored to

- 43 -

its place, and an attempt made to extend it to men at large. Such rediscovery and restoration was made, among others, by the Catholic mystics, and by the early Friends, George Fox, Robert Barclay, Isaac Penington, William Penn. Read the literature of the early Friends and you will have no doubt that their central aim was to promote transfiguration, a radical change into new beings born of God. Phrases such as "a new nature", "a new creation", "a spiritual birth", "Christ formed within", occur again and again with impressive authenticity. Read of their experiences and you will see that they practiced what they preached, and with results. And, from their own accounts and from what others have written of them, it will also be apparent that, by rediscovering and revitalizing the essentially religious function, they revitalized both the creative and moral functions.

Christians today? I do not know. They are a large and diverse body. C. S. Lewis in his "Beyond Personality", is assured that he expresses the officially held doctrines. In one place he writes:

> ...the difference between Biological life and Spiritual life is so important that I'm going to give them two distinct names. The Biological sort which comes to us through Nature, and which (like everything else in Nature) is always tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept up by incessent subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food etc., is Bios. The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which made the whole natural universe, is Zoe. Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoë: but only the sort of resemblance there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.

- 44 -

And that is just precisely what Christianity
is about. This world is a great sculptor's shop.
We are statues and there is a rumour going round
the shop that some of us are some day going to
come to life.

How excellent! But *is* this what Christianity is about,
now? Do any appreciable number of contemporary Christians
hold such ideas and aims? If so, then the essentially reli-
gious function is present as a doctrine. Do numbers of today's
Christians practice it? Are they actually working and living
to effect a change-over from *Bios* to *Zoe*, from statues to liv-
ing beings? Then the religious function is present as a prac-
tice. It may be so, but I doubt it. I doubt it because I
think that were it true, Christianity would be a transforming
force. Its moral and creative functions would be ever so much
more vital than they are. People would be different people and
we would live in a world of quite another character and atmos-
phere. We would see less people clinging to *Bios*, fighting
each other for those subsidies from Nature. We would see more
people opening to *Zoe*, cooperating for gifts from God. You
would feel religion in the air, as you now feel big business,
politics, and war. Religion, the real thing, would come to
meet you; you would not have to search for it; you would not
have to look for it as you do for a needle in a haystack.

I doubt it because I have not found it so in my experience.
With certain notable exceptions, the people of my acquaintance,
those of religious disposition both inside and outside of the
churches, hold no such doctrine, have no such aim, make no such
practice. The majority, in fact, would be as uninterested in
and as puzzled by C.S.Lewis's words as Nicodemus was by Christ's.

- 45 -

Ours is a time when the essentially religious function
has been discarded. Some, it is true, have a vague or mis-
taken idea of what it is - but of what use is that? On oc-
casion I have heard some supposedly religious people express
the view that we should not aim at self-transcendence be-
cause this makes us unworldly! They seem to think it a sin
to try to get out of the pit. They seem to believe that ex-
iles should remain exiles, statues remain statues, the blind
continue to try to lead the blind. The essentially religious
arm has been lopped off. The creative arm has withered. Only
the ethical arm remains, and it is none too vigorous. Alone
and under-exercised, the moral arm simply cannot cope with
this big, bad, hyperactive child - the modern world.

And now, to cap the climax, science, with the invention
of the atomic bomb, has given birth to the most ominous cloud
that has ever hung over men. Mankind is in an emergency ses-
sion. What will arise? Man himself must arise. We must rise
superior to ourselves. Human beings must be born anew. In
the words of Rufus Jones, there must be "under God a new birth
of life and power". The *atomic* bomb has not created this ne-
cessity; no inventions or acts of ours create it. It is in-
herent in the nature of man to need to grow and continue grow-
ing towards his own higher reality, towards the Reality we
call God. But the bomb, in the hands of unregenerate men,
certainly does emphasize the need.

Something more substantial than rumour must be spread
that we are going to come to life. It should be made known,

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now and at once, that we can and must come to life. Men at
large should be instructed as to what this means, and as to
the means thereto. The uniquely religious arm must be re-
stored to religion, for its own sake, and also as the only
way of revitalizing the creative and moral arms. Religion
as the instrument of radical change and transfiguration must
be taught again, proclaimed so as to evoke desire and catch
the imagination. Above all, we must discover these truths
through firsthand experience, and practice them. Living ex-
amples and living words - this is the demand, and the supply
must meet the demand.

It is essential that there be enough of those continu-
ing to grow to meet the need of everyone to continue growing.
It is urgent that there be enough transformed beings to aid
others towards transformation. There just must be enough re-
born beings standing there on the higher ground at the pit's
edge, ready to extend the hand that every climber needs to
grasp from time to time.

One simple thing might be done at once by all. Let us
daily remember the gist of it - *Ye must be born again*. New
birth is not the ultimate goal, The kingdom, God Himself, is
the ultimate goal. Christ makes this clear in his instruc-
tions. We are to be born again so that we may enter the king-
dom. But Christ makes it equally clear that new birth is the
only way thereto. New birth is what we must strive for; it is
what must happen to us, if we are to enter the kingdom. *Except*
a man is born of water and of the Spirit he *cannot* enter the

- 47 -

kingdom of God.

By self-transcendence we see the kingdom. By being born anew we enter the kingdom. Only when we rise on high can we realize that what we sought is also here below.

29

150

Only by being-moving is a man set free to evolve and develop.

The Universe attracted me. Drawn into it, I had a
sense that I was ascending. The Universe became increasing-
ly close; the Earth ever more remote. I was of the Universe -
and it was as if I had never been of the Earth. I was a being,
having no known place of origin, able to exist everywhere.

The remote Earth also attracted me. My attention, in
part, was definitely earthward bent. And so, in a way im-
possible to describe, I had a sense that I was descending
to that planet even as I was ascending to the larger world.
As I "came down", I had a panoramic view of this globe,
these earth-beings, these objects and forms.

Suddenly I felt - I have just landed here. I have
just alighted on this "L" platform. Here I am!

I looked around, newly, as if this had not happened
before. My impressions were incredibly vivid. They so far
surpassed all former ones that it seemed I was now having
my original meeting with the earthly sphere.

This is the Earth. These are earth-beings. This is
one of their cities. What a strange place! What strange beings!

I observed the various types of bodies, the houses,
the motor-cars, the streets, the electric lights. I took
in everything that met my eyes, and seemed not to understand
any of it. What I felt now was intense curiosity. It was an
entirely visual experience, a rapt observing unaccompanied by
interpretations. It was, perhaps, pure contemplation direc-
ted to an outward scene.

- 30 -

Presently, perceptions became linked with thoughts, impressions were translated into understandings. People were earth-bound, but were they in touch with the Earth? It did not appear so. They seemed unrelated to their globe. Bound, yet separated. Though they moved over its surface, there was no inter-penetration, no exchange of living forces. They might as well have been on the surface of a large shell made entirely of metal.

Body-bound, were they in touch with their bodies? Was the body a living thing to them? To me, as I watched bodies walking the streets, as I saw how rigidly they moved, how few their expressions, how set and confined their ways, it seemed that I was seeing not organisms but machines. Between the people and their machines there was no vital connection. Here it was again - bound, yet separated.

The Earth was in the Universe. So were people. Did they realize it? Not those I was observing. They were wrapped up in themselves, as if their heads were down and their arms wrapped tight around their bodies. In effect, they were existing outside the Universe. They were outsiders. Their lack of realization that they were in the cosmos shut them out. Through unconsciousness they were outcasts from the great life of the world - as they were from the life of their own beings.

Unrelated to the Earth, unrelated to their own bodies. Unrelated to their beings, unrelated to the Universe. Examples in every possible way. And they accepted that appraisal.

- 31 -

152

ling condition as a matter of course, as though it were
natural, and were content, or blindly discontent, to
mole along.

Newly come to Being, newly come to the Universe,
and to the Earth, I was a newcomer in every sense, inex-
perienced in my new birth, without sure bearings.

As I voyaged further into this new life, I left be-
hind for a while, every even remotely familiar thing. It
was as though my body had dropped dead, so that I was com-
pletely released from it. I no longer had even that strange
small link. I soared up and away, out of reach of the Earth
and its beings.

I penetrated a vast unknown, a formless world of
formless life, wherein I seemed to be the only definite
entity. To my perceptions there was no other being of my
kind or any kind, no finite living thing. It was as a great
field of living force that flowed without obstruction. It
was as an ocean of life without waves, without creatures,
without markers, sky or horizon - limitless.

I felt - I have died, and I am the only soul alive.

I have passed away, yet exist. Lifted up, moving,
I know not how or where. On I must go, carried by the
surge of my incredible resurrection.

It seemed I was in the illimitable reservoir of life
before it is poured into moulds. I was as a lone traveller

- 32 -

153

in a living desert where there was no night or day but a
constant diffused radiance. How I had come to this track-
less expanse I did not know; but I had a sense that I had
somehow gained admittance to a sphere that beings dare
not penetrate. A voice in me said - You better go back.

I felt myself to be the first being ever to enter
this awesome realm. Struck with awe, with a kind of
terror, I wanted to close my eyes, hide.

No one knew I had started on this voyage, nor ex-
pected my return. No one awaited my arrival anywhere.
I had checked out of the inhabited world, departed on a
journey watched over neither by man nor God. I was on
my own; and on and on I went through a mighty sweep of
luminous vitality. I felt destined to press on, forever
without companionship, without communication, without
guide or map, through the unmarked ways of this awesome
Universe of Life.

- 33 -

VI VI Down to Earth

How long had my body been standing on that platform?
All I know is that when I again became aware of the earth-
ly sphere, people were still abroad on the streets of their
city, but fewer of them. It may have been near the time
called midnight by earth-beings.

How did the thought come that I might as well move
body away from the railing, onto a train, and into the
apartment on 23rd Street? The idea did present itself,
but only as an amusing and rather fantastic notion. Walls
of brick, chairs, bed, bathroom - that, my home? Mine, that
small accumulation of earthly belongings? Those rooms and
their contents were as unrelated to me as a rodent's burrow
to a flying bird. Certainly not for myself, nor for my
body either, could I see any reason for going there.

Body did not need a hole to crawl into. Then why move
that inconsequential object? Let it remain where it was in-
definitely. Or, if it wanted to change place, let it go
anywhere. Yet, just those rooms were its place. If it
didn't return it would be missed. People would become con-
cerned and start a search for the "missing" body. So why
not go there? Wherever it was, whatever it did, however
body fared, I would continue being, growing, adventuring in
the Universe. I knew this so surely that I could not take
body and its circumstances seriously, one way or the other.
Outdoors or indoors, what difference? Here or there -

- 34 -

Could I move it? This question somewhat startled me. Here was an entirely new angle of the situation. It seemed to me that body would not move of its own accord. If it were to be done I'd have to do it. Could I? I became quite curious, and tried. For the first time since entering Being I tested my ability to control my earthly appendage. It worked! In some mysterious way my body obeyed me, its arms and legs moving as bid. It seemed as light as a feather. But how were my commands communicated to it? Why did it follow my orders? Incredible! I proceeded to manipulate it, like a boy with a newly acquired toy.

The next thing was to move body away from the railing. Get going, my friend. It did! It made ready to board the next train. Strange fascinating body! I watched it walk. I was aware of it moving somewhat below and in front of me.

A thought struck me. Inasmuch as I was newly come to this planet, it was lucky that I was in league with a body that had been born and reared here. It spoke the language and knew how to get about. A number of other bodies were its friends. It had money in its pockets, more in the bank. Not bad at all. We'd get along quite well.

A train drew up. Body and I got on. Though not a bit tired from standing in one place so long, it sat down on a seat that ran lengthwise. Across the aisle was a similar seat occupied here and there by other bodies. Facing them, I was getting my first close-up view of earth-beings. I looked intently at them. They glanced casually at me, or,

- 35 -

to be exact, at my body. They could no more see me than
I could them.

I thought to myself - You never really know what
state of consciousness another is in. You but assume that
others are in the same state as yourself - unless something
has happened to make you realize that different states are
possible. Otherwise, it simply does not occur to you that
there may be difference. Even should the idea come to mind,
how would you find out? By what sign or signs could you
ascertain whether a human being were in the waking or in the
Being-Conscious state? The man beside you on a train, one
passing on the street, someone at the next table in a res-
taurant, might be in Cosmic Consciousness itself, and
you'd not suspect it.

It was fun looking at people from my new vantage point.
It was thrilling just to exercise my new faculties: to gather
impressions, to think, to feel, to wonder, as a being.

Suddenly I stopped having fun. What I saw bit into me.
The grimy bodies of these beings, the haggard faces, the
pained sullen eyes, the weariness, the hopelessness. How
terrible they had fared. And these were beings. They were
beings of the Universe. Somewhere in them was the wonderful
Power - and they had lost out. But why, how? What destruc-
tive force, within them or without, was strong enough to
neutralize or counteract the operations of the inward power?
Precisely what pushed them down, making them lose all sense

- 36 -

of who they were, shrinking their souls, cramping and twisting their bodies? Feelings of outrage and sorrow gathered in me again.

Above the heads of my fellow passengers was a line of ads running the length of the car: cough remedies, dental nostrums, headache cures, skin beautifiers, hair tonics, aids to digestion, reliefs for constipation. I winced at the thought that these were not so much advertisements of merchandise as of the various ailments afflicting the poor people seated beneath them.

One man, happening to glance my way, seemed curious. He kept looking as though trying to size me up. Evidently he was scrutinizing my body only, assuming that he was thereby taking my measure. No doubt of it, he was equating my body with myself. What a queer sensation it gave me to be taken for my body when I was so starkly aware that I was a being.

Suppose you were carrying an umbrella and saw someone looking at it, taking it to be your body. Or suppose a man looked at your chest but believed he was seeing your face. Not only would you have queer sensations; you would know that should that person have dealings with you he would behave at variance with your reality and with his own better intelligence. Whether he meant to or not, he would mistreat you, and himself.

I now knew that should the man across the aisle have occasion to deal with me he would behave at variance with

- 37 -

158

my and his reality. I further saw that this was just what people were continually doing to each other, in so far as they were unaware of themselves as beings and took the body to be the man. Here on this train were samples of the results. The bodies of men and women, as well as their beings, suffered mistreatment resulting from the fact that people were body-aware, being-blind.

When the train stopped at 23rd Street, body and I got off. Down we went to the street level on which I had seen the bodies of earth-beings walking across the surface of the Earth, horizontally.

Though body still seemed strange and off there, I found that we were becoming more connected. How easily, how happily it moved. As I was above and behind it, I not only was aware of its every movement but experienced a sense of leverage over it. It seemed, in fact, that I had complete control of it. At the same time and as never before I recognized it as a self-moving organism. Quite evidently it had its own springs of action, its own mysterious life.

As body walked the half block to number 439, the whole Universe was open to me, and I to the Universe, and I felt an immense freedom. I had this sense - Body walks on the Earth, I move through the Universe. I am in Life limitless and unobstructed.

We came to the house. Body got out the key, opened the door, and we entered. It was as though I were seeing the interior of an earth-being's dwelling for the first time;

- 38 -

the dimly lit hallway, the closed doors along it, the
stairs to the second floor. I had this awareness - This
house, the people in it, all houses, all people, the Earth
and everything on it, are in the Universe.

Body went upstairs, used another key, and we were in
the apartment. Keys, locks, doors, walls - said I to myself
with a chuckle - Earth-beings keep things locked up.

Body walked in and stood still. The room seemed
strangely quiet, vacant, uninhabited. A hush was upon
everything as though something mysterious were about to happen.

I looked around, amazed. I had seen this room before,
yet I hadn't. I, in another condition, had seen it. I, in
this condition, never had.

How small it seemed. Hardly large enough for a pygmy.
I was as a full grown man returning to a place he had known
as a child. Could it be possible that I, in any condition,
had lived here and regarded it as "home"? Was it I, who
not many hours before, had left this room to go uptown with
a friend?

Small the room was, but the great Universe came in.
Walls might exclude the outside world fashioned by men; they
did not exclude the Universe, but were penetrable curtains
in it - little limits within the limitless. Though body was
here in its shelter, I was as much in the vast spread of
creation, and as exposed, as when body had been out in the
open on the "L" platform.

So this was the inside of a house, one's own private

- 39 -

160

quarters, where, presumably, one could live to himself
without others seeing you and interfering. No, the eyes
of men could not see you. The eyes of Life? I had a sense
that just as I was aware of being in a vast Life, so Life
was aware of me being in it. I was connected with Con-
sciousness. It was a two-way relationship, with a constant
stream of communications passing between the small and great
poles. I saw and was seen. I moved and was moved upon, re-
gistered and was recorded. More surely than I knew I was
within the Universe, the Universe knew that I and all beings
and all things were within it, interconnected.

Of a sudden I felt affection and pity for this room
and its things: the couch and chairs, the work table with
its typewriter, the dark orange curtains at the windows.
It was the place that had belonged to my dead self. It was
the special place where that self had lived what it believed
to be its private life, where it had gone about its self-
given work and, indeed, tried to improve itself, tried to
make contact with what it dreamed to be reality. Yes, here
it had dreamed and, if I remembered aright, here, in its
terms, it had loved. And now that self was as dead as its
illusions. A segment of my life was represented by this
place, several years of unconsciousness.

Body and I moved about, looking at things, discover-
ing them as it were. The toilet, which body promptly made
use of; the shaving articles, which it would use the next day;
the pots and pans and food in the kitchenette. We clicked
the typewriter, picked up and replaced the phone. In the

- 40 -

161

bedroom there was the bed that body had slept upon many a
night. And all was new and strange. Yes, I, in another
condition, had seen these things; but I, in this condition,
was seeing them now for the first time. I was not unlike an
archeologist making "finds" on the site of an ancient city.

When body sat down in a chair, I recognized with some
surprise that neither it nor I was the least tired or sleepy.
It seemed that I had come upon an inexhaustable spring of
quiet energy. I felt I could remain awake, without need of
rest of any kind, as long as I remained in existence.

Then what introduced the idea that it would be just
as well to get a bit of sleep, and why did I take the notion
seriously? All I know is that at the thought of going to
sleep I was suddenly touched with a self-concern like that
which grips the personal self.

Suppose that while I slept my being were to leave me,
my consciousness to disappear, and when I awoke in the morn-
ing I'd find myself an ordinary person again? Could I be-
come ordinary again? It did not seem possible. Yet it
might happen. Suppose it did. I'd kick myself for not
having stayed awake to enjoy this consciousness longer.
Imagine forfeiting this wonderful experience for the sake
of a few hours sleep which I did not need!

But was my new condition so volatile that it would
vanish if and because I slept? Then no matter what I did,
it would disappear before long. It wasn't mine. It wasn't
mine to hold or relinquish. Given me by Grace when I least

- 41 -

162

expected it, it would continue for its time, and would be
taken away when Grace saw fit.

So be it. I decided to sleep.

As I reached this decision there arose a glowing
sense of what the experience had already revealed. It was
not in me to ask for more. My high consciousness might pass;
memory of what I had discovered through it would remain. My
being might vanish, but the realizations that had come through
it would continue in my life, whatever came to pass. Grati-
tude welled up. With my whole self I was grateful to the
Nameless for what had been granted me this night of my life,
this day of my being. And now, for the first time, I had a
feeling of what my findings might mean to other beings of
the Earth. Perhaps some day I would try to communicate them.

Body went into the bedroom, hung its coat in the clo-
set. I was aware - this coat, this closet, are in the Uni-
verse. Body removed its shoes and pushed them under a chair -
in the Universe.

As body got into bed I had the sense - all bodies,
all houses, all cities, the lands and waters, this planet
and the myriad stars, are in the Universe.

As I settled down and knew that sleep would soon be
upon me, I felt an irrepressible expectancy and hope. At
the center of my heart was the question - To what will I
awake?

I dropped off into an unusually tranquil sleep.

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163

## VII Comments

Please regard this as a parenthetical chapter. The description of the unfolding experience will be continued in the next. Here, I would like to comment on certain features and meanings of the events already recounted.

### Thier in the Night

Others have testified that experiences of this kind came upon them without warning. So I testify, It came as a thief in the night. How else could it come, since I had been sleeping; since, though I may have been awake to the life in front of my eyes, I was asleep to the life behind my eyes?

Even though we may be aiming towards a deeper life and a larger being, we habitually exist more asleep than awake. Though we may be trying to contact reality, still are we dreaming. So it must be that, when given what we ask for, we are taken by surprise and are at first incredulous.

But what an extraordinary thief! It steals nothing, it gives everything, It takes nothing of any importance, it makes a gift of the priceless.

### The Power

We build ships and bridges, write books, compose music, engage in scientific research, and, with some reason, call this creative work. Yet with our best efforts we do not and cannot of ourselves give rise to a living organism even of

- 43 -

the most elementary kind, much less to a higher form of life.
How then are we to regard the work of the Power that gives
rise to a new man, in a new being, and higher consciousness?
Surely this, above all others, is creative work. Surely
the Power is the creative force itself.

Miraculous Power! Knowing and fore-knowing, fully
conscious, it is completely able to accomplish its intricate
creations. Right, pure, perfect, it is the sacred source
from which we stem - and we are blind to its existence until
it opens our eyes. To behold it is to venerate it. To ex-
perience it is to know without doubt that there is that of
God in every man.

## Surrender

Surrender is the path to greatness. We must let go
of the separated self if we are to be joined with Man and
God. We have to lay down the egotistical will in order to
be directed by the Life Will. We must loosen our hold upon
the body if to be taken by the spirit. We have to discard
the false to recognize the real. We must relax our grip on
the part if we are to be included in the whole. In fine, we
must lose our life to find our Life.

These are true sayings. They are true in that they
point to the kind of effort we must make, to the kind of
results we must obtain if we are to change, to develop and
expand, to transform. But they may be misunderstood.

They might be taken to mean that we, relying solely
upon our ordinarily available forces, are called upon to do

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165

all the work. It might seem that it is possible for us,
by our wills alone, completely to surrender - and that only
after we have utterly surrendered will a greater life break
in upon us. According to my experience, it does not work
this way.

As everyone knows, the act of surrender is incomplete
unless it involves not only a giving up but a receiving, not
only a disavowal but an acceptance, not only a letting go of
the old but a new taking hold. There are and must be two
parties to the contract, both present, both willing, both
actively doing their parts.

By effort you may have somewhat worn down the sepa-
rated self, pried yourself loose from it, but it will not
be finally overcome until your real being takes you into it-
self. As far as it lies within your power you may have re-
nounced the world for the sake of God's kingdom, but there
you will be, without a world, without a life, unless God
receives you.

Your opening to God may be the condition of His accep-
ting you, but His acceptance is as necessary as your opening.
There must be this reciprocal action. Then and only then can
there be complete surrender. You cannot do it alone.

The risk we take is that, having done our utmost, we
may have to wait a long time, in a state of deadness, before
the higher powers act, for these powers act on their own
initiative in their own time. The hope we have is that God's
life will break in upon us somewhere along the way, it causing

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a complete break with everything contrary to it. Though we seek the greater Life, it is the greater Life that finds us, and only then do we really leave the lesser. The whole must be in the act of including us before we can finally let go of the part. The real must take firm hold of us before we can step clean out of the false.

As said, there are two parties to the contract: myself and the Other, yourself and the Other, each human being and the Other. Our part is to make right effort: to try to let go, to free ourselves, to prepare to surrender. No change is likely to occur without such effort. It is made, however, chiefly by use of the will, and the only will available is the personal will. At best, this will is a limited power. If enlightened, the most it can do is to pry the person loose from certain things. It may break some habits, and weaken attachments to some outward things. It may change certain thoughts, feelings, beliefs. But give itself up? Surrender itself to a higher will? Release its hold on the man? Evidently the personal will cannot let go either of itself or of the man - and it is just this will that, in last analysis, binds the man to all he would transcend. So the Other must act if we are to be liberated.

Only a higher will, acting directly upon the lower, can dissolve it. Only a greater power can make the self-powers relinquish their hold. Only the true inward master can dispose of the false inward master.

If and as the Other acts, effort is superseded by the effortless, trying gives way to accomplishment, hesita-

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tion is overpowered by the irresistible. We do not surren-
der, but in joy are surrendered. We do not claim, but are
claimed.

Rightness

From first to last throughout the experience I had
the deep knowing: This, though utterly strange, is utterly
right.

Some others have reported that on entering a higher
state they felt righteousness. George Fox wrote, "I knew
nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness."
Perhaps he and I experienced different conditions, or it may
be that different terms are used to describe similar condi-
tions. I prefer the term rightness. It more accurately in-
dicates what I experienced. It gives a clearer conception
of the state that I think we ought to be striving for. It
is less subject to misunderstanding and abuse. Righteous-
ness has come to indicate personal moral feelings and judg-
ments. Rightness, in my meaning, refers to a beyond-the-
personal condition of life, to sheer right-being, right-
functioning, right-living.

What could be more clear and to the point than the
commandment, "Be right." There is no doubt that you and I
are to strive to enter the condition that is proper for us
as beings, that we are to make effort to be right and to
exist rightly in our relations with other human beings, with
Nature and with God. Whereas if I am told, "Be righteous,"
I may believe that I am to become holier than thou, sit in

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judgment of my fellows, and feel indignant whenever anyone
goes contrary to my code, creed, or custom.

Rightness is not possible to men in exile. For in
exile we are literally "in wrong". But we become right in
proportion as we move from exile towards Being.

## Absence and Presence

In the absence of the Right, men can only do what
seems right to them. Therefore there are as many rights
as there are men. Confusion and conflict result. Thinking
we are doing right, we do wrong. So there are as many wrongs
as there are men.

In the absence of the Law, men can only do what seems
lawful to them. Therefore there are as many laws as there
are men, and men are lawless.

In the absence of the True, men can only invent what
is true for them. For each man there is a different truth.
For all men there are the same falsehoods.

In the absence of the Will, men can only exercise
their own wills. Therefore there are as many wills as there
are men, and strife is inevitable.

In the absence of the Power, men can only use their
powers. Each man seeks his own power, and the result is
warfare.

Those in exile experience absence - the absence of
reality which is illusion, the absence of wisdom which is
ignorance, the absence of love which is irritation, the ab-
sence of beauty which is meanness, the absence of Being which

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is egotism.

In exile, we are out of what we should be in - in
what we should outgrow. Out of unity, we are in separatism.
Out of consciousness, we are in unconsciousness. Out of
good we are in evil.

Man's main need should be man's main work. Our chief
need is to absent ourselves from what we are now present in,
and to place ourselves in what we are now absent from. In
the midst of violence we must seek the harmless. In the midst
of crime we must seek conscience. In the midst of untruth we
must seek the truth. This is the way.

This is the way of moving from pain to happiness, from
many hates to the one Love, from myriads of separated crea-
tures to the one Being, from legions of illusions to the one
Reality.

Finding Oneself

Most of us, if we have the opportunity, try our hands
at one thing and another, seeking the work that is ours, seek-
ing the self that is our self. How difficult it is to find
oneself - to find oneness. There are so many people in each
person, so many different parts and sides. These, often in
conflict, comprise what we call the individual. Each of us
has a good and a bad side. These two, though existing in the
one human being, are utter strangers to each other; they
never meet. Each of us has a "front" and an "interior" which,
to put it mildly, are dissimilar. Each of us plays different
roles in different circumstances. To mention these is but to

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note the more obvious of our many selves.

I remember May Sinclair making similar observations about a character in one of her novels, a Mr. Rickman. Was it any wonder, she asked, that Mr. Rickman had not yet found himself, since there were so many Mr. Rickmans: Rickman the bookseller, Rickman the student and recluse, the humble and reverent human being, the young man about town, a serene intelligence, an amiable commonplace fellow, Rickman the genius. "In short", she wrote, "it was a very confusing state of affairs, and one that made it almost impossible for Mr. Rickman to establish his identity. Seven Rickmans - only think of it! And some reckon an eighth, Mr. Rickman drunk. But this was not altogether fair; for intoxication acted rather on all seven at once, producing in them gentle fusion with each other and the universe. They had ceased to struggle."

The many dramatis personae, a small sized mob in each one of us, civil war going on much of the time - this is what we experience daily. Or, if not, it is only because we are blinded by the illusion of unity. Others see the many people in us, if we don't. Others are aware of the contradictions and conflicts.

How may these selves be reconciled? Certainly not by drink, the case of Mr. Rickman notwithstanding. Not by any ordinary means.

Which of these is the true self? We incline to believe that one is. The truth is that no one of them is. The true self is behind and above all the various selves that ordinarily come to the fore. Only when we enter the one-behind-

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the-many do we really find ourselves. Only then are we uni-
fied, harmonized. Some of the selves into which we were
divided, disappear, and the others become the coordinated
abilities of the one being.

True and False Self-Centeredness

Without true self, we are without true center. We
cannot center in a void. No vital base is to be found in
our false and shifting selves. Egotists are supposed to be
self-centered. Are they? It is true that they are wrapped
up in themselves, or rather, in what is not themselves, in
a psychic stuff compounded of illusion, arrogance, prejudice,
etc. What center have they? They are mostly surface. Com-
paring myself as a being with myself as an egotist it seemed
that when in that other condition I had had no inward sub-
stance at all. I had spun around a hollow.

If without real base, how can you be self-supporting?
If without a central self, how can you be self-dependent?
This explains the apparent paradox that the more egotistical
a man is the more he uses others and is dependent upon cir-
cumstance. If you dwell on the surface of yourself, you are
necessarily unbalanced and are readily toppled over. So
you cling to others for support.

Egotists are said to be selfish. Indeed they are.
They are insatiably selfish because no amount of things can
possibly fill the void within them. Though they gobble up
the world they are dissatisfied. A man's greed is the
measure of his emptiness.

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Find your real self and you have a self to center in.
Your center of gravity is properly placed within you, and
stabilized. You become established in a density of being.
The feeling of surety arising from a right inward condition
is the only genuine security we human beings can experience.

If not established inwardly, we are shaken. Shaken,
we feel insecure. Insecure, we fear. But we seldom re-
cognize this causation. We believe that external things
are the cause; so we resort to external means as the cure:
jobs, land, income, insurance, government. Consider how
much of the world's business owes its existence - and profits -
to the fact that people are inclined to seek security in al-
most everything except themselves.

## The Unborn

Those within the body of the mother. But not those
only. All who are still encased in their own bodies, en-
wrapped in the ordinary world.

The race of men has remained unborn so long! Surely
a second birth will come to all, as it has to some.

## The Imprisoned

Those in jail, in concentration camps. Those too
who are confined in the false ego, caught in a psychic
stuff whose shackles will not yield to keys and saws, whose
doors will not open simply on our say-so.

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173

Who puts us in this prison, and why? What crime
have we committed? How long is our term? Will it cure
or make us worse?

Men get out of material prisons every day, some
because they are pardoned, some by escaping. Few get out
of the ego-prison.

This is a solitary confinement. Each peers through
his bars and sees others peering through theirs. Sometimes
we are allowed to mix; and when we do, something wonderful
may happen. More often, however, we but show what prison-
life has done to us. We flare up at the least provocation.
We vent our frustrations. We are mean to each other because
we want to be mean. We are brutal because we want to be
brutal. Few think of freedom. Most want to get into a
position of advantage over their fellow prisoners.

In time, we come to like our bars and want to keep
them. We want to keep our private bars: covetousness, con-
ceit, prejudice, false beliefs. We want to keep the public
bars too, the bars of nationality, color, class, caste,
creed. We penalize whoever would break them down and free us.

## The Uprooted

Those divorced from the soil, taken from their home
communities, snatched from their ancestral ways. But a more
basic uprooting is suffered by all who are divorced from
their inner resources, whatever their outward circumstances.
It is suffered by all who are separated from the spirit, and
strangers to the way of their own beings.

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Can the inwardly disconnected become outwardly
connected? Can the spiritually uprooted become socially
rooted? Can people, each one dismembered within himself,
constitute an organic society? Quite a few, closing their
eyes to the evidence, believe it is possible. Some, so
they think, are making or are going to make it happen by
means of blueprints, machines, and force. Look at man's
world and you have the answer. Look at yourself.

Uproot a plant and it dies. Men, uprooted, are par-
tially alive. This must mean that with us the separation
is not complete: at least one link remains. The sensible
thing to do, it seems to me, is to nourish and strengthen
this link. Our partial life is at this end of it. May not
our whole life be at the other?

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175

VIII First Morning

Dawn came - another day on Earth.

Bright sunlight entered the room in which my body
lay. I awakened and was wide awake. I was in Consciousness.
How perfectly extraordinary. The experience had not vanished
while I slept. It continued!

I looked around the room that was somehow familiar
yet not quite probable. What was this place, this little
cubicle? How had I come to be in it of all the places in
the Universe?

I listened. The noises of trucks lumbering along
the street outside came as from a valley to one high on a
hill. Though the street sounds gave me an idea that the
city was going about its affairs as usual, I had a strong
impression that all of it was a make-believe.

Men, with the range of experience possible to men,
narrowing themselves down to truck-driving? They couldn't
be doing it seriously. Human beings, rich in their own re-
sources, hurrying to shops, factories, offices as if that
were the sole purpose of their life and they were destined
never to do anything else? Beings of the Universe focused
on doing business as if earthly commerce was their full
life's work?

Since body was in bed, let it lie. For my purposes
it need not get up. I was already up, in Being.

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176

There came to me a sense of what I had experienced
the night before, and as vivid a sense of what might unfold
this day. Never had the promise of coming outer events so
quickened me with anticipation as this prospect of coming
inner events. Not as a child on Christmas morning had I
been so thrilled by what was in store.

Body, of its own accord, presently got up. As it
moved about the rooms I was in a glow as radiant as sunlight.
Joy possessed me. Not a mere absence of pain or sorrow, but
joy itself, a singing gladness. I could have sung the Lord's
song, for I felt close to His land.

All morning I was in this sheer being. I came to be
aware of life as a sacred process moving towards the kingdom.
I also had an intimation that though the kingdom, as the goal
of the entire evolutionary trend, is distant, as an expression
of God's life it is at hand, everywhere, always. One need
not go far to find it; one need not labor for it as men labor
to build their cities and empires; one has simply to open his
heart.

Meanwhile there were other events, comparatively minor
but more readily described. On this morning, as on others,
my body followed its routine for beginning a day. And I, in-
terested in its behavior, somewhat surprised to see that its
habits were seemingly unaffected by what had happened to me,
observed it. There was a noticeable difference in my rela-
tion to it. Though still nonattached, I seemed closer to it.
There was a new nearness. Body was more real to me, and in
a sense, more "mine". Also it seemed not so small, more
"life-size".

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177

The force that had taken me out of and far away from
body, now seemed to be returning me to it. Curious about
these changes, I did not really question them. Only later
did the meaning become clear. During the first night I had
reached the maximum disassociation; already on this first
morning a set of new connections was being established. I
was re-taking my body. It was becoming, in a new way, an
integral part of me. It was becoming, to me and in fact,
an instrument of my being - a means of contact, not a con-
finement, an ability, not a liability.

As my body appeared more life-size, so did these
rooms. My rooms? No, not that. Not now, not ever while
I remained in Being, did I come to regard these quarters as
mine. They were body's shelter. Their furnishings were the
belongings of my impossible dead self.

Nearer to my body, I was also in closer contact with
the things of its world. Continuing to see earth-objects
as earth-objects, they no longer seemed so far down there,
but were more on the same level. I was sort of surprised
to find them here and was pleased with the thought that my
presence surprised them.

Suddenly I experienced the things of these rooms with
wonderful immediacy, as though I were in direct communica-
tion with them, appreciating them.

The tingle of water was upon my body as it stood under
the shower. Suddenly I felt - Water! The wonder of water!
I looked at it with new eyes - touched it with new hands.
I experienced water with a feeling of regard akin to tenderness.

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178

The cloth of the towel that body used to dry itself was almost a living thing. I recognized it as an entity with a character of its own. So with the metal of faucets, the wood of chairs, the flannel of trousers, the leather of shoes...

Breakfast was the first food eaten since I had entered Being-Consciousness. A small quantity sufficed; the quality stood out. An orange, milk, rolls, coffee, each disclosed its unique vital personality.

This keen contact with the Earth's materials came and went. But during the following days the experience was renewed often enough so that I came to understand the extraordinary communication there can be between beings and things. What meaning in the simplest relationships!

When a man opens and awakes he becomes real to himself. When he becomes real to himself the world becomes real to him. The outer world of Nature is discovered to be as marvelous as the inner world of Being; the real physical as wonderful as the real spiritual. Each is revealed as an order of reality.

But those closed to themselves are closed to the world. Those not yet born to their own beings are not awake to the things of the world. The unquickened in spirit are unquickened to spirit and to things. They do not make contact. They do not appreciate. Are they "materialists"? Then they are very poor ones.

Breakfast finished, body did something quite contrary to habit. It washed the dishes right away. Usually they were stacked, because in my former condition the morning hours had been the best time for what I referred to as "my

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179

work", and I wanted to get to work first thing. So I used to go to the typewriter; dishwashing was not allowed to interfere. My feelings of whether the morning had been spent profitably or futilely had depended upon how the writing progressed.

Now, it was quite all right with me that body was at the kitchen sink instead of at the Corona. Now I had a new work that had begun the night before and was proceeding. Now I had a wonderful occupation that progressed of itself, neither helped nor hindered by body's particular job. Now I functioned as I had never dreamed possible. As body washed the dishes, I was growing in being and in consciousness. What more important work? As body dried the dishes I was discovering, meeting, circulating. What more important doing? As body put the dishes in the cupboard I was moving nearer to the Presence that interweaves the Universe. Of all occupations this is chief.

I was *being*. Therefore I was *doing*. Being and doing are not different things, but one and the same. It is impossible really to be without doing. It is impossible really to do without being. There is one thing: being-doing. If you have the one you have the other. If you lack the one you lack the other. When one is in being, being-doing proceeds whether the body is active or quiet. It may or may not express through the body. The body may or may not contribute its experiences to the total experience. The inter-relationship between being and body may enhance both but it hinders neither.

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180

This is what it means to be body-free. One knows that bodily action is not the only kind of action, nor is it the most important. One does not equate doing with physical doing, or with mental doing. One knows that there is being-doing, and that both physical and mental doing have meaning just in proportion as they are impelled by and in-fused with being-doing. One is not dependent upon the body for one's experiences. One is able to let body have its life because one has one's being-life.

Curiously enough, though body-free I did not feel free of it. It was as if I had never been bound to it. I say curiously enough, but there was nothing unaccountable about it. When a man walks through the prison gate and knows he is at liberty he feels free because he has just come from confinement and emotionally remembers how he felt when confined. He has a basis for emotional contrast. I had none. I had no remembered sensations of the body-bound condition. It was as though that condition had never existed. Besides, the man set at liberty from a jail is the same man who was confined, with much the same consciousness. He who was imprisoned is now free. There is a continuity of "he". But I was in a different being. There was no continuity of "me". It is questionable if the being of my present experience had at any time been body-bound. More likely it had always been "free". Now I was in its native condition.

When body finished its job at the sink it strolled around the living room, pausing at the work-table. I looked at the pile of manuscripts. Those papers! What labor had

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181

gone into them! Out of curiosity I picked up a page, read,
it, put it down. Could it be possible that I, for months
past, had tried to function by that means? Had I really
believed that those words would convey something of worth
to other human beings? Truly the blind try to lead the blind.

I took up a book with a bit of paper in it for a mar-
ker. I, in that other condition, had been reading it only
the day before. Doubtless it had meant something to me or
I wouldn't have marked it. Neither did this seem possible.
Near the book was an ash-tray filled with cigarette stubs.
That fellow had smoked, doubtless feeling he needed to smoke.
Close by stood a comfortable chair, showing signs of having
been used by the same fellow. It was like coming upon a
man's room left just as it was before he died.

Here was a situation! These were his belongings, not
mine. Yet not his, for he was no more. He had gone, leaving
neither will nor heirs. To whom then did these things belong?
The laws of men were hardly adapted to handing down a decision
in a case like this.

The phone rang. I talked briefly with someone who
thought he had business with the "me" that I knew to be
among the departed. A woman came in to clean the rooms.
Body got out of her way. I continued being.

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182

IX Let Be

Could I express in this part of the record, the increase of my awareness of God's Universe, this writing might convey something of the atmosphere of the original experience; and other matters would be seen in true proportion. Lesser things would not be given a prominence greater than they actually had at the time.

My difficulty is also due in some measure to the fact that during the early phases of the experience there were some features at the very heart of it which were not yet manifest enough to be communicable. The time came when these features, indeed the heart itself, were quite revealed. When we reach that phase I shall try to put it into words. It will be found in the chapter, "The Brilliant Brotherhood".

For the present I shall continue to trace the progress of my new relationship to body and to things. This will lead to new contacts with people. The presentation will be given in some detail because my aim is to describe not only the high points but to delineate, as far as possible, the entire condition of Being-Consciousness, as I experienced it. I am convinced that Being-Consciousness is our normal life-condition. If it is, then obviously we should come to know all aspects of it. It is important that we see how we would change if we entered it, change in our relation to the great things and also to the small things that loom so large in our subnormal life. To this end, each of us is called upon, I feel, to contribute his full findings.

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183

As to my new relation to body and to things, I should mention that it means more to me now than it did at the time because, having thought about it over a period of years, I more clearly recognize its bearing on the general human situation; also because it is something I have lost and desire to regain. At the time, it was the only possible relationship - a natural aspect of my whole condition. Now body-bound, I regard it as a man in prison regards a remembered freedom.

Today I may say of my body: Here it is, let it be. So saying I will be trying to adopt the attitude that inevitably existed when I was body-free. But do it? I cannot.

Bound to it, I must get what I want through it. So I coax it, prod and drive it, push it around, or try to make it be quiet. So I also coax and coerce surrounding bodies, and may even try to bring pressure to bear on bodies miles and miles away. So do all who are body-bound. We are continually nagging at each other for one thing or another. We prick each other mildly or violently. In a word, we are busybodies. Some are harmless, some harmful. We coerce, exploit, enslave. Men are not wolves or jackals; we are not beasts of prey in that sense; but some men, psychologically, are the only beasts of prey on earth. Is it any wonder that I see a large human meaning in the fact that there was a time when I really did let my own and other bodies be?

Nor will my body let me be. Today it is almost the opposite of what it was then. Now it tends to be a confine-

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ment rather than a means of contact, a liability instead
of an ability. If it is out of order I must overcome it
daily, and it often is. Measures must be employed to im-
prove its functioning in the hope of improving the function-
ing of what is referred to as "me". Whatever its condition,
good or bad, its states influence and often determine what
I think and feel and the extent to which I can be. Its de-
sires color my life. Its appetites bend me to gratify them.
Can it be true, I sometimes ask, that there ever was a time
when it really let me be?

Now I look forward to bodily pleasure, recoil from
prospects of bodily pain. I have some dread of the violence
that might be done my body by other bodies. How the body
will fare is to most of us, if not a constant obsession,
certainly a tenacious cause of anxiety. Is it possible that
I was ever free of hope and fear as to its fate? Can any man
be that free?

Mine, I think, was a minor state of freedom compared
to what some men have attained. There are records of those
who achieved such freedom that they remained free even though
their bodies were tortured.

Today I may say of things: Here they are, let them
be. Or: Here they aren't, what matter? Oh yes, I can say
it, but not do it. Though not passionately attached, I have
a lively desire for certain things, and an active wish not to
desire certain others. Or I feel I ought to do something
about them - polish up this, get rid of that, collect, put
in the attic, store in a trunk. I do not love money, but my

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relationship to that alluring thing of no intrinsic value
is by no means completely detached.

Sane people recognize that man's addiction to things
is a trouble-maker. But whence comes the addiction? Things
obviously do not cause it. Things, like man himself, are
the victims of it. Something wrong within man must be the
basic cause of his wrong relations with the surrounding world.

While free of the body and of the personal self I was,
in consequence, free of the internal condition that gives
rise to wrong external relations. So complete was my libera-
tion that I had to make effort even to remember that I had
ever coveted, or willed not to covet, the goods of the earth.
I let things be. Since the rooms were furnished, let body
use what it needed. Let me appreciate things as materials.
For the rest, I was non-related. It was an absence of both
positive and negative attitudes, an absence of relationship.
Had someone come in and said he wanted everything that I,
according to his belief, owned, he could have gone off with
the entire outfit, from pots and pans to cash.

Neither was there anything in me to make my hand reach
out for distant things. No prospect of earthly wealth could
make my heart rise hopefully. Out there in the world, as I
knew when I thought of it, people were going after things.
Were they doing anything else? How much was necessary labor?
How much unnecessary manipulation? How much for use? How
much for misuse? The scheming, competing, fighting, killing.
The ever increasing labyrinth of laws governing the getting

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and keeping of things - laws troublesome to make, as troublesome to enforce, evade, break, change.

I was so out of that world that it was only by effort that I could understand what motivated people in their mad pursuits. It seemed incomprehensible that *beings* could be the victims of such a mania. I was as astonished by this aspect of the human situation as you would be to see eagles scratching around the barnyard like chickens.

**Possession?** To me it was an obvious fact that no one can own anything - not a pencil, not a fortune, not his "own" body, not even his "own" soul. The things of the earth are of the earth. The things of man are of man's commonwealth. All things are of God.

All that we can do is to use or misuse. We can appreciate or take for granted or violate. The belief that things can be made "mine" and "yours" is an illusion of people who are neither completely asleep nor completely awake. What a ghastly illusion. Those in deep sleep are free of it. Those in high consciousness are free of it. Those in the so-called waking state are under its spell.

Since I was being, it was only natural that I let body be. But why did it let me be? What had happened to render it so undemanding, content to move quietly around the rooms or sit motionless for long periods? I suddenly recognized that though I had beheld the processes of my transformation, I had had no insight at all into the changes going on within the body itself. I focused on body with new interest; and

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as I did so I became quite aware of certain features of its
condition only half-recognized up to this time.

What remarkable well-being! Body seemed purified, as
though a deep-seated illness had been cured. Now it was re-
charged with tender vitality. If walking, it seemed to flow.
If seated it seemed to rest in perfect equilibrium. What
unity, what serenity! Body was singing. It knew something
about itself that I did not know, and what it knew made it
happy.

I would have given a good deal to see inside of it,
to know precisely what had happened. In general it was doubt-
less true that the Power which had worked wonders in me had
also worked wonders in it - but what? What changes had occur-
red in its organs and functions? The only clue was an im-
pression that came again and again. A weight has been lifted.
A weight has been removed. Presently I asked - What weight?
All at once it dawned on me. The weight of that-me! Of
course; what else? The event that had liberated me from the
personal self had also liberated body from that self. Both
of us were free of that self and, to whatever extent, of
each other.

Not bearing the burden of that self, body was buoyant.
No longer driven and made ill by that self, body was at peace
and well. Not cramped and congested by that self, its vital
currents circulated unimpeded and unimpaired. Now body could
be and move as was natural to it, because relieved of burdens
not rightly belonging to it. It was itself as I was myself.

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188

I recognized that there is reason for referring to the body
as the physical being. Body too was being - and this was
why it let me be.

Physicians and psychiatrists daily verify the fact
that mental and emotional factors are involved in and fre-
quently cause bodily disease, and therefore, must be effec-
tively dealt with if there is to be a cure. My findings go
a step further. They indicate that the entire ordinary self
oppresses and deranges the body; and that, therefore, this
entire self must be overcome and eliminated if there is to
be total health.

The overcoming of the self is as necessary to bodily
well-being as it is to social and spiritual advancement.
Right-circulation, I am convinced, is the key to health and
wholeness: right-circulation within the body, within the
being, between the two, and between the being-body and the
larger world. Right-circulation is impeded and sometimes
critically arrested when the personal self obstructs the way
between the being and the body. Right-circulation is re-
stored when that self is removed, and just in proportion as
it is removed.

I believe that were people to become free of the self,
the following results would be immediately evident in the body.
Minor disorders would disappear at once. Major disorders of
long standing would readily yield to treatment. Bad habits
formed by cravings for stimulants and sedatives would pass

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away. Most of the drugs now used would be dispensed with.
People would enjoy health of body, pliability, sensitivity,
to a degree beyond anything ordinarily dreamed possible.
It would be as if a miracle had been wrought.

- 69 -

190

## X Anonymity

The adventure of discovering myself and moving within an ever expanding inner world, was in full progress. Another, that of exploring the Earth to which I seemed newly come, of finding out about earth-beings and their life, was more in prospect. Though in no hurry to pursue it beyond what happened within the precincts of the rooms, my anticipation of it grew livelier as the morning advanced.

Said I to myself: Here I am on Earth - and I'm the only one who knows it! No one witnessed my landing. As yet, not a soul suspects my presence here. I've come out of the blue. In due course I'll sally forth, in body as well as in consciousness, and have a look at this place and its beings.

A feeling that had been there all along now came fully into my awareness - a profound and free and happy sense of utter anonymity. Going abroad in the world would not alter my status. People would see my body, but not me. I would remain invisible, unknown. Even in a literal sense I felt anonymous, for the name that had been applied to me when in that other condition seemed unrelated to me now.

Had I ever at any time anywhere had a name that referred to my being? It did not seem so. If in some other place or world I had had a being-life among beings, and a name by which I was called, that was forgotten. In my sense of it, I had always been nameless.

Now anonymous-I went to the window to obtain through

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191

body a view of the city. There it was - the real world, as
people called it. The street with assorted pedestrians,
street cars, truck traffic, a row of flat-faced brown houses
across the way; and, above, a patch of blue sky with a moving
white cloud. Could I have looked at this scene for months
past? It seemed quite improbable. This was a street on
Earth, now in daylight, that I had viewed for the first time
only the night before.

A stranger from Europe or Asia would have regarded
this scene as American or Occidental. Its typical features
would have stood out in contrast to those of his home. To
me it was an earth-scene - and it might as well have been
anywhere on Earth. I had no remembered home with which to
compare it.

That this was New York had no particular meaning for
me, one way or another. It was simply a section of earth-
life to which I was neither oriented nor disoriented. It
seemed quite accidental that I had landed on just this part
of the globe. That I had ever felt myself to be part of it,
that I had struggled to make my way in its life, that I had
had particular attachments to some of the inhabitants - yes,
I knew it, but the memory was remote and unreal.

Had my body been in a city completely strange to it -
Dunedin, or Punaka, or Tomsk - I could not possibly have felt
more strange to myself, more unrelated, in any personal sense,
to the world out there, or more elated by the feeling that
when I ventured forth I would be exploring the unknown.

Observing the passersby, I saw them as earth-beings.

- 71 -

Each and all seemed equally strange, equally familiar.
People were people, stripped of the labels and classifications they foist on each other, stripped too of the rats they give each other. I saw an earth-being, not an American or a New Yorker or a foreigner. I saw an earth-being, not a white or a colored man. I saw an earth-being, not a street-cleaner or taxi-driver or a salesman.

One large truth I knew, and if momentarily forgotten,
it soon returned. The people who walked the streets and
rode in cars and looked out of windows, each and all were
beings, as I was. Though I could not yet feel it, I was
sure that as beings of the same Universe we must be basic-
ally alike. It seemed likely, therefore, that if I went out
and met with any of them, some kind of real contact would be
established. Just what this contact might prove to be I
could not imagine.

For the rest, I felt other. My world, it seemed,
touched theirs yet did not mingle. Without egotistical
stake in the human situation, neither did I yet have a being-
function, a work that would connect me with the life of people.
For the present, then, I could only feel: Here they are, let
them be. This too was a non-relationship in every respect ex-
cept one: I wanted to understand human beings. This desire
steadily increased until it became intense.

My observations began as any man's would. I saw bodies
first and foremost. The bodies of people were prominent,
though I knew that their beings were primary. This recalled
the ride on the "L" train the night before, the man who had

- 72 -

looked at my body and taken it to be me. Of course; what
else could he do? He saw the body; he had no basis for
knowing that I was being. What could be expected of him
when I, who had basis for knowing that people are beings,
found it no easy matter to make this knowledge outweigh the
visual impression that people are bodies only?

Of bodies, what my eyes saw were the features that any
pair of eyes would see: the sex, skin color, facial features,
gait, etc. I looked. My eyes told me all too little. What
bearing did the fact that bodies were of male and female sex,
of various colorings and conditions, have on the central puz-
zle, namely, why the consciousness of people is so inadequate,
why people are beings but do not realize it? Apparently,
none whatever.

I tried to see with something more than the physical
eye, and seemed to move closer to people, so that I beheld
their bodily features in sharper light and discerned something
of the individual character of the person who inhabited the
physical frame. What I saw fascinated me.

Each feature of each face - the nose, the jaw, the
brow - was a perfect masterpiece, perfectly modeled and arti-
culated with the others to comprise just that face as a
unique face. Each body was just that body, not to be mis-
taken for another. Each character was just that character.
Yet, as unmistakably, each and all were of the one kind, the
kind called human. What countless variations of the common
mould!

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194

Each man's uniqueness showed forth strikingly. Each
one was himself and none other - and so should be met, valued,
treated. The membership of all in one kind was just as evi-
dent. All were vital interrelated parts of an unimaginable
whole - and so should be rated and appreciated. For a moment
I felt so near to the reality of that whole that I seemed
about to embrace it.

Presently my memory of certain things, inactive till
now, began to stir. Said memory, "After all, this is New
York, not just somewhere on Earth."

Said I, "Maybe so. What of it?"

"You have lived here off and on all your life."

"But it's not real to me, that past life."

"You have friends here. You must have; in fact you
do have."

"Friends? Have I? You may be right, but it doesn't
seem possible, or important."

Memory mentioned names. Each name evoked a picture of
a face, an idea of a definite human character. There was re-
cognition but no special response.

Nevertheless the thought persisted, "In this city are
the friends with whom you lived and worked. Call one up.
Tell him what's happening. Go out and see him. Communicate
what you can. He'd be as interested as you. He'd understand
some of it. He may have had a similar experience. He may
understand what you don't. He may have gone far beyond what
you are experiencing now." True, but it didn't click.

- 74 -

"You have relatives on this Earth, bodies related to your body by blood. You know people all over the country. Look here - " It was fact, but might as well have been fiction.

Yes of course, in another condition I had been on the Earth long enough to have met with all sorts of people and formed many friendships - and a few antagonisms. All of that had not changed simply because I, within myself, had changed consciousness. It existed in its world, but there seemed nothing for me to do about it.

An idea came to mind, however. Although I might not be moved to get in touch with those whom memory singled out as my particular friends, they no doubt would be moved to get in touch with me. What then?

Here was an entirely new prospect. I sat up and took notice. So far, to be sure, the outside world had let me alone, as if giving me time to become acquainted with myself and reach a certain stage of this new growth; but it was hardly likely to continue to do so. Wherever else I might be, here I was right in these rooms where others knew I lived, as available as ever. Those friends and I were bound to meet, and I would welcome it - not because we had been friends but because we were beings.

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XI Three Notes

New conditions, like new things, invite eager exami-
nation. A new man inspects himself, gets his bearings,
spontaneously lives according to the precept: _Know Thyself._
From his new vantage point he investigates the world around,
spontaneously practicing: _The Proper Study of Mankind is Man._

Among the understandings that came to me were some,
as we have seen, concerning human bondage and freedom. Re-
lated insights were gained as the experience continued to
unfold. It will be best, I think, to summarize certain of
them here.

Cause and Cure

The addictions of men, from our little vices to our
large greeds, from our minor frustrations to our terrible
cruelties and persecutions, exist because people are body-
bound, and would cease to exist were we to become body-free
through birth above the body into Being. Racial prejudice,
segregation on account of color, sex, occupation, these and
many other aberrations, indeed all forms of man's inhumanity
to man are outgrowths of bondage to the body-personality and
would be outgrown if this bondage were dissolved. I doubt
that these so-called problems will ever be resolved in any
other say.

Each addiction and each prejudice is an agent of bon-
dage. The longer these are permitted to operate, the tighter

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the knot becomes. To overcome them is a way of becoming
free. To sanction and abet them is a sure way of remain-
ing enslaved.

Prejudice is commonly supposed to work to the advan-
tage of one party, to the disadvantage of the other. This
is why there is no concerted effort to overcome it. Concerted
effort awaits the realization that prejudice cripples both
parties, arrests the development of both, keeps both from
their own souls.

## Body, Character, Being

Of these three, most people believe that body is the
most important. They act as if it were.

The human body has been elevated to the position of
an unhappy king. Though given a status higher than its due,
we do not appreciate it for the wondrously wrought creation
that it actually is. Though crowned king of man's life, we
but make it serve as a peg on which to hang our prejudices,
labels, classifications, divisions. Though we subscribe to
its regency, we mistreat it at every turn. It is a strange
cult, this cult of the body, full of contradictions. It is
a terrible cult, for it results in injury to the body and
harm to the human character and to the human being.

Sometimes it is preached and promulgated, but this
is quite unnecessary. People already believe in it because
it accords with their body-bound experience. They are body-
aware, being-blind. Necessarily they take it to be them-
selves. They see it first and foremost. They have less

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198

capacity to recognize character - still less to recognize
being. They are pre-psychological.

The body presents itself full view to everyone. When
you meet a man, there his body is. His character takes longer
to come out. His being may never reveal itself to you. If
you see the body, but do not sense the character nor search
for the being, you must regard the body as the chief if not
the sole reality. If the body is equated with the man, then
the kind of body is the kind of man. You define the man by
his evident-to-you physical markings. Although you are prepared
to treat him, or mistreat him, accordingly.

Bodies with white skins are said to be "white men".
Those with black skins are "black men". That these are <u>men</u>
is not emphasized, because not realized. The term men, in
fact, is often dropped entirely, as superfluous. What you
have are "whites", "blacks".

Bodily factors play dominant roles in other definitions
or classifications according to which we treat and more often
mistreat each other. Nationality is largely determined by
the place of the body's birth. Those born in England are
said to be Englishmen; those in Germany, Germans; those in
China, Chinamen. Here too the fact that all of these are men
is either ignored or subordinated.

Class and caste, in the majority of cases, are matters
rigidly regulated on the basis of the body's parentage and
occupation. Though in spirit a man may be among the poets
or holy men, custom regards and treats him as belonging to
the caste into which his body was born. The other way around,

- 78 -

a man in mind and character may be corrupt, but he will be
rated as of high class if his body was born among those of
that class.

Segregation, obviously, is on a bodily basis. Character and intelligence simply aren't taken into account. Inclusion also is on a bodily basis primarily. The first qualification for acceptance into most family circles, communities, schools, clubs, businesses and churches has to do with body color, body parentage. True, character and intelligence are sometimes weighed in deciding who is to be included, but it is also true that character-factors will quickly yield to body-factors if the latter incline people to say, "Exclude him".

What has been said so far but begins to list the instances where the cult of the body holds sway. Bodily factors do not rule man's world, but our interpretations and reactions to them do. Especially is this true of our public relations. In private relationships, character and intelligence, and even being, come in for more consideration, but by no means for their due consideration.

This is called the scientific age. Science induces and requires the birth of the mind. In how many people has such birth occurred? This age, like others, is an era of the great unborn. Science is like a pea of intellect in a mammoth body. Religion and art are similarly pea-like in the same huge body. The truths of science have as much difficulty winning acceptance as the truths of religion. All truth encounters the same irrational resistance. The wide-

- 79 -

spread prestige of science is due not to the fact that it is
a way to reality but to the circumstance that in its applied
form it provides countless things for the body. Among these
scientific products are the extraordinarily effective medi-
cines that cure bodies and the extraordinarily effective
weapons that kill bodies. No, with us in this so-called age
of science it is as it was with those in the so-called age
of religion - the body-cult is dominant.

All in all, here are the ratings that prevail in the
world: Body, first; Character, a remote second; Being, a
distant third, or not rated at all. People in effect are
up side down in relation to their own reality. The resulting
conflict will continue as long as these false ratings prevail.

It is, of course, the hopeful fact that each person, body-bound though he is, already somewhat wants to be treated in accord with the true ratings. The tragic fact is that each person tends to treat others in terms of the false ratings.

Only if and as people nonidentify from the body and
overcome the personal self, will they become being-aware as
well as body-aware, thus knowing and feeling that Being is
first, Character second, Body third. And as they know and
feel so will they tend to live, treating each other truly,
in accord with their reality as human beings. Until this
change takes place in consciousness we can only try to meet
and treat each other in accord with the true ratings.

Though you do not see it, try to sense it; though you
do not know it, try to believe it; though you are inclined
to behave otherwise, try to act it: namely, that the being

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301

of a man is the most important thing about him, indeed is he,
his very core and essence; that his character and intelli-
gence are a close second; that his body is subordinate to
being and to character.

This is a way of outgrowing the body-bound condition
and all of its outgrowths. It is a way of becoming able to
treat others as we would have them treat us. It is a way of
breaking free of all that makes us harm the body as well as
the character and the being, of entering into all that would
move us to a true culture of the being, of the character, and
of the body too.

The difficulty of outgrowing the cult of the body and
growing into the culture of the being would not deter us if
we could only bring ourselves to realize how desirable, how
imperative, such growth is. The fact that we are a long way
from it should spur us to begin the ascent without further
delay.

Freedom

When are you free? The way we say it points to the
answer. I am free. If you can truly say I am, you can truly
add free. Freedom is attained in consequence of detaching
from the body, overcoming the personal self, and entering
real being.

Realize I am, realize We are - and two things happen:
you find yourself in the actual condition of freedom; and
your preconceptions are seen to have been meaningless or
deceptive.

- 81 -

What meaning has freedom for a man who is free?

This - that he is as he ought to be, that he can function
as he is designed to function, that he is able to serve him-
self, men, and God - and that he would help others likewise
to be and to do.

I would call this our proper freedom. It is simply
proper that beings be nonidentified from the body, that they
do not take the body to be themselves. It is as unnatural
for beings to be body-bound as for bodies to be in prison.
It is simply normal that beings be free of the personal self,
of its false beliefs as to what constitutes profit, pleasure,
and good, of its drives towards ends that are unworthy of
beings and often disastrous. It is right for beings to re-
alize who and what they are, to pursue being-aims, to be ever
growing, purifying, perfecting.

Beyond our proper freedom there is, I surmise, a
greater freedom which a being would enter only as he attained
conscious union with God. As I was granted no more than a
foretaste of it, I can do no more than point to it as a possi-
bility. Here I am concerned with the normal freedom of human
beings on Earth.

It may seem needless to ask where our proper freedom
is to be found. Obviously, in oneself, in ourselves. Yet
this is not at all obvious to the majority of men, or even
to most of those who consciously seek freedom. Themselves
externalized, they seek outward. They are victims of the di-
verting illusion that freedom resides in the social environ-
ment, in systems, a boon to be conferred or taken away by

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203

governments. So there may be point in stressing the truth
that freedom is to be found within, nowhere else. It is
hidden, so to speak, in the very last place most people
would think of looking for it. It is a psychological con-
dition, a state of the human spirit.

If you have it, the world cannot take it away. If you
do not have it, the world cannot give it to you. But the
world most certainly can and does hinder or help attainment.
For this reason, those who would be free must work to estab-
lish favorable outer conditions, these to serve as means.

Though society cannot bestow freedom on its members,
it would, if ordered and governed by free men, help all to
attain freedom within themselves. Though no man can give free-
dom to another, a free man creates an atmosphere in which it
becomes desirable and more possible for others to enter their
real beings and thus become free.

A free man not only creates an atmosphere conducive to
the release of the spirit, he makes available the psycho-reli-
gious means and methods which must be used in addition to the
social.

Methods and practices that enable human beings to work
directly upon themselves are indispensable. For the factors
that exile us from our real beings are the ones that enslave
us, and these too are within us. But for these internal fac-
tors, no man could be enslaved, nor would he enslave others.

- 83 -

## XII Restaurant

That in men which limits them in other ways, also
limits them in regard to time. The little self condemns us
to a miser's view of hours and years, shutting us out of a
sense of the eternal. We give authority to clocks and calendars,
and they rule us. We feel pressed for time and must
rush, unknowing that in the Universe hours are countless,
years innumerable, and life continuous.

In Being, time seems unlimited. I knew with certainty
that there is time to do whatever we need do.

Though the time signals of the everyday world exerted
no pressure on me, I took notice of them on occasion and was
sufficiently in touch with the habits of my body for all
natural purposes. On this first day, for example, when the
time came for body to have its midday meal, we went to lunch.

As an explorer I went out upon the street. More vivid-
ly than ever I had the sense: This is the Earth. These are
people. This is what people do on Earth. The Earth and all
its beings are in the vast and radiant.

A restaurant was around the corner. Many a time I, in
that other condition, had gone there and fared rather well.
So there we went now. It amused me to see my body smile greet-
ings to the proprietor and head straight for the table at which
it usually sat. I heard the waitress being kidding by - was it
myself? And just who looked over the menu and ordered what
was usually ordered?

- 84 -

I looked around. Here were earth-beings. The Universe was all around them, and within them, but they were not in it. They were in their little selves, and enclosed by these walls. Yet were they? I observed them more carefully. What I saw sent a question racing through me.

These people were not like the ones I had seen on the "L" the night before, nor like most of those upon the streets. These appeared more as I felt beings ought to look. Every one was well-conditioned and seemed at least as wide awake as I. Was it true? Could it be that these people also were in Being-Consciousness? Could it be - and this was the question that startled me - that these people, and many more, had been in their real beings all along, whereas it was only I who recently had awakened? If true, how extraordinary!

I sort of shook myself and looked again, and listened too. Across the way a good-looking young woman had a book propped on the table so that she could read while eating. Now I recalled having seen her often. She always read during lunch, in lieu of other companionship. Would a being in Being-Consciousness feel lonely because she was alone?

Near enough for me to overhear their conversation were two ruddy and vigorous middle-aged men, talking business. How absorbed they were! Nothing else existed for them. What energy, what enthusiasm! And all about prices, profits, and an intricate deal, the fine points of which escaped me. Beings in Being-Consciousness, those two? Beings, yes. But they, who looked as awake as I, who showed ever so much more force

- 85 -

and verve, were evidently among the exiles, as I had been the
last time I had come to this place.

Body developed a lively appetite as the food was
brought in. Not much was consumed. A relatively small
amount seemed to satisfy all needs. Taking notice of this
fact I said to myself: Body enjoys its food as never before,
but wants less of it. Not until I had observed the same thing
at meal after meal did it strike me that this was a fact of
some significance.

Body and I were in our proper conditions, freely cir-
culating. In consequence, so it seemed to me, two things had
happened. Body was able to extract more nourishment from
less food. Consumption was decreased; the value derived was
increased. Body fared better on less. Both body and I were
obtaining sustenance and energy from sources other than physi-
cal food. This surmise was supported by the fact that body
skipped meals without missing them in the least. It seemed
probable that it could easily have fasted for a week, quite a while.

For the first time in my life I saw that there might
be literal truth in the words,

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought
for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye
shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye
shall put on. Is not the life more than the
meat, and the body than raiment?

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow
not, neither do they reap, nor gather into
barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.
Are ye not much better than they?

This possibility opened up a new aspect of the re-
volution that would occur in man's life if more and more

- 86 -

people were to come into their proper condition. No longer
would men's lives be bound up in the production and consump-
tion of vast quantities of physical foods. Human beings
would be liberated from the endless chain of eating to live
and living to eat. Man's bondage to his belly would be
broken. Broken too would be his slavery to the commerce
and the institutions that thrive on that bondage. The
energy now spent in slaving would be released for develop-
ment.

- 87 -

208

## XIII Sight-Seeing

Lunch finished, body and I stepped forth into the open world of the sunlit city. As there was more to be seen on 23rd, I wandered along this street of the Earth, looking in shop windows, reading signs, watching people. As never before or since, I was a sight-seer.

Arrived at Fifth Avenue I took an uptown bus and found a seat on top in the open. Up the man-made canyon we rumbled, and that ride was impressed on me indelibly. Years after I had fallen from Being and the experience had been all but forgotten by my conscious mind, I would be reminded of it every time I rode on the top deck of a Fifth Avenue bus.

High above the skyscrapers was the blue sky. I seemed to be up in that sky. Down on the street was the thick traffic. I seemed to be down on that pavement, closer to people than they were to themselves. And now, as on the previous night, I was aware: Above me arches an incredible Universe. Below me spreads a living Earth. Within me is a wonderful being.

People moved to and fro, all in a rush, some running, some dashing across the street at the risk of their lives - where to, why? They brushed elbows, squeezed past each other, sometimes bumped; but they were not together. Each wedged his separate way, bent on his exclusive business. Each was so wrapped up in himself, so cut off from the rest of life, so tight in his little self that I felt sure it must be painful.

- 88 -

309

Because of the pain, each and all must want release
from that condition. Because they were beings, each and all
must want a larger and more real life. How could they be in-
terested in money-profits? Why didn't it strike them that
the only profit to be gained in that separated condition was
the progress made towards liberation from it? Why did they
not stop each other and ask the only important question:
Have you found the way out?

Instead, they were simply "going ahead", as if their
condition were quite satisfactory. If they suffered, they
apparently thought the cause to be something outside of them-
selves, a cause to be overcome by busyness and worldly success.

Yet it couldn't be that way with them, whatever their
outward behavior. They had to want to be free of their ego-
prisons. They had to want to be beings. Of a sudden the
essential core of people seemed to emerge, so that it stood
out, more real to me now than their myopic preoccupations.
All that had made me feel other than them fell away. There
was a swift contact of essences, a mingling of being with
beings. I felt completely with them. I felt We, unqualified.
The feeling became radiant. How wonderful! We were beings,
together in life, co-workers in a sacred work.

Then we seemed to separate. My sense of kinship
vanished; the feeling of otherness returned.

The bus swerved to avoid a car. A car jerked to a
stop to avoid a pedestrian. Cars and people, in that world
seemed in constant danger of colliding. Crowded into a tiny
space and moving rapidly, they but dimly saw each other,

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210

never foresaw. I seemed not to share that danger. I felt
I could have made my way on foot in the thickest traffic,
through it, not into it.

Each object was seen with stark clarity. There was
no filter between myself and things, no buffer between my-
self and men, but an amazing immediacy. I was stripped bare.
Sight and feelings were exposed. Impressions penetrated to
the quick, so that something like pain mingled with the thrill.
Each contact had an electric quality. Life crackled, and I
enjoyed the sting of it.

I was present. The vivid sense of myself as a re-
ceiver of experience was matched by an equally keen aware-
ness of myself as a source. Within me, I knew, was a bound-
less store of everything that constitutes the life of man.
I was present in the source of thoughts, feelings, and actions,
able to govern what issued from it. Able to control, and
therefore responsible. This realization broke in upon me,
and I knew it was true. Self-responsibility was in the very
core of my being.

My basic experiences issued from me, and returned to
me, affecting me first and last as they affected no other
being. I was building myself. The causes of my actions were
in me. Their consequences would inevitably be in me. I would
reap what I sowed. Not God, not others, I alone was respon-
sible for my life, for my inner as well as outer actions, even
for the almost imperceptible thoughts and desires that would
never be recorded anywhere in the Universe except upon the

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malleable substance of my mind. This was what it meant to be a being, to be an "I".

My eyes lighted on a fellow passenger. Seated up
front, his back was to me, his head bent forward, in his
hands a newspaper. The man's head, newspaper, arms, and
back seemed to form a closed circuit. It was as though his
vital currents followed a course from his head to the news-
paper, from it up his arms into his body, and through his
head back to the paper, round and around. Nothing else ex-
isted for him. But was even the newspaper real to him?

Was he reading it? True, his eyes saw the print.
Some part of his mind followed the words. Pictures were
evoked, emotions perhaps. But was the "I" of that man pre-
sent and active? Did what was read really enter him? Did
what was thought and felt really issue from him? Had he any
sense of himself as a responsible-I? That man, I was sure,
was absent-I'd.

Sitting next to me was a woman-being. Now she opened
her purse and she - or what? - rummaged through its contents
for something that eluded her. Was she looking for whatever
it was? Or were her hands taking orders from a desire or a
fear that acted on its own without reference to the "I" of
that woman?

Across the aisle was a man who, by all appearances,
was alert to his surroundings. At any rate his eyes were
open and looking around. His fingers nervously tapped a
brief case held on his lap, and now and then he glanced down
as if to make sure that it was still there. The more I looked

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2/2

the more I felt that he was concerned exclusively with the
papers in that case, with an event in which they would play
an important part. Though apparently awake to the world, he
was in fact inwardly committed to a focus as narrow as that
of the woman with her purse, the man with the newspaper. Had
he so committed himself? He or something in him would feel
acute loss were the papers to stray. Yet in that man himself
was a reality of incomparable value, and he felt no loss
though he lost it every day.

The bus driver, the pedestrians, the traffic cops, the
millions of beings on Earth in the slums and mansions, in
mines, in factories, on farms, most of them doing active work,
some doing skilled work - it could not be that all of them,
all the time, were absent-I'd, yet it must be that most of
them were like the people on this bus, so thoroughly in that
strange condition that they could not recognize it.

Neither active sources nor active receivers. Life sort
of washed over them instead of flowing within and through them.
The surrounding world merely pattered on their bodies. The
experiencer was absent; and so, though the means of experien-
cing were at hand, there was no one to use them.

Yes, but the situation was not that simple. There was
something else. The experiencer of joy and meaning might be
absent. The experiencer of pain? Present, I was sure. Al-
ways available at any rate. Strain, protracted anxiety, dis-
appointment, bitterness - these were experienced, and not pas-
sively either. You could see it on people's faces. Something
in them actively received and gave hurt, suffered and made

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suffer. How 5 strange. The experiencer of happiness, absent.
The experiencer of misery, present. How unjust. How dia-
bolical. What was the meaning of it? Who or what was to
blame? More to the point, what was to be done about it?

<u>Understand it</u>. The words rang out as if they had been voiced. Examine it, search for the meaning. This is the most important and indeed the only thing that you or anyone can do, first. People are living. Life may not be real to them, but that they exist is a reality. Therefore they exist for something. There is purpose in the human situation, and it is being worked out day by day in the very conditions people find themselves in.

Here was a possibility and it was worth exploring. If
the outer behavior of people was as automatic as it seemed,
and as disconnected from the inner being, then I did not see
how there could be meaning in the daily round. But suppose
the outer were somehow connected with the inner, what aim
might be served by apparently commonplace experience? If the
experiencer of pain were unrelated to the experiencer of mean-
ing, what purpose in suffering? But suppose these two, though
seemingly separated, were actually linked. Then what? I
could think of one and only one purpose. The meaning of man's
life was a developmental meaning. The purpose of human life
was human development.

What I was witnessing as the bus continued up the ave-
nue, what everyone was engaged in was a drama of development
in which even the most apparently trivial action played a part.
Human beings, without their conscious minds knowing it, were

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putting themselves into situation after situation the real
function of which was to make each individual meet and con-
tend with, and in some measure overcome, the very things in
himself that blocked the way to his real being and proper
consciousness. Each would remain in just that complex of
situations, until he had outgrown the need of being there.
Whereon he would pass into another complex, calling forth
still other impediments.

People were inclined to live for their pleasure rather
than for development. A function of pain and suffering was
to jolt them out of that inclination, shock them awake, spur
them to ascend. If and as they undertook their real work,
pain would diminish because the need for it would become less.
If and as they ascended, suffering would fall away proportion-
ately. Meanwhile, the experiencer of pain had to be present,
for a minimum development was required of each being in each
life. No matter how asleep, or how reluctant, each had to
lop off something that impeded his growth. But how small
that minimum was, compared to what might be. How slow the
progress, how devious, how tortuous. If people would only
undertake their development consciously, voluntarily. If
they would only awake enough to realize that the work of grow-
ing is their chief work and the only basic meaning of their
lives. If they would only put their heart and strength into
meeting all situations for the sake of the development to be
gained thereby, using all obstacles and handicaps and diffi-
culties as opportunities for creative struggle leading to new
birth. If they would see that the only way out is to develop
out. Then indeed would their progress be speeded. Then

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215

indeed would they become great in growing.

Suddenly it occurred to me to ask: Can I help them?
Can my discoveries be of use to them? I who have awakened,
what can I do to aid these inward kin of mine also to awaken,
that we may better serve each other and our Creator?

And the answer promptly came - Not a thing.

Such help, it seemed, was not within the ability of
the newly born. It rested with the Life and Power that were
in all beings, as in me. Not a thing could I do to help the
woman-being at my side, the man-being with the newspaper, the
crowd on the avenue - except to continue being and growing.
What happens to a unit of the whole affects the whole.

I was suddenly filled with a burning sense of what
might be communicated. An unspoken testimony flowed from
me, not as a man speaks words to another, but as an inner
communication of a common consciousness.

People, you can awake and be. You can outgrow the
condition you are now in, and what you now think to be real
will cease to exist, and you will stand in newness. I bear
witness that what you believe to be you is not you. You are
other than that. But in each man there is Man. In all be-
ings there is Being. In Being there is God who designed man
to fall and to ascend perfected.

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216

XIV Here We Are

At 57th Street I got off the bus and began walking
down the avenue. The idea seemed to be that body and I were
heading back to the 23rd Street rooms. Why? Central Park
or the river front or anywhere would have done just as well.

Now I was in the midst of the pedestrians - walking
bodies, sleeping beings - moving through them. Life in that
world, broken into innumerable separate currents, was a tangled
wash over the pavements. And all the while the great Universe
looked down at this small globe and its beings.

The impression of walking-bodies-sleeping-beings was
so sharp that I had a sense of moving in a crowd of somnam-
bulists. A sort of awe arose in me. How did they manage to
get about? Where had they come from? Where were they going?

I singled out particular people, trying to make a con-
tact with them which would again evoke a feeling of kinship.
Though I failed, I knew the basis was there. The radiant seed
was in that boy swinging along whistling a jazz tune. The
Power was in that bent old man. The Life was in that doorman,
and in that business man, and in that smartly dressed woman.

Presently I found myself yearning towards these people,
asking that they be quickened to the essential work at hand.
It was a prayer to the Nameless to lift these beings to Life.

And then I had a vision of it actually happening. I
saw the Power rising in them, claiming them right in the midst
of their occupations, transforming them as it had transformed
me.

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217

People hurrying along the streets, window shopping,
buying, selling, I imagined them stop and become still. The
city would be hushed, waiting. The human world all over the
Earth, silent, wondering.

And then, in each one, the perfectly quiet, the
quietly perfect awakening.

I saw each one make the wonderful discovery in secret,
then find that all the others were making the same discovery.
I saw them, bright in wonder and new beauty, join hands and
give thanks.

The vision expressed my wish. Was it anything more?
Might it have been a glimpse of an actual event towards which
mankind is tending?

Later that afternoon, standing at the window of the
room on 23rd, I looked down at the front yard where the miracle
of new life would soon show in the grass of the lawn and the
single tree. Shortly the sun would disappear behind the palisades on the other side of the Hudson, and, in due time, bring
another day to China. A soft light was in the world, an invitation to feel loveliness, which I could not accept. Deep
in me there was a gathering gravity.

Implications of existing, charges laid upon me by my
own being, the commands of a superior necessity - into my consciousness these came, and I felt: I did not make my being;
I cannot unmake it. No power of my own, no power on Earth or
in the Universe, can cause me to cease to be. I am - and I
am in for it.

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Here I am, an *irremoveable reality*. I exist in the Universe, and cannot not-exist. I live because I have to - not because I desire to. Not my wish nor will, but a Will greater than the wills of all beings put together, is back of it. He who is called God has made it imperative, for his purposes, that beings come into existence and stay in existence. There is no escape, no appeal.

I felt pinned by reality. A noble but terrible truth was burning its way into my heart, steadily thrusting into my vitals. I wanted to draw back, to get away. I wanted to turn to someone, call on someone. I squirmed, as a living thing upon a spit.

God help me, was the cry uttered by a voice I did not know I had. The cry did not seem fitting. If God had placed the charge upon me, it was not for me to ask Him to relieve me of it. This was something for me to face and handle.

Now I was awake in a new way, and I trembled. It was solemn, awesome, to touch what I was touching. Existence, an unending progression, myself inescapable in it, without appeal. On my own, no sleeping, no forgetting, no dallying, forever responsible. Strakly in me the undimmed realization that I exist, and for a purpose that *will* be served.

The thought of death popped into my mind. There was no comfort in it. Some day, to be sure, death would come. What then? I would pass from *this* life, but not out of existence. Death would not deliver me. It would not close the accounts. It would not remove me from the Universe, nor terminate my responsibility.

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219

I saw clearly that what is called death is not a con-
dition, but an event in time, of brief duration. It is an
event of unending life. By it the being separates completely
from the physical body. The separation puts an end to that
partnership, to that particular phase of existence. The
being continues being.

By the way in which the thought of death came to me,
I understood why it comes to others, why so many people be-
lieve that death will put an end to them. They want it to!
They would rather be destroyed utterly than to continue bear-
ing even such responsibilities as they are aware of having.
They would rather be annihilated than to continue living as
they are, and they know of no other possible life. The pro-
traction of their present kind of life is an intolerable
prospect. Seeing no escape whatsoever except by death, they
fasten on the death-event and interpret it according to their
wishes.

How easy it would be if death wiped the slate clean.
How comforting if death offered a permanent escape; if, no
matter how we lived, what suffering we heaped upon others,
we could look forward to complete deliverance in a few years,
and without any special effort on our part. This pleasing
but deceptive fancy appeals with equal persuasiveness to those
who believe that death causes utter extinction and to those
who believe that it will release them, once and for all, into
paradise. Both are escapists, and to no avail.

Those who are in the Universe are going to remain in it.

- 99 -

The death-event was not designed as a boon to the lazy, the wayward, the criminal, but as a needed change of condition. There is no means of escape. There is only progress - or its opposite. There is only progress towards an ultimate liberation to be attained through growth and transformation.

In existence before we came into this life, we are in existence now, and will so be after we leave this life. Forms and conditions vary. We change consciousness. The essence of a man continues until it has made full use of its manifold equipment. The being remains in the created world until it has fulfilled its destiny. Somewhere in the living Universe we shall live until we have accomplished the long-range purpose of our creation.

The starkness of my own presence in the Universe threw a sharp light on the presence of other beings and things. Here they are! There was this vivid cognizance, this inward exclamation. Not why, not how, not what for; simply the sheer existence of each thing: a windowpane, a tree, an iron fence, a human being, a car, a house, the Earth, the Sun. I accorded everything special attention, a kind of salute.

What a contrast between this electric recognition and the usual casual acceptance. Those in the waking state simply do not see and feel enough to realize the existence of surrounding presences, and salute them. To say that they take things for granted is true, yet it isn't. They do not take a thing.

Ask a man if he realizes he exists. His indignant answer will be that of course he does. When challenged -

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221

but not otherwise - he really believes he does. Suppose he is on a liner crossing the ocean. Ask him if he realizes the existence of the ship, the other passengers, the sea. Of course he does. What do you take me for, he'll snap back.

Midway across, something happens to the ship, and to the man in consequence. The ship is wrecked and sinks. The man suddenly finds himself in the water, struggling to keep hold of some floating stuff. There he is - neither more nor less in existence than when safely on shipboard - but how much more aware of it! Now his sense of himself as a living reality is so keen that it may be painful. Now he as vividly perceives what's around him: the wood he clings to, the vast swelling ocean, heads bobbing in the water, a life-boat. And the ship itself, though it has disappeared, is ever so much more real to him than when it was afloat and he on it. In short, the emergency has aroused him from his habitual torpor and made him almost a conscious man.

Foremost among the things taken for granted by people in the waking state is that state itself. They no more know that they are in just that state than a man in sleep knows he is in that state. They have no attitude towards it one way or the other.

As for the sleeping state, they appreciate a good sleep and are fretful about lack of sleep. But the state itself is passively accepted as - what? Equally unmindful are they of making the radical change from the one state to the other, recognizing nothing remarkable in this quite re-

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222

markable process. Sleep comes, if it does; they do not ask
how or why - and somewhere in them is the belief that as a
matter of course they will in time wake up - but how, why?

Having so recently entered Being-Consciousness, I
could not passibly take it for granted; and it seemed to
be its nature that nothing else was taken for granted.

This second night, as body prepared for bed, I fore-
saw what would presently happen. Body would stretch out.
A drowsy feeling would come over me, and then - off! Off
into a condition of which I knew hardly more than the label.
How perfectly amazing! Precisely what would happen to cause
that mysterious change? Would I be as real then as now?
Surely I would not pass out of existence, but where would
I be? Was that world as real as this? To say that I would
"lose consciousness" was to say nothing definite at all.
What was the nature of this loss, if loss it were? What
would happen to my present consciousness? If it "went", wha
where would it go, how would it return? If it "stayed",
why did I not stay with it? These questions started me
thinking of how I had gone to sleep the night before.

I recalled something that greatly interested me. I
had not dropped from Being-Consciousness to the ordinary
waking state, and then from the waking state into sleep.
There had been no such stages. I had passed from Being-
Consciousness directly into sleep. Moreover, I had fallen
asleep exactly as I always had. Whatever the process might
be, it operated as before. Nor was there any difference,
as far as I could tell, in the way I had slept, except that

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J23

sleep had been deeper than usual and, in five or six hours,
completely refreshing.

How had I waked this morning? I saw at once that
there had been no intermediate stages there either. How
strange any other way would have been. How extraordinary
if, each morning of each day, the process of the original
wakening were repeated: opening my eyes and finding myself
in the ordinary waking state; in this state going about the
affairs of the day; then discovering that I was undergoing
all of the miraculous changes that had begun while I stood
on the "L" platform. But no, this morning on awaking from
sleep, I had found myself at once in Being-Consciousness.
The waking state, as such, seemed to have been eliminated.

To me these were fascinating facts. I contemplated
them with sheer wonderment. The mystery of consciousness!
The mystery of its states and passage between them! The in-
ward workings of beings! How had it ever been arranged! I
was overpowered by a sense of the magnitude of the Intelli-
gence that had designed all this.

And here I was, somehow - God alone knew how - in the
midst of it, unknowing of the basic matters; my eyes, like a
child's, just opening to the miracle of it. I knew nothing,
nothing at all except that the living world is an in-
credible structure of reality - and beings, in all their
states, are part of it.

I was a being - but what is a being? I was living
and would live on and on - but what is life? I was conscious,
quite conscious compared with what I had been, but of con-

- 103 -

consciousness itself I knew nothing and could not even say that
this state would last another hour. Unknowing was somehow
embedded in my reality - and I, to this extent, was a speck
of ignorance adrift in the flow of the Universe.

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225

XV Kinship

Sometime during the morning of the second day the phone rang. Answering it, I heard a voice I recognized. Now I was at least in speaking contact with a particular person who felt he had a special relationship with me because of past experience. My first response was a sense that the world I had left, that I seemed never to have been in, was catching up with me. My second was a wondering what this would lead to.

I was aware of my body at the phone, and had a vivid picture of his at the other end. As if I were a third person, I saw the two speaking to each other, on the Earth. At the same time I had a broad impression of beings on other planets, in other spheres of the peopled Universe, communicating with one another, carrying on their many occupations, while we here on this globe were using an invention of earth-beings called a telephone.

How strange to hear a man talking to me as to an old acquaintance, assuming that he knew me. Stranger still, I heard myself talking as if I were my former person. The voice that came out of my body was, it seemed, the voice of that person. Something in me accepted that person's interests in things, commitments to people. That self, then, was somewhere in existence? It could be called to life, if addressed? It still lived, if only as a ghost?

Presently I began to recognize that at the other end of the wire, there was a living reality - not merely a voice,

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226

not simply a body, not only a man with whom I had been friends -
but a being, a being of the Universe, we together in a cosmic
process.

We talked for a while and made a date to meet for lunch.
Later, on the way to the meeting place, I felt that something
extraordinary, unimaginable, might happen when we met in per-
son. I must have expected our former closeness to each other
to open the way for a meeting of beings more intense than had
yet occurred between myself and any one. But when I walked
up to him, it did not happen.

We met as bodies, friendly bodies, We met as people
who were accustomed to each other's ways. With unspoken con-
sent we headed for the restaurant where we usually want. We
gravitated towards the same table, ordered what we usually
ordered. Now I felt that the pattern of that past relation-
ship had quite caught up with me. It was familiar enough,
and most interesting to watch as it unfolded; but in my sense
of it, it had no connection whatsoever with my present being.
Yet I was not playing a role; it happened naturally.

The self that was meeting my friend might be ghostlike
to me; it was, to all appearances, sufficiently authentic to
him. He accepted it as me. He accepted me, without question.
By no look or word did he give sign of sensing that I had
changed. I wondered about this. I suppose I must have ex-
pected that this man, of all people, would feel something dif-
ferent. I must have anticipated, and perhaps hoped, that a
question from him would give me a chance to mention my ex-
perience. It would have been good to have communicated, in

- 106 -

words, with this human being,

When nothing of the sort happened, it became clear
that my new condition simply did not register with him - and
if not with him, then with whom? If it did not in any noti-
ceable way affect this friend, who not only had known me in-
timately but was more aware than most of my other acquaintances,
it was not likely to be sensed by anyone. Nor was it. I may
as well say here that when I did meet with others, not one of
them seemed to perceive anything unusual. But why not? If I
had lost my mind or otherwise changed for the worse, that cer-
tainly would have been noticeable. Then why not this radical
change for the better, this transformation which had restored
me to my real being? There are accounts of transformed men
acting as catalysts, deeply moving others simply by their
presence. I can only say that it was not my good fortune
to be one of these. For the rest, I am at a loss to explain it.

Though my friend seemed unaware of the change in me, I looked for change in him. I was alert to the possible, mindful that transformations may occur in any human being at any time. But would I recognize the signs if I saw them? Would a deep change in him be communicated to me, seeing that mine was not communicated to him? How would I know if a man had awakened from the ordinary consciousness - unless he told me? How would two beings, both in their real beings, behave towards one another?

Presently something happened in me, and I no longer
asked such questions. Neither did I attend to the exchange

- 107 -

between my revived self and the self of my friend. New feelings awoke, and I ceased seeing his body as an object out there, the man as a separated entity. I discovered him as he might have discovered himself had he entered his real being; and I knew that the so-called conscious part of him was unaware of this meeting. It was happening behind his back! Yet he was looking straight at me!

Suddenly he, the being, was with me and I with him in a life that had centers of being and functioning, but no fixed boundaries and no barriers whatsoever. It would have been impossible, now, for me to break apart and experience myself and himself as separated. As during my bus ride but now more concretely and with much greater warmth, I felt we. I lived we. This being and I were together in an indissoluble existence where divisions not only did not exist but were unthinkable.

I knew that he and I were kin - not because we had been friends, not because our body-minds were of the same nationality, spoke the same language, shared similar interests - but because kinship is the fundamental relationship between beings.

My awareness of the truth of kinship had come of a sudden, and just now; but it was perfectly evident to me that neither I nor he had just brought this kinship into existence. It was a reality existing from the unimaginable beginning. All I had done was to realize an already established bond, to become conscious of an ancient and enduring unity. Had it not been there, nothing I could do would have made it so.

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229

Since it was there, nothing I could do would negate it.
Kinship, clearly, was the work of our Common Creator, and
was woven, never to be unwoven, into the very fabric of our
essential existence.

What was true of this being and myself is true of all.
All men, as beings, are kin. Our task is not to make it so,
but to try to realize that it is so.

Men as bodies are separate, but not as separated as
they appear to the eye. Like the leaves of a tree they are
distinct as forms, but each and all are organically related
to one another through their connection with the one tree.
Men as egotists are mutually repellant. Men as beings are
joined. The several conditions co-exist.

It is not possible to join bodies beyond their given
interrelationship. It is not possible to force egotists to
behave as brothers. But when the consciousness of men is
lifted out of the body and out of egotism and centered in
being, men thereby discover that they are joined as beings -
and bodily behavior expresses the new consciousness. Brotherhood is realized kinship.

The beauty that could be in the human world, the un-
ceasing wonder! I beheld something of this beauty, and into
my heart came a love so tender, so magically potent and ex-
tending that it seemed to reach to all the people of the
world, and to all life, and I felt - If only the will of this
love could be done on earth, what a world there would be, and
what people!

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230

My attention returned to the particular friend sitting with me at the table; and now it seemed that I was not only joined with him but that I was in the place of his being, so that I felt as his being may have felt. From that vantage point I saw his personal self, as if I were connected with it from the inside, as his own being was. There was a visual element in this. I seemed literally to see that self. I saw it as a coil, a creeper around a tree. Though the being was larger than it, it was would around the being. Though the being would outlive it, it seemed to be squeezing the being to death. So this was what wrapped a man up, cut him off from other beings, prevented consciousness of kinship! This was the thing itself, the very form of egotism - a mortal coil Of a sudden I wanted to cry out to my friend - Struggle against it, fight it, throw it off!

I wanted to call to all men - There is your enemy, right in yourself! Fight that, conquer that, and you will be delivered.

If ever I had been vague about it, vagueness was disпelled now. I starkly realized that a being is first, last, and all the time up against the egotistical self that is part of his own human totality. He is constricted and thwarted by his own egotism as by nothing else in the whole world. Therefore his main sustained effort should and must be to overcome that self. Only secondarily and occasionally need he contend with the personal selves of others. And when he struggles against those selves of others, he should keep in mind that the beings of others are always to be affirmed and cooperated

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231

with.

At first sight the coil seemed an alien and evil para-
site that had somehow gained root in human life and was de-
roying that upon which it fed. But presently I realized
that it is an intended part of the human totality. I under-
stood that it is designed to perform an essential function!

A being develops by overcoming difficulties. The per-
sonal self provides them. And this is their joint proper
purpose! The personal self is meant to be limiting, to pro-
vide resistances and obstacles that are always at hand. A
being is meant to struggle against these impediments. If and
as he does, he develops as a being, and the personal self func-
tions as intended. It is only when a being does not so struggle,
but becomes passive or actively abets the self, that the self
misfunctions, thwarts, and in extreme cases virtually strangles
the being. In this case, a developmental opportunity becomes
a paralyzing handicap. The man defaults - and all other
faults and defeats of human life stem from this primary failure.

The coils and their ramifications are meant to be points
of application for our being-efforts leading to being-develop-
ment. They are what we are working on and working out in this
life - if we are. And this is the purpose and the meaning of
this life.

What is true of the individual in relation to himself
is also true of individuals in relation to their world. The
world is simply a larger coil - and is meant to be. Small
coils within us, large coils without and all around us - here
it is, a sufficiently varied workshop, a well-equipped gym-

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132

nasium, providing daily opportunity for our individual and
collective developmental efforts.

Limitations, though necessary at this stage of human
development, are not designed to be forever limiting. When
overcome they cease to exist. They are to be used as means
to the limitless. Ego-prisons are not meant to imprison for-
ever, but to serve as means to permanent liberation. Separa-
tism is not an eternally fixed condition, nor need it continue
to breed the maladies of men. It can be used as a means to
the discovery of the kinship of beings with one another, and
the fatherhood of God.

Let us make good use of this life and these conditions.
Let us make greater developmental use of everything at hand
and of everything that comes to pass. This is the life for
a man. This is the life for the human beings of this Earth.

That first meeting with one of my friends seemed to
start the ball rolling. That afternoon I took the initiative
and called up another. That evening I went to a gathering.
From this time on I circulated among the people I had known
when in that other condition. My former relationships with
people came to have a place in my transformed life; and these
remained, on the surface, much as they had been.

But wherever I went, whatever I did, whomever I met -
former acquaintances and those called strangers - I was aware
of kinship in being. I did not have to try to remember it.
It was impossible to forget it. The reality of We was ever
present, outshining the separation of bodies, the divisions

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of personal selves.

My body did not feel kinship for all other bodies.
As before, it seemed to have its likes and dislikes; but
its inclinations did not bias my essential response as a
being to beings. Nor did its visual separateness from other
bodies dim my realization of spiritual connectedness.

There was something in me that liked certain qualities
in people and disliked or was indifferent to others. To this
extent, personality entered into my relationships. I did not
experience an unqualified love of people in their entireties.
Yet these personal matters were unimportant. They did not
pull me out of being nor prevent me from meeting with others
as beings.

I knew that people did not realize their kinship to me
or to each other as I realized mine to them and theirs to one
another. But their lack of realizing did not stop me.

People-as-egotists pitted themselves against each other,
each trying to wedge his way, each striving and often scheming
for what he or she believed to be to his own advantage. Ugly
things were said and done. One day I saw a brutal street-
fight between two men. All over the city of New York and
throughout the Earth, men-as-egotists and separatistic groups
were clashing. These facts contributed to my understanding of
the human situation. But neither did they stop me. The power
of realized kinship made way for me to enter.

These people were beings, as I was. This was the firm
basis on which I met them, every one. Under the surface was

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a sacred seed awaiting a sacred growth. Their visible behavior was but the distorted reflection of a radiant reality. Even to glimpse this reality was to have faith in men. I had faith and felt a pure personal-impersonal kind-ness, I had a gladness for these beings, and a sorrow too, a gravity, a glowing and boundless good-will.

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## XVI These Are Awake

Puzzles fascinate the human mind; human beings, to my mind, were the greatest puzzles in the entire world. I moved among them as if on a journey of exploration. I wanted to check my findings and, if possible, fit together in my reason the disparate elements that somehow were combined in the living individuals. I wanted to open to new and deeper understandings of the enigmatical combination called man.

Especially alert to find out more about beings in relation to their mortal coils, whenever I met a person I tried to discern just what form his coil took, just what were the particular obstructions provided by his personal self. For as no two men were exactly alike, so no two coils were exactly alike. Though many men had in common much the same difficulties, each man had his own unique combination of them. Indeed the individual combinations were often so unlike one another that it sometimes happened that blood-brothers, having similar problems as ingredients, were as strangers and could not understand or sympathize with each other's difficulties. The difference of pattern blinded them to the similarity of content.

On meeting a person I asked myself - Is he aware that a coil exists in him? Does he recognize that it is this that he is primarily up against and ought to contend with? Does he see his basic difficulties, his own unique pattern of problems? Is he pressing against them from within, to overcome them, to outgrow them? What progress is he making? It was

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while pursuing this investigation that I came upon two discoveries, one of which deepened my relationship with people, while the other made men seem even more of a puzzle.

To feel kind-ness is also to feel a profound respect for people as beings, though you may disrespect them as egotists. Already I had this being-regard for others, this recognition of their essential worth and wonder. Now, in addition, I came upon qualities in their more outward characters that evoked regard for people simply as people.

I seemed to have a sense of the life-history of each individual, a feeling of what each had come through in this life, and still had to go through. The gameness, the fortitude of men in their struggles on this Earth! What adversities they encounter, and yet they can smile and give good words to one another! Decency co-existed with meanness and hate. Honesty, helpfulness, good values and an innate intelligence co-existed with their opposites.

I particularly respected people for the fact that they were suffering, and carrying on. Not only the sensitive but the seemingly hardened and brazen suffered inwardly, hiding their feelings from each other's prying eyes, each keeping his crucifixion to himself, continuing to bear it. I was humbled by the secret suffering I saw in everyone, and understood that any human being, no matter how asleep or how tireless his egotism, suffered in a way that should have evoked the sympathy and respect of others.

I felt then, I feel now, how hopeful it would be if each person, instead of standing off and viewing others with

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cold criticism, picking them to pieces, judging and condemn-
ing them, would use his own suffering to understand and feel
with others in their suffering. If only each and all would
allow their suffering to melt them, open them, so that they
could put themselves in the place of others. At present there
is not enough love to bring people together through love. There
is enough suffering to unite us. Union through suffering would
lead to union through helpfulness. Union through helpfulness
would lead to union through love.

It was, I believe, recognition of the innate but often
buried intelligence of people that put me on the track of sever-
al surprising findings. Though people were somnambulistic,
there were some wide awake things in them. These awake things
were in their submerged lives; people were asleep to them. In
effect, sleeping and waking were proceeding at the same time
in the total lives of the same men!

The wakeful faculty I first came upon was intuition.
Intuition, I became sure, was awake even in those who were
asleep on their feet. It was offering to the so-called con-
scious minds of people the understandings and the values of
their real beings. It was trying to be an ambassador from
the World of Being to those in exile. In some measure it knew
everything that I had come to know since entering Being. All
that people had to do was to admit their own intuitions into
their own consciousness, allow this faculty to impress their
minds, and they would grasp being-truths, they would be guided
through the maze of exile.

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There are several words for the consciousness from which our habitual awareness is all but split off. Sometimes it is called the "unconscious", sometimes the "subconscious". I became convinced that the "unconscious" is quite conscious. But, because people are unconscious of it, they call it the unconscious!

The subconscious, as I prefer to call it, is the consciousness of human beings. Not in the outer mind, but in it, is the unfolding pattern of a man's life, the unifying principle, the creative force. In it are the links relating a man to the rest of life and keeping him so related. In it are the unlearned wisdom and the reserve power. There are the roots of men, the roots that push down into the common ground of all life, that have purchase in the Great Ground of the living Universe. There, in the very center of that consciousness, is that of God in every man. Without the subconscious, people could not live. Without it, indeed, there would be no people.

It seemed evident that many of men's actions came straight from the "unconscious". These actions were as awake as their source. But, because people were unaware of them, they called them unconscious actions!

Then I came upon something that gave me a shock. I discovered a thing in people. I had no name for it then. I have none now. To call it greed is not enough. Rather it is the misshapen body of which greed is one arm. Not human, not animal either, it is gargoyle-like. Insatiate, scheming, clever - and to no purpose whatsoever. It is like a maw that

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would gobble up everything in sight, feeding only itself, feeding on all else - a maw unrelated to other organs except in a predatory way. When inhibited, it peers rapaciously from behind bars, gazing at the world with a horrible and utterly senseless longing. When it breaks loose it plunges people into a ruthless and shameless grasping, and, in extreme cases, murder. And this thing is awake.

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## XVII They Plan for Exile

Whenever I had the chance I listened to people's con-
versations, those meant for me and those not. Whatever people
said or did seemed to be my business, for my business was to
understand - if I could.

I had seen the puzzle of the human situation, some of
the main features at any rate. What, however, was the key to
it? I knew that man is out of place. By what lever could he
move himself into place? Just how, by what means, could kin
realize kinship? By what precise steps could exiles enter
Being? Were there methods more effective than the ones I knew?

In this instance, as in many others, what I next came
upon was not the key but another feature of the puzzle, not
the lever but another weight.

To appreciate the force with which this new perception
struck me, it must be remembered that though I was linked with
people as beings, I was non-related to them as exiles. I cen-
tered in the World of Being, experiencing it while they experi-
enced their world, seeing both worlds, as a man above the clouds
may see the world of sunshine he is in and the dark world below.
I knew, never forgetting this knowing, that as I had arisen to
Being so could they who were now in exile.

The new weight I saw was this. Not only were the mass
of men in exile, but, in effect, they planned to remain in it.
By their very planning they were holding themselves in that
condition, making doubly sure that they would not get out of it.

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241

Their desires were for the imagined satisfactions coming to them as they were in that world as it was. They approved of these desires and prizes. They approved of themselves trying to gratify these desires. In this respect their self-approbation was a mighty thing, not to be deflated by setbacks, not to be unseated by disaster. And as their desires, so their plans, so their projects. They planned their business and their politics for that world; so their business and their politicians held them to that world. They directed their science and much of their religion to and for that world; so these bound them to it.

For those who delight in evil, the world of exile was a devil's paradise. Naturally they did not want to get out of it. Naturally their plans were for it. But the same compulsion ruled most of the good people too. The good people, to be sure, wanted to ameliorate the conditions of that world. But it was precisely that world they wanted to change; on it their hearts were beant; on it their plans were focused; and so they were as much under the weight of their good plans as were the evil under the weight of theirs. The good people also stopped themselves from rising.

They expected to find love in that condition, security and peace. And they worked for them. How hard and how earnestly they labored to make it peaceful - when by its very nature it could never be peaceful. They educated themselves and their children; and the education was for life in exile; so education weighted them in it. Singly and in groups, in small and

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large organizations, and through all sorts of movements they tried to render *that* condition less wretched, less horrible, more decent, more liveable. Their aim? To raise the living standards of the prison, make the pit more comfortable and more attractive to live in. And so their very aims, well-intentioned though they were, and often fruitful in a piece-meal way, held them in the pit. It seemed never to occur to them, as a real possibility, that they could move *from* that condition *into* this condition of Being. They sought freedom in liberty, not freedom from exil e.

And why? Had no signs of another being, another life, another world, ever come to them? Had they never heard, through the scriptures, the truth that the kingdom of heaven is within - is now, exists now, need not be made by men, is God-created? Had they never been told that in order to enter the kingdom of God one must be born again, born above this body, this self, this ordinary world? Ah yes, they had heard, and some of their own experiences had pointed them to the way. But these things weighed lightly upon them, were matters of talk instead of springs of action.

Deep down in people, more firmly embedded than learning acquired from the outside, more insistent that the occasional instructions from within, was the overpowering assumption that the personal self is the real and only possible self, its life the real and only possible life on Earth, its world IT. This belief was the frame that determined the over-all bent of their views and actions, even of their dreams. Their words, the words that really meant something to them, their

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243

ideas and ideals, their plans and projects, their entire conscious life was predominantly disposed to accept themselves as exiles, and the world of exile, as the fixed limit of their existence on this globe.

But whence came such a predisposition? Had they, of themselves, originated it? Hardly. How, then, had they come by it? Who or what was the originator? What caused these sure weights that kept them prisoners, that made the majority would remain captive exiles? The more I thought of it the more I felt that human beings were the unsuspecting victims of a psychic outrage.

It was so baffling, so tantalizing. Were the real beings of people remotely distant from them, were the condition of Being far far away to be reached only by travelling to another solar system in another universe, I could have understood it. But the beings of people are within them, part of their own human totality. The World of Being is within and all around them, existing now, not needing to be laboriously created by men, not awaiting men at the far end of the evolution of the species, but to be entered now by transformation. With this the reality, what could prevent it from breaking through sufficiently to impress men? How can people, no matter what blinders they wear, continue to be blind to it?

How could darkness and illusion ever have found purchase in man? Where else does evil exist except in men? And how can evil compel beings, who have God in them, to bend to it? And if they bend, why do they not struggle to recover? They have power of recovery. Underlying the deposit of evil there are creative powers stronger than any destructive force on

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Earth. If am many planned to get out of exile as now plan
to stay in, mankind would be well-nigh delivered within the
lifetime of those now living.

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## XVIII Low Ceiling

I opened to a view, and it was not a happy one. I saw human beings on Earth, within the all-embracing Universe, dwelling on what now are the continents and islands. Thousands of them died each day, leaving their physical bodies behind to be buried, leaving too their works and their perishable treasures; while fresh thousands entered this sphere each day by birth into physical bodies. The beings were curiously unaware of the Universe, of the Earth, especially of themselves. Though some of them studied the body and the mental processes, though some gained knowledge of pathology and were able to cure some forms of disease, what they learned seemed to have little or no bearing on their deep-seated motivations. Again and again they made the same tragic errors, suffered the same great failures, achieved the same kind of myopic success. Few came to know that on leaving the bodies of their mothers and entering the world they had come into a second womb, and that ahead of them was a second birth.

Surrounding the Earth, as a smoke-polluted industrial cities, was a low ceiling beyond which ordinary vision could not penetrate, which kept the beings, in vision as in body, earth-bound - yet not vitally connected with the Earth. The low ceiling was as a weight that bowed men down, pressed on those who wanted to be upright, flattened them. It obscured all sense and awareness of life as a sacred process, as an evolutionary and involutionary spiral in process of perfecting.

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246

The pall was not natural to the Earth. It seemed to arise and to keep arising from the beings themselves, yet neither was it natural to them. To all life it was lethal, to human beings most of all, because it emanated from them. The other creatures could shun men and in this way protect themselves to some extent.

Periodically the pall became particularly ominous over some portion of the Earth. And there, down below on the lands and waters, flames shot from guns, violent explosions occurred, the earth was torn up, water spurted skyward, cities fell, men attacked men; fish, birds, and mice were killed. Nature herself was thrown out of balance.

Men knew that the lesser creatures ran from them. They did not know why. Men knew that they often shunned each other. They did not know why. Each man knew that he shunned himself, as much as he could. He did not know why.

Men assumed that the pall was a fixed feature of the Universe, its periodic ominous concentrations a fixed feature of the human world. They denied that the outer and inner skies might be clear, that the birds and animals might be drawn to them, and they to themselves and to each other. Men made themselves believe that the progressive poisoning was not poisoning at all, but the natural, normal, unchangeable nature of the one and only life possible to them on Earth.

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## XIX Notes

### Realizing

I *realized*. This, I think, was the essential thing.

To realize is to make reality real to oneself. Realizing is the ability to *know*, by direct spontaneous apprehension, to *feel* what one knows, and to *sense* what one feels. Mental, emotional, and sensory functions all play a part in the process. The whole being is involved. Realizing is a native process of Being-Consciousness. Those who have been made whole, realize. The resurrected realize.

The finest work that the unresurrected can do is to gather the infrequent flashes that come to them, and, instead of forgetting these contacts with reality, pile them up as living steps to the living world.

Being-Consciousness is the ever-present realizing that one is a being, that others also are beings. It is the constant increasing awareness that oneself and all beings are in a great progression and are charged to grow, to purify, to press ever higher, to unfold towards the utmost reaches of their resources - thus to serve themselves, Life and the mysterious God.

Being-Consciousness is the consciousness that *meets*.

### Meeting

To meet one's own being. To meet Being, extending without end. To meet the invisible power of one's life, the palpable dignity of one's self, the fullness, the rightness,

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248

and the beauty. To meet the realness of unpossessive con-
sciousness. To feel there is no boundary between self and
fire, earth, air, land, water. To know that all is mine,
and all is yours, and all is His.

The threefold meeting: with one's own being, with the
beings of others, with the Being of beings, the one embracing
Deity.

To meet one's own being is the pathway to the worlds.
There are meetings wider, deeper, higher. He who has met his
real being does not stop, but finds himself in others, and
others in himself, and moves within the Universe.

Say to yourself: I go to meeting. A wonderful saying,
this. Especially if one is doing it. Say - I am met. What
more can be said? Yes, there is a further step. I am joined
with the living. I am in union with the Nameless.

Those Who Grow

I was in a motion that seemed motionless, a vital
silence, a Presence.

I was in the midst of creative action. As recipient
I received it with gratitude. As source I contributed to it
in my measure.

There were knwoings, questionings, openings, rejoicings,
bendings to the One whose slightest touch transforms life into
an act of worship.

I was in the fountain, and my fountain flowed. My con-
sciousness, though whole, was still limited - and it sometimes

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occurred to me to wonder what it would be like to be in
Consciousness, Unlimited. But the limits were moveable.
I pressed against them and they gave way.

This being-living progressed and changed, yet the
core was constant. Thoughts flashed and receded. Feelings
arose and subsided, as in the ordinary waking state. But I
did not get lost within myself. I was present. My center
was stable amid the changes. I moved on a high level, dedi-
cated. I felt joy in the great adventure, and within and
all around was the supreme Initiator.

It was not granted me to become a seer. I did not see
God, as some have. Nor was it given me to know, in the white
light of revelation, his Will. Yet I was aware of the sacred
presence, and I came to know - Those who grow thereby serve God.

## Being and Egotism

It is the nature of being to move ever deeper into its
own reality, and into the reality of others. Having entered
in, I was able to be outgoing.

A man, located in his real being, need not turn in; he
is in. He need not try to move still deeper in. By being he
is irresistibly drawn in and in. Nor need he turn out; he is
out. He is out of his ego-prison. Out of that wrapped-up
condition, he inevitably is outgoing.

He discovers that there is no barrier between himself
and others, no division between the inner and the outer, the
subjective and the objective. The one merges into the other.

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358

one who is already aflame. It is a trumpet call to high adventure that starts the forward movement away from old forms."

But as surely as we periodically need outside help, so surely do we periodically need to do without it. One must be on his own, working and developing in his own way, relying chiefly on his own resources. The wisdom of a teacher consists in knowing when to call and when to dismiss his pupils. The wisdom of a pupil should consist in knowing when to seek and when to leave a teacher. Even when the teacher-pupil relationship is closest there should be a basic self-reliance, a free association.

True teaching is not dictatorship. Neither is it the flat plane of popular democracy. It does not level down, but up. It is a dynamic relation between those more advanced and others less advanced. Instruction is given, sometimes quietly, sometimes harshly, often with loving kindness, always with respect; and should be received with appreciation, gratitude, and at times with veneration. True teaching is an incline, an up-grade, now gentle, now steep, by means of which those who are lower rise towards those who are higher, while the higher move higher still.

We cannot learn the methods of science and grow into the life of a scientist simply by reading books or spending weekends in laboratories or in the field.¹ We must go to a place where we can study and work continually for some time, a place especially designed and equipped for this purpose, including able instructors. There are numbers of such places, many of

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them excellent. This is because the need for them is recog-
nized, science is highly valued in our day, and many people
want to become scientists or technologists.

The same is true as regards learning the methods and
growing into the life of a musician, an actor, a school teacher,
a craftsman, a mechanic. None of these skills is to be ac-
quired just anywhere through any experience. Nor is the grow-
ing into these kinds of life to be accomplished by merely oc-
casional application. This is recognized; and so there are
conservatories of music, schools of the theatre, teacher train-
ing institutes, craft and trade schools, and people go to them.

The need for centers of religious life is even greater.
It is more difficult to develop in the religious life than in
the others. We need be gathered with others of like dedication.
We need be where the life of the spirit is the life.

Psycho-spiritual means and techniques are not easy to
learn and are even more difficult to continue to practice. Few
people, under the conditions of modern every day life, can hope
to pick them up on the run, practice them rightly, and pursue
them until they have served their purpose. As already said, we
must be helped to get started, and to persevere until we have
developed some degree of "staying power". Above all we await,
deep in our hearts, knowledge of what religious experience
really is, an awakening to the possible, so that we may know
what to demand of ourselves, so that we may have a personally
felt standard to live up to.

The larger world, having an atmosphere favorable to
business, politics, etc., is almost void of atmosphere favorable

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352

to spiritual enterprise. We, then, should find a place, or create one, with an atmosphere favorable to this kind of undertaking, its explorations and discoveries.

The world which we fondly call ours is vitally interested in producing the kind of men who keep it going as a paying business. It gives high rating to those who in one way or another contribute to material profit and power. Indeed it is so zealous for people of such types that it forces them to over-specialize at the expense of a rounded life. It is in-different if not hostile to the cultivation of religious men. If there are few or no seers, prophets, saints, what matter? Indeed it would rather not have holy men, for they call people away from love of the world, as from love of self, and the world is a jealous world. All of which points to the fact that if there are to be holy men there must be places where this type of man is valued and nurtured.

The kind of center I have in mind is not one in which you learn to make some aspects of religion serve your desire for a worldly career, but a place in which you learn to make all aspects of your life in the world serve your desire for new birth. It is a place where spiritual reality becomes increasingly real to us, where we become able not to conform to the world, but to be transformed that we may know the good and perfect will of our Creator. There we undertake and finish a phase of the never finished process of becoming children of the light and growing up to God.

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A religious center is a form of life wherein we are enabled to approach our center. It may be a house with no more than two or three people living in it. It may be a larger place, established on a more or less permanent basis, holding a number of individuals woven into a spiritual community. It may be temporarily created by a meeting, small or large, of dedicated people gathering periodically.

Where, are you going to find such a place - one, more-over, that suits your needs? As a matter of fact there are more of them than is generally known, here in America, in England, India, perhaps in every country of the world. They are not pub-licised as are our colleges, nor as numerous. There should be more. There should be more demand for them. There will be more when there is more demand. Increased demand awaits the reali-zation of our need.

A man goes to medical school. Then he comes out to prac-tice. He cannot practice before going to school. If he stays in school the rest of his life he will never practice. So we may go to a religious center, then come out to practice. Of course, we are practicing while there. We may never again at-tain such intensity of practice, such singleness of purpose, such utter dedication. But after a time we should leave, now able to carry on in the midst of the irrelevant world. This too is part of the training, and it is, I think, an indispen-sable part.

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354

On first re-entering the world the flame will be
bright. The inner glow will be sustained by the deeper
powers of our life. We'll carry on the life and the work
with considerable zest and force. Then, after a time, our
sense of purpose will diminish, the glow fade. Alien inte-
rests will subtly become ours. Here it may be that we should
make double effort to continue working independently. Or
this may be the time when we should return to a center, or
create one, to be rekindled, recharged.

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## II Certain Gurdjieff Methods

### Self-Observation and Nonidentification

This is the method conveyed to me by A. R. Orage just before I left for the Institute. It was usually referred to as "the method". As Orage was explaining it, a hitherto unused faculty in me suddenly came into action. It was almost as though a new center had awakened. Thanks to this, I was able to begin practicing the first steps at once, and correctly. Later on I made mistakes, fell into some of the pitfalls that await everyone, but Orage was at hand to set me right.

Such a start is not to be expected if one merely reads of the method. In fact it did not always happen through personal contact and spoken explanation, though Orage was an expert conveyor. Some of those who attended the groups never learned to do what this practice calls for, while quite a few others needed repeated corrections of their efforts for a time.

Self-observation has never seemed to me the most apt term to indicate the nature of the first half of the method. "Mindfulness", as used by the Buddhists to cover a related practice, is in some ways preferable. The term "watchfulness" of the Friends is also good. On first hearing of "self-observation", one might think that he is to observe himself, that is, his inner processes, his thoughts and feelings, by turning the mind inward. Not at all. One is to keep the mind turned outward, or better still, not be concerned about it. One is to try to be aware of his body and its behavior. At first and for some time, bodily characteristics are all that one is to try to observe.

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356

Self-observation, however, is an excellent term in that it indicates that one is to be aware of his *own* behavior, not that of others. It is also good because it brings out the point that the process involved is not introspection or anything like it, but is a kind of observation, a watching, an awareness of what your body does, as though it were an object sitting or standing or moving in front of you.

It is as if there were a moving picture camera within and yet behind you, taking pictures of your body in all of its postures and movements. A camera, however, is mechanical. This process never becomes automatic, but must always be done by conscious effort. A camera merely sees. This is more than seeing, hearing, or sensing. You are not simply to see your body. You are not simply to hear it when it speaks, or to sense it when it has marked sensations. We all do these things now and again. Nor are you to think about it. Many of us, out of habit, think about our bodies and ourselves, too much. Self-observation rarely occurs of itself.

What we are aiming for is awareness pure and simple. Sight, hearing, and the other senses may contribute. We are not to try to eliminate them. But what we want is the action of pristine awareness. We are trying to activate a faculty that, so to speak, is superior to the five senses, to feeling, and to thinking. The real purpose of the method is to arouse and exercise this faculty, and by the exercise of it, to develop it. It is not at all activated by trying to be aware of other bodies and objects, or of feelings or thoughts. This is why we are focused on our own bodies, each on his own.

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As your body sits or stands, try to be aware of it,
just aware. As it walks, be aware of it walking. Try to
have an unbroken awareness of it walking, a detached aware-
ness that observes and does not interfere with its behavior.
You should know: My body is walking. But you are not to put
it into words. You are to have, or try to have, just the
sheer awareness, without words, thoughts, comments, judgments;
without any impulse to change or correct what you are observing.

Remember that we are not aiming to become more aware of
the body for the sake of becoming more aware of it, but for the
sake of increasing consciousness. Nor is the object to improve
ourselves, in line with some personal picture or ideal, by
direct action upon the features that our new effort may bring
to our attention in a new light. Let them alone. Let yourself
alone. Attend to the new effort. Of itself it will effect
changes in line with the true human norm. It will act as cata-
lyst. Leave everything to the new effort, and try to improve
it. As your body gestures, try to be aware of it gesturing;
as it speaks, of it speaking; as it eats, of it eating; etc.
All without wishes, thoughts, judgments. Just the sheer awareness.

If you succeed in being aware in this way, or even suc-
ceed in trying to be, you will discover certain things; you
will find that you'll forget. You won't often remember to try.
A whole day will pass, or several days, with not a single
prompting to make this effort. Or, if prompted, other things
may seem more pressing and more important. Somehow, then, you
must get yourself to feel that this is important. You must

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welcome and act upon each reminder. By conscious effort you
must try to remember more often. You will also find that your
awareness flashes on and off. So you must endeavor to increase
the span.

We begin simply, and advance. Should you remember to
practice the method twice a day, your aim for the next day is
to remember three times. With each day step up the number of
times. We may begin by being able to remember to try to sus-
tain awareness over a five minute period; after which, even
the idea of the method passes from mind. Next day, then, aim
to sustain the practice for six or seven minutes. And so on.

One may start, as I did, with the attempt to have and
maintain an awareness of the whole body, whatever it is doing.
Or one may single out one feature, such as posture, and try to
be aware of it as often as you can and for as long a time as
possible. Later you may switch and attend to gestures, tone
of voice, etc. Having developed some capacity to be aware of
one at a time, try to observe two at a time, then three at a
time. Eventually we should become able to sustain awareness
of the entire body and all of its behavior throughout the
waking hours. I say be <u>able</u> to do it, not that we will always
see fit to do it.

I cannot even mention all the mistakes commonly made
by most of us in the early stages of the attempt to practice
this method. One is our inveterate tendency to take hold of
something newly seen in our bodies or in ourselves, to change
it, to correct it. This concern has its value, but is out of

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359

place in this practice. For this is not intended as an instru-
ment of therapy or morals. Its purpose is to increase the
ability to attend, is to exercise and develop sheer conscious-
ness, to add that cubit to our statures. It works not for the
correction of this body and this person but for the transfor-
mation of the whole man.

In the practice of self-observation, observation is the
aim, detachment a means thereto. In trying to observe your
body you detach from it. In the practice of nonidentification,
detachment is the aim. Nonidentification, as the word suggests,
is the effort to annul one's identification with the body, and,
indeed, with the personal self. It is the attempt to step back
from the body, out of the self, to emerge from one's habitual
wrappings, and approach the attitude that a being has when he
is free of body and of self. It is the endeavor to know, in
the words of the Gita, that one is "other than the instrument".
I am I. Body is body. I am not my body. I have a body but
it is not me.

How can one tell another exactly how to detach? With
the idea in mind, try to do it. Take your body as it is, where
it is, now. Gently try to loose yourself from it, to step out
of it, so that the whole body becomes to you what the hand is
to it, what a tool is to the hand. Let go of the sense that
it is you. See it impersonally, as if it were an object as
removed from you as any other object or body.

Begin first thing in the morning. See the body lying
there in bed. Try to know and feel - This is my body, not myself.

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360

This is a body. Continue this effort as the body gets up,
washes, dresses, has breakfast, goes about the affairs of
the day. Presently you will forget. Presently, then, re-
member. Try again. Try as often and for as long a time as
you can throughout the day; and, last thing at night before
falling asleep, be aware of it lying there, a body, an organ-
ism, an object, not you.

When in the stage of trying to do them, self-observa-
tion and nonidentification are two different practices. When,
however, we are able to do them, they may merge into one. Each
promotes the other. He who is truly aware of body, is non-
attached. He who is nonattached is able to be purely aware
of body.

The entire method is to be practiced as we engage in
our regular daily occupations. It is to be added to what we
ordinarily do. It is neither necessary nor desirable to take
time out or place ourselves in conditions removed from the
duties and distractions of the everyday world. Right in the
midst of life - this is where to do it.

Those interested in reading further of these and re-
lated matters are referred to: C. Daly King's "The Psychology
of Consciousness", especially the last three chapters; Robert
Courtney's "Beyond Behaviorism", particularly the chapter, The
Old-New Method; F.L. Woodward's translation, "Some Sayings of
the Buddha"; and Alexandra David-Neal's "Buddhism, Its Doctrines
and Methods", particularly the chapter, The Eightfold Path.

In rounding off these notes on a method that is as dif-
ficult to practice as it is rewarding, it might be well to

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36/1

recall my experiences of observation and nonidentification
while in Being. It was natural for me then to be body-free,
self-free, to be aware of body without special effort, to be
and to remain nonattached. Yes, and then came the fall; and
when I fell back into exile and again became bound to this
body-self, again I had to make conscious effort to remember,
to observe, to nonidentify, and the going was as difficult
as before. It still is.

## Contending With Oneself.

I was started on this method by coming upon Gurdjieff's
words, "You are here having realized that you have only your-
self chiefly to contend with. Therefore thank those who give
you the opportunity." Thereafter I gradually developed it.
As it will be described in some detail in Chapter IV, I will
say no more of it here except to remark that its use enables
us to meet some needs not covered by self-observation and
nonidentification.

## Psycho-Physical Means

Those who would promote harmonious development and
attain a deeper being, a greater consciousness, are liable
to be held back by the following factors among others: bodies
that are tight, congested, toxic; old habits of thinking,
feeling, and behaving; a tendency to wish for attainment but
not to work for it, by applying ourselves to concrete matters
within the range of our present abilities; the temptation to
hide one's faults and weaknesses instead of seeing and over-
coming them; the inclination to repress or curb the evil in

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ourselves, and believe that is enough, instead of giving our-
selves the opportunity to uproot it.

Manual work as performed at the Institute was a means
of overcoming these impediments. So were the gymnastic exer-
cises. So were the situations created by Gurdjieff. We were
chiefly directed to these means, rather than to thinking or
meditation or prayer or worship. The idea was that one can
fruitfully engage in active pondering, meditation and prayer,
only after being changed psycho-physically, or while being so
changed through tangible activities.

We cannot live even an ordinary life satisfactorily if
our bodies are sluggish, insensitive, unvivified. How, then,
can we press forward developmentally? How can we be alert,
aware, able? How can we meditate if the body is ill at ease?
What can we do if it is definitely out of order? Most of our
force is spent on overcoming its malfunctioning. Yet any num-
ber of aspiring people believe they can by-pass the body, while
others think it is beneath them. But there it is. There it is
to hinder them if it is deficient, to help them if trained and
tempered.

At the Institute we were called from our roseate dreams
of higher consciousness and brought face to face with body,
and through it, with ourselves. It was put to work. We were
put to work on it. And out came its habits, limitations, its
faults and aptitudes, its inclinations and disinclinations, a
will of its own. Here indeed was a concrete thing to grapple
with, a tangible difficulty against which we could measure our

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ability. Were we its masters? More often it was ours. But though we suffered defeat again and again, some good things happened. We learned, if we had never known it before, that manual work under appropriate conditions is a first-rate means of unlimbering the body, vivifying and restoring it. More than that, manual work if done in a certain way, is a means of tapping the body's usually untapped reservoirs of energy, regenerating it, awakening it. It is possible for the body itself to undergo a kind of transformation and new birth. This is an amazing discovery, an experience as extraordinary as the transformation of mind or being.

The results of developmental physical labor are likely to become apparent first in the body. After several months of such work the body emerges clean, pliant, empowered. Provided, of course, that it had no organic or serious functional troubles. Before long the good results are felt with equal if not greater force in the emotions, mind, will, and general consciousness. Feelings are released, deepened, and made mobile. Mind becomes lucid, capable of grasping and comprehending. The will, so you find, actually exists and can be used effectively. In fine, the re-toning of the body reverberates upon the psyche - and the re-toned psyche, in its turn, upon the body. An all-around re-creation is going on.

Any true workman derives satisfaction from working, from a sense that a job is well done. But manual work is usually done mainly for the sake of the outward results, that is, for its products and the money to be gained from them. A farmer works to grow crops, a carpenter to build houses. That is what

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they aim for; any inward results are regarded, if at all, as
by-products. At the Institute we were to work - not that every-
one did it, not that anyone could do it consistently - chiefly
for the sake of inward purification, renewal, growth. Each
task, to be sure, was to be done as well as we could do it.
We were under obligation to improve as workmen. Tools and
materials were to be cared for as good craftsmen do. One of
Gurdjieff's sayings was, "I love him who loves work." However,
it was work for the purpose of development. We were not to
become attached to the outward fruits of labor. The aim was
the same as expressed again and again in the Bhagavad-Gita,
"Be free from attachment to results." Those who grew overly
fond of the fruits, egotistical about their accomplishments,
were likely to find their pet projects mysteriously disrupted.

"Perform every action", says the Gita, "with your heart fixed on the Lord". "Do your duty, always; but without attachment. That is how a man reaches the ultimate truth; but working without anxiety about results". "Work is holy when the heart is fixed on the Highest". Opportunity was given to apply these attitudes in practice, endeavoring to make them our own.

New experiences do not come to those who are ruled by
old habits. This is obvious. One way to prepare for new ex-
periences is, then, to break old habits. Someone at the Insti-
tute once said, "To understand a new idea, break an old habit".
Some of those who came to the Institute had never done manual
work before; so just to do it involved, for them, habit-breaking.
No one was allowed to become habituated to one kind of work.

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365

New elements were introduced. People were shifted, as need be, from job to job, from heavy to light tasks, from the feeling of trees to the making of roads, from work in the vegetable garden to kitchen duty.

The work day was from about eight in the morning to six in the evening, with breaks at lunch and tea time. Sometimes, particularly if you were dead tired, or thought you were, Gurdjieff would call for volunteers to work after dinner until nine or ten. The gymnastic exercises and dances usually began about nine and lasted until midnight or later. Each day was a full day. More effort and experience were packed into a day at the Institute than into an ordinary month. It gave you a measure of man's reserve power, a standard of human capacity. It was astonishing to find that you and others had it in you.

Usually we start a piece of work with some zest, and carry on splendidly until our desires and energies lag; whereon we will stop if circumstances permit. Here, as already indicated, you were to work hard while you felt like it, and then, when you most wanted to quit, you were to go at it with renewed determination and work twice as hard. It was this extra, altogether volitional effort that counted most. By pressing upon the body in the way required, impurities were pressed out of it. By working beyond the range of wish we develop will. By continuing to work after we are tired we learn to work with maximum economy. By going beyond the limit of our ordinarily available energies we may tap the deeper sources.

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366

You may say that we cannot work in this way under
ordinary circumstances. True, we cannot. You may feel that
this kind of exertion is dangerous. It is, unless you are
under wise guidance.

Manual work, especially when one is not accustomed to
it brings out of us all sorts of things, some good, some quite
bad. We are shown up to others. We have opportunity of being
shown up to ourselves. It is our own fault if we do not prac-
tice, "Know Thyself". Manual work does this under any condi-
tions. At the Institute it was the ground within and around
which Burdjieff created developmental situations. Thus it
became an outstanding occasion for employing the psychological
methods, Self-Observation, Nonidentification, and Contending
with Oneself.

I know too little to write of the ideas behind the other
psycho-physical means: the gymnastic exercises, the dances,
the music. To do the exercises was quite difficult at first,
for they involved nonhabitual movements and coordinations. To
participate in some of the dances was sheer joy, in others an
ennobling religious experience.

A piece of writing exists, a partial report of a lecture
by some one who understood an exercise called the "Stop" exer-
cise. The following passages are quoted from it.

Our habitual movements are automatic; automatic
too our thoughts and feelings. The automaticity of
thoughts and feelings is definitely bound up with
the automaticity of bodily movements. One cannot
be changed without the other.

As every function of a man, mental, emotional,
or moving, has its definite repertorie of postures
and is in constant reciprocal action, he cannot or-
dinarily go beyond his repertorie.

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367

The Institute's method of harmonic development consists in getting a man out of the circle of his innate automaticity, and one of the means to this end, especially at the beginning of the work upon oneself, is the "Stop" exercise, which offers special exercises for the mental and emotional functions with the object of changing undesirable states and giving in exchange other desirable states.

Every pupil must, at the command Stop!, or upon a previously arranged signal, immediately arrest all movement, whatever he may be doing, whether during work, repose, at meals, on the Institute premises, or outside. In this the pupil must not merely suspend all movement, but also maintain the tension of his muscles, his facial expression, in the same state as it is in at the word of command, keeping his gaze fixed on the point at which it is directed when the command is uttered. There are no postures in the suspended figures thus obtained. It is simply an incipient movement, interrupted at the instant of transition from one posture to another. It is usual for us to pass from one posture to another so quickly that we do not notice the positions we assume during these transitions. The "Stop" exercise enables us to see and feel our body in positions totally unusual to it.

Feeling himself in this condition, a man feels himself, as it were, from a new point of view, sees and observes himself in a new way. In this position, to which he is unaccustomed, he can think in a new way. In this manner the circle of old automaticity is broken up. The body strives in vain to assume a convenient posture, habitual to it. The will of the man, brought into operation by the command "Stop", hinders this. The "Stop" exercise is simultaneously an exercise of the will, attention, thinking, feeling, and motion.

## Situations

A most important aspect of life in the Institute was the training provided by specially created situations. Gurdjieff was a master hand at giving you exceptional opportunities for contending with yourself. All would be going well, and then, suddenly, you would find yourself so related to Gurdjieff or to others or to your work that some of your worst faults or

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weaknesses would be brought to the fore in full light. There
they would be, called from hiding, uncovered. There you would
be, facing them, Your self-respect, your conscience, every
good force in you would insist that you struggle to overcome
them. And you were to try to thank those who gave you this
opportunity! How difficult to do that. How easy to be thank-
ful for the passing of the opportunity.

Or you might be caught, quite unexpectedly, in a problem
with your fellow workers, the problem so acute, so almost
tangible, that you would feel it literally binding you, it
being imperative that you work out of it. Situations such
as this usually set you against others, others against you.
You blamed them. They blamed you. Anger often flared. And
right in the midst of this you had to continue living together,
each and all learning to surmount the all too human tangle.

These situations were not different in kind from those
provided by everyday life; but how different in intensity!
There were others I do not want to write about here. Never
before or since have I had such opportunity to promote cathar-
sis-development by contending with myself. The situations of
daily living, useful as they are for this purpose, seem rela-
tively tame, undesigned, uninspired, unillumined.

While in progress, this aspect of Institute life was
usually painful and sometimes terrible. Occasionally I felt
it was the devil's work, as though I and the other ordinary
mortals had been tricked into entering an unholy laboratory.

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369

But, what training! You would go through an intensive phase of it, and then come out, indeed come up. Once a conclusion had been reached, a reconciliation perhaps, you were sure to rise and you might lift into a life as wonderful as the other had been terrible. There were times when light broke in, beauty, an awakened sense of man's life as a sacred process progressing towards perfection.

I do not know how Gurdjieff did it, so of course I cannot explain his method. He is the only one I personally have known who could do it. He was a dramatist of high order. He wrote his drama of development in the throbbing life of human beings. All I want to do here is to record, for the sake of those who may not have known of it, that such a method exists - conscious training by means of consciously created situations. The same method may be in use by other men here and there on earth, men you and I have not yet heard of but may some day meet.

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### III Certain Quaker Practices

The early Friends, by and large, were as genuinely religious people as any of whom we have record. They had true inwardness, and true outwardness based on true inwardness. They lived in the spirit and in the world. Though some of their words and phrases were second-hand, borrowed from the conventional Christianity of their time, their experiences were fresh, springing from the perennial source. More than one attained first-hand experience of "that of God in every man".

Not that they were perfect or thought themselves perfect. The faults and imperfections of George Fox or William Penn, for example, sometimes eclipsed their love and light. But they were dedicated. They were dedicated to becoming perfect by overcoming just those imperfections. Catharsis-development was earnestly practiced by them under other names. In their measure they were agents of the Power, the divine principle in the heart, to which they wanted to turn all men. And they were aware of the need of specific means and methods.

"An Apology for the True Christian Divinity", by Robert Barclay, is the most cogent and comprehensive exposition of the faith and practices of the Friends written in that day. Barclay began his book by pointing to the need of right means and warning against the use of wrong means. He wrote, "He that desireth to acquire any art or science, seeketh first those means by which that art or science is obtained. If we ought to do so in things natural and earthly, how much more then in spiritual?"

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371

"Our business", wrote William Penn, "being the realities of religion, an effectual change before our last and great change; that all may come to an inward, sensible and experimental knowledge of God, through the convictions and operations of the light and spirit of Christ in themselves, the sufficient and blessed means given to all ..."

What were these means that Barclay considered so necessary, that Penn regarded as blessed and effective? We shall examine certain of them. Before doing so, however, it will be well to note the view that the Friends had of man, the kind of change aimed for, the ends which these means were to serve.

By experience the Early Friends knew three large facts about man. These facts, as will be seen, are substantially the same as those pointed to again and again throughout this book.

There are two men in each man, and between the two there is a barrier. There is the ordinary person, the body-mind, the personal self. Robert Barclay called this person the "natural man". Within us, but not of the ordinary person, there is a divine principle, a life and love and power - in fine, that of God. The outward person and the inner being are, as it were, mutually exclusive. When the one is present, the other is as if absent. Or, as may be said, when the one is active the other is passive. The existence of a barrier between the two was recognized, as the following words of Isaac Penington show, "O Lord my God! discover to the thirsty souls, what it is that withholds them from the living waters;

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that they may not labour and spend their strength in vain,
in duties and ordinances invented by man".

The natural or earthly man is out of the light, out of
the power - in other words, in exile. He exists in an unre-
generated state, closed, in darkness, dead. Incapable of true
prayer and worship, he cannot serve God in any way except by
yielding to be radically changed. By radical change the Friends
did not mean a change wrought by the will of the ordinary man,
through notions and ideas he might have of himself. They did
not mean this natural man to become a person more able to fol-
low his own bents, nor even better in the usual sense. They
aimed to subject him to God's regenerative power. They worked
to open him to the Light Within, to let the Light in, to be
taken up into it. They aimed at nothing short of a major trans-
formation. A new birth effected by the Power, a new creation,
a new growth, this was their central and unswerving purpose.
For thus and thus only would they know the truth and live by
it, know God's will and do it.

Again and again in their writings they expressed the
wonderful desirability of new birth, the absolute need of it
as the only way of entering God's kingdom and becoming the
agents of its manifestation among men on earth. "... a re-
deemed state, regeneration, or new birth ... without this
there is no inheriting the kingdom of God". "When the new
birth is thus grown up into strength and dominion, into the
stature of a man in Christ, then thou wilt change that dwel-
ling-place for the dwelling-place which is from above".

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373

"Oh, be thou awakened ... awake and arise out of thy deep sleep". "... there is somewhat else would live and be acting in thee ... and thou woudest be centering in self, in that which thou receivedst from God". "... the tender and secret drawings of the beginnings of a new nature, away from what is of an earthly nature". "... as many as resist not this light, but receive the same, in them is produced an holy, pure, and spiritual birth". "... yet does this perfection (the new creation) still admit of a growth; and there remaineth a possibility of sinning".

There is no mistaking the ring of these and many similar statements. There is no mistaking the validity of the context in which they occur. Those Friends were writing, speaking, ministering out of their first-hand realizations.

The forgotten teaching was remembered by them. The misinterpreted teaching was truly interpreted by them because they had experiences which revealed its meaning. *Ye must be born again.* This, the central religious precept, the most concise indication ever given as to the purpose of this life, and the goal towards which we should be tending, was understood, experienced, lived, and communicated to others by the early Friends. Except a man be born again he cannot enter or even see the kingdom of God.

The Friends, aiming to enter the kingdom via the only way, *made way*. They actually entered it, in whatever measure; and they fell from it; and they worked towards it again; and it was because of their attainments, in part labored for, in

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374

part God-given, that they knew they were possessed of blessed and effective means. What, then, were these means?

The blessed means were and are, as I discovered through my experience, the operations of the wonderful Power, the works of the Light and Love. It is these that effect the great change, the thorough transformation, the substantial new birth. God's power in us, this is it. Said Penn, "... the Light of Christ within ... the principle of God in man, the precious pearl and leaven of the kingdom, the only blessed means appointed of God to quicken man ... without this secret divine power there is no quickening and regenerating of dead souls."

It is this Light, breaking in, working wonders in man, that, as said, effects the new creation. It also, as no other means can, "shows man his state, deals plainly with him, and sets his sins in order before him". It also teaches "what to deny and what to do". In other words, what to oppose, what to affirm and further. As Penn understood it, three operations are involved. "First, a sight of sin; secondly, a sense and godly sorrow for it; thirdly, an amendment for the time to come. For of light comes sight; and of sight comes sense and sorrow; and of sense and sorrow come amendment of life".

When the Power is active in us, it does all. All we need do is to participate, effortlessly. When we are in the Power, our ordinary wills are utterly unnecessary. But we are by no means always in the Power, or even open to it. Though the early Friends were closer to the Power than most of us, though they experienced openings more often than we do, they

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375

too were in exile much of the time. What did they do then?
They had to use their available awareness, sight, insight,
will, force, energy, conscience. They endeavored to open
themselves, to move still closer to the Light, to induce, as
it were, the Power to operate. In fine, they had to make
effort to fulfill their aim. How were these efforts imple-
mented? They employed certain human means and methods. They
used human but nevertheless effective means when the blessed
means were not operating.

Among their human-religious means were the Meeting for
Worship and the Meeting for Business. An idea of the nature
and purpose of these meetings may be had by reading Barclay's
"Apology", particularly the chapter, Concerning Worship;
Rufus M. Jones's "Faith and Practice of the Quakers"; Howard
H. Brinton's "Creative Worship", and "Divine-Human Society".

Other means, used both in and out of meetings, may be
designated as: Waiting, Watching, and Lawful Warring. These
three practices were repeatedly referred to by the early
Friends in their expositions, journals, letters, and epistles.
"O wait", wrote Isaac Penington, "wait upon God. Be still a
while. Wait in true humility, and pure subjection of soul and
spirit, upon him. Wait for the shutting of thy own eye upon
every occasion, and for the opening of the eye of God in thee,
and for the sight of things therewith, as they are from him".
And again, "Wait to feel that raised in thee. Wait to feel
the birth pray". "Be watchful," said George Fox. "Keep the
inward watch", said William Penn.

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376

The Practice of Watching was an exercise of awareness, though unlike Self-Observation. It was an effort to be aware of conduct and the springs of it, an alertness that overcame the tendency to drowse and sleep. It pointed you to whatever might arise in you, the good and the bad, that of God in you and that of the devil too. The Practice of Lawful Warring was similar to Contending with Oneself. It will be covered in the next chapter.

Though these several means were often indicated, they were not set in order and fully explained. Those who mentioned them seem to assume that other Friends already knew exactly what to do, and simply needed to be reminded or, at most, given a hint here and there. Perhaps it was so. Perhaps most of the Friends of that time did know what to do, having come upon the practices themselves, in the Meetings for Worship or elsewhere, or having been taught them orally. However that may have been, we of today are left to pick up the hints and work the rest out for ourselves.

## The Practice of Waiting

Suppose that you have been reached by the sense that God is the supreme reality, and that it is possible for us to live in Him, but that as we ordinarily exist we live as if apart from Him. Suppose you have partially discovered and firmly believe that prayer and worship are means of bridging the gap. So you *want* to pray, *want* to worship. But you have realized, as the early Friends did, that you, the body-mind, the closed-in self, are not able really to pray or to worship.

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377

What would you do? Doubtless you would keep trying.
Very well. But your attempts seem not to be leading to the
real thing. You but use the words of prayer, assume what you
take to be the appropriate posture. Then one day, quite unex-
pectedly, you feel something deep in you, praying - and this
is the real thing. So you come to recognize that though you
as a cut-off self cannot pray, there is that in you which can,
which does pray occasionally. Then and there might it not
occur to you that the thing to do is simply to wait - wait for
the arising of the life which is able to pray? Thereafter
would you not wait for the stirring of the inward being who
is capable of worshipping God and drawing close to Him? This,
I take it, is just what the Friends did, and for like reasons.
They waited. They developed the practice of waiting as a ne-
cessary prelude to praying and worshipping. Unless the Power
were working in them before they gathered in their meetings,
the Meeting for Worship began, I feel sure, as a Meeting for
Waiting.

They assembled and sat quietly. They did not think,
or ruminate, or engage in reverie. At any rate they tried
not to. They did not meditate in the usual meaning of this
term. They "centered down", and endeavored to attain a pure
waiting upon the Lord. They waited for those "tender and
secret drawings". They waited to feel "that" raised in them.
They waited for the new birth to pray.

With them, the Meeting for Waiting probably did not
have to last long. Those Friends were so quickened, so in-
wardly fertile, that all they had to do, it would seem, was

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378

to be still a short while, and something happened. We of today
can hardly expect to progress so rapidly, for we are farther
from our centers, over-active outwardly, beset and distracted
by our numerous modern "conveniences". Yet many of us, both
within and without the Society of Friends, assume, contrary
to the evidence, that we need not wait at all, but can jump
from a motor-car, enter a church or meeting house, or sit in
our rooms, and at once proceed to worship God in a manner
acceptable to Him. What wonder that our so-called holy places
are so often void not only of the spirit of God, but of a vital
human spirit; and we ourselves, despite our good intentions,
little more than religious humbugs?

The idea of practicing waiting as a psycho-spiritual
means is of course not original to the Friends. It is indi-
cated, sometimes succinctly, sometimes beautifully, in the
Old Testament. In the Psalms we read, "Wait on the Lord;
be of good courage, and he will strengthen thine heart: wait,
I say, on the Lord". And again, "I wait for the Lord, my soul
doth wait, and in his work do I hope. My soul waiteth for the
Lord more than they that watch for the morning". Doubtless
the practice has been known in simple or developed form wherever
and whenever men have sought, by use of enlightened means, a
first-hand experience of the divine reality.

What is waiting, more precisely? Pure waiting must, I
think, be approached by steps. These steps may be called:
Conviction, Composure, Watchful Waiting vivified by expectation,
and, Unformulated Expectation.

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379

**Conviction.** Obviously we will not even attempt Waiting, much less put our hearts into it, unless we are convinced that it is a fruitful exercise; that, by truly waiting we facilitate the inner-action which liberates the spirit; that, in a very real sense, all comes to him who waits.

Presumably the Power can act at any time in any circumstances, regardless of the condition of the outward person. But we are closed to it if the outward person is harried or distracted or bent exclusively on his egotistical affairs. If we feel self-sufficient and behave on the latent assumption that we can do without the Power, it does not come through to us. It is reasonable to think, then, that if and as we voluntarily quiet, collect, subdue the outward person, and strive to open ourselves to extra-personal reality, we are doing our necessary part to increase the likelihood of inner-action.

**Composure.** We cannot wait, in any true sense, if we are over-tense, jumpy, nervous. Body, emotions and mind must be relaxed. But neither can we wait if we over-relax and become limp or drowsy. Alertness and aliveness must be obtained and maintained. Some of the early Friends, even those, became drowsy in their meetings. It is no easy matter to stay oneself midway between strain and limpness, in an equilibrium of quiet, lucid awareness.

We are poor waiters if we become impatient. An unobtrusive patience is necessary. Nor can we wait if the mind roams or starts seriously thinking of something else; if, the minute the body comes to rest, this is a go-sign for all sorts

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of day-dreams, fantasies, or personal problems. The mind must be collected, all thoughts gathered, the attention fixed on waiting before the Lord. In thinking of composing oneself, we usually picture the body in a sitting position, disengaged from its customary activities. For the purpose of practicing waiting it is also possible and indeed desirable to try to compose oneself while the body is in motion, right in the midst of its customary activities.

Some say waiting for God; others, waiting upon the Lord. I prefer the expression waiting before God. The little word "before" seems somehow to facilitate my working myself into an attitude of pure waiting. If I feel that I am waiting for something, I want it to come, and in my time. I am likely to try to hurry the coming, to press or coax or beguile or coerce the arrival. And if I do that, I stop waiting. Whereas if I say and feel I am waiting before something, I know very well that should it come at all it will arrive in its own way and time. I may have to wait a month, a year, a life-time. Very well, I wait. When you see it clearly and see it deeply you are impressed by the truth that there is nothing more important that you can do than just this simple (but sufficiently difficult) waiting before the Lord. At times there arises in me the sense that, were I capable of it, I could do no better than to cast aside every other interest and occupation and spend the rest of my life, day and night, waiting.

As you compose yourself to wait, try to kindle or evoke the sense that in some real measure you actually are relating

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yourself to the eternal and the glorious. If you succeed in this, you will feel yourself letting go of the little self, stepping outside of your ordinary preoccupations and problems, permitting your habitual plans and expectations to slip away. You will feel yourself inwardly melting, surrendering. A mood of reverence may come over you, a "breathing unto the Lord".

The time comes when, by repeated practice, one is able to take the aforementioned steps almost simultaneously. As you compose yourself to wait, you inwardly melt. As you melt you present yourself at the threshhold. Now if we could maintain ourselves at the threshhold, that would be that. No further steps would be necessary. But we fall away, and must work back again and again. Not only do we fall away from a momentary experience of pure waiting, we lose sight of the purpose. The mind strays into other paths, or we become discouraged and deliberately give up. Repeatedly we must remind ourselves. Again and again we must renew a sense of our purpose and a belief in it. Often having taken the first steps, and having "arrived" as it were, we will misstep and will have to go back and start all over again.

**Watchful Waiting.** This is to be done when we feel ourselves approaching the threshhold. Most of us, I am sure, have come close to moments of true waiting for someone or something coming to us from the outside world. By those experiences we know that an important aspect of waiting is a watching for signs of that which, we hope, will approach us. We look to see if he or she is on the way. Our minds are on that prospect because

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our hearts are on it. We watch, and are expectant. We watch
more than they that watch for the morning. Expectancy, indeed,
is at the very core of our waiting. It gives life and meaning
to what otherwise would be an empty attitude. Sometimes the
expectancy is a quiet glow, at other times an elation. Its
intensity varies, but never vanishes as long as we wait. It
departs only when we give up hope and stop waiting.

So in our waiting before something that is to come from
within, there should be watching and expectancy. We scan our
inner horizons for signs of whatever may approach. Without
trying to imagine the exact nature of the event, we look within
for forerunners of a God-given experience. We do not say it
will be great. We say nothing about it at all, except that it
will be *other* than our habitual experiences. And we want this
other. "In His work do I hope".

And then, when expectancy glows, we are to let go of
even the thought of otherness. We are to have no thoughts
whatsoever. We are to be utterly desireless except for the
desire to wait before the Lord. Here it may be necessary to
remind ourselves that we are not asking for something, but
are waiting before; that we are not petitioning God for any-
thing either for ourselves or for any other; no, not even try-
ing to understand His will. This is the attempt to attain what
Thomas Kelly calls "unformulated expectation". Expectancy is
still present, but it is wordless, imageless.

Is it possible, you may ask, to be expectant without
having in mind what you are expectant of? Yes it is; though
with our best efforts we *won't* often succeed. Is it desirable?

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It is necessary to pure waiting. For if we expect of God something definite we will unwittingly ask for it, and so lapse from pure waiting. Moreover, we simply do not know what may come from Him, as of this time, God being the source of the Unexpected. In the profound sense of the words, anything may happen. This is the truth. Pure waiting requires that our attitude correspond with the truth.

We are to attend to the Source of the Unexpected. Attend, and sustain attention, pure and simple. This is the very essence of it. The state aimed for may be called a state of diffused yet pointed awareness - diffused in that we are not focusing on a particular thing, pointed in that it is focused on the "Beyond that is within". Thus we wait. Thus we wait as long as we can wait.

As lapses from waiting are frequent and relatively long, provision must be made for them. When we fall away and are trying to return it is helpful, so I have found, to tell one-self in varying ways what one is waiting for. "I am waiting for <u>that</u> in me to arise." Or, "I am waiting for my being to pray." Or, "I am waiting for the Power to claim me again." Or, I am waiting for the touch of God." Sometimes I recall a por-tion of what befell me when I was lifted up into Being. Or I may remember something of the records of those who have entered the kingdom. As soon as the aids seem to have served their purpose I forget them and again try to attain pure waiting with keen but unformulated expectation. And even while I am making use of the aids, something in me knows that I do not know what

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I am waiting for. I am simply waiting before the greatest Power, the one reality of the entire universe. Isn't this enough?

It may seem that the Practice of Waiting, as it shows through my words, is of doubtful value, having little to do with vital experience, a mental chore instead of a religious means. True, one may go about it as a chore; but one also may engage in it as a devotion. There have been times when, soon after composing myself, a mood forms, an atmosphere of the spirit, and from then on the practice of waiting has glow and meaning. Rarely, before the waiting is over, I have heard myself intake breath, as though the soul had glimpsed, for a moment, a light, a divinity, a breath-taking wonder which my untrained eyes could not behold.

Of this we may be sure. For the early Friends their practices were anything but dully methodical. They were the arms of a vital life. They were the implements of a holy desire. They were the tools of what was felt to be the essential purpose of man's life. So they can and should be for us.

Once the idea of waiting becomes established in your mind you may recognize to your surprise, as I did, how much of our life already does consist of waiting, but of another kind. How we wait! We wait for people, wait for trains, wait for meals, wait for a letter or a phone call, wait for a job, wait to be released from work, wait, wait. Even when we get on a train we wait to arrive, and when we have arrived we wait for something else. We wait to live. Many wait to die. What waste! Use those times, use those occasions. Practice waiting

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before God, of course at other times too, but also just when
you are waiting anyway. The meaning and the purpose this will
introduce into life! Since learning to engage in this prac-
tice I have redeemed I can't tell you how much time and energy.
I've waited in doctor's offices, in railroad stations, in living
rooms and kitchens, in restaurants, before lectures and the
theatre, while walking city streets and country fields, while
resting, during periods when I could not write or work creatively
in other ways.

## The Practice of the Presence

Turn to the source-books for a true understanding of
this practice. I aim simply to give an idea of it. Read
Brother Lawrence's "The Practice of the Presence of God", and
his "Spiritual Maxims". Read Thomas R. Kelly's "A Testament
of Devotion", and the last three chapters of his pamphlet,
"Reality of the Spiritual World". There you will find the
several efforts of which this practice is composed, set forth
clearly in a context of memorable religious life and experience.
Thereyyuu will not only learn what is to be done, you will be
introduced into the atmosphere from which this practice sprang
and to which its use will contribute.

Though Thomas Kelly was a Friend, though some number of
Friends engage in it, it obviously is not a unique Quaker prac-
tice. Rather it is one of the root-practices. Brother Lawrence
and other Catholics in France were organizing their lives around
it just at the time that the Friends, in England, were becoming
a religious body. Judging by what we find in the Bhagavad-Gita,
some members of some of the eastern religions engaged in it

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387

By quiet, persistent practice in turning of all
our being, day and night, in prayer and inward wor-
ship and surrender, toward Him who calls in the
deeps of our souls. Mental habits of inward orien-
tation must be established. An inner, secret turn-
ing to God can be made fairly steady, after weeks
and months and years of practice and lapses and
failures and returns.

At first the practice of inward prayer is a
process of alternation of attention between outer
things and the Inner Light. Preoccupation with
either brings loss of the other. Yet what is sought
is not alternation, but simultaneity, worship under-
girding every moment, living prayer, the continuous
current and background of all moments of life. Long
practice is needed before alternation yields to con-
current immersion in both levels at once.

Questions arise. Some of these relate to certain of
the above statements. For example, is it desirable, if possible,
to be immersed in both levels? In the deeper level, yes. In
the surface level, in external affairs? Immersed in them?
For the present, however, we should pass on to questions re-
lating to the practice itself. What precisely are we to do
to attain this inward orientation? Of what does inward prayer
consist? With what effort do we begin, and what are the steps?
In the "Testament" and in "Reality of the Spiritual World"
Thomas Kelly lists and describes five kinds of inward prayer.
The prayer of oblation. The prayer of inward song. The prayer
of inward listening. The prayer of carrying. Infused prayer.
We begin with the prayer of oblation and progress to the others.

With Thomas Kelly as with Gerald Heard, as indeed with
all who practice inward prayer as a creative process, the life
of prayer is a developing life. We start with what we can do,
gradually progressing into what we cannot yet do. Failure is
inevitable if we attempt to begin with the type of prayer that
is possible, as a consistent practice, only to those well advanced.

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The prayer of oblation is an offering of ourselves to God. "To Thee I surrender. Take all of me, take all of me". The prayer of inward song is born of the inward flame. It is a joyous, reverent, sometimes quiet, sometimes exalted singing to the Lord because of His love and glory and wonder. The prayer of inward listening is akin to the last step of the Practice of Waiting. "In quietness we wait, in unformulated expectation". The prayer of carrying is an experience of the relatedness of men in one another through their relatedness to God, each and all joined and upheld by inward bonds of worship. Infused prayer is prayer that we ourselves neither make nor offer. It comes to us from the Beyond that is within. It is put in our hearts as though by God Himself.

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IV Right Affirming and Right Denying

The Practice of Waiting and the Practice of the Presence rightly employ the human will in relation to God. The present method involves the right employment of the human will in relation to oneself. After all it is our selves that stand between us and God, and it is we who must grow up to Him. As long as there are these separated selves, we will be held in them, or, if we transcend them momentarily, we will fall back into them: they must be faced and overcome. We will remain in Being and in God only after we have left these selves forever.

The present method is, in essence, a means of overcoming the self and growing up to God. Its pointed purpose is to promote catharsis-development. It specifically applies to the evil in us, and to the good also. It enables us to take hold of certain of our features that other practices either by-pass or deal with only indirectly. Here we have a means of uprooting and transmuting the evil in us, not merely curbing or repressing it; of wearing down the barrier that is interposed between a man and his soul; of releasing and developing the deep powers, the being-powers. As it breaks down the self it builds up the being. As it destroys egotism it promotes the birth of the new creation.

This is a method whereby we become increasingly able to take hold of general experience, shape it to our purpose, extract its essence, reject its dross. As with Self-Observation and Nonidentification, and the Practice of the Presence, it is

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to be practiced in life situations; a work to be done while we are doing other work; an effort to be added to other efforts; an art to be contributed to human relationships; so that we may make good use of experience. By means of it life is given meaning. We find purpose in and zest for meeting all situations, the unpleasant as well as the pleasant, the ugly as well as the beautiful.

Elsewhere in the book, particularly in Part II, chapters XXVI and XXVII, I have indicated the need of a method such as this, and the broad purposes it serves. It might be well to re-read those passages in connection with the present chapter. Here we will consider the anatomy of the method itself.

The key lies in the right use of our power to affirm, to work for, to cooperate with, and, the right use of our power to deny, to work against, to oppose. It is the effort to struggle for and advance that in oneself which ought to be developed; and to contend with and struggle against that in oneself which ought to be overcome. It involves, in short, Right Struggle.

The method has, as it were, two arms. One arm, the right use of the affirming force, directly promotes development, indirectly promotes catharsis. The other, the right use of the denying force, directly promotes catharsis, indirectly promotes development. Both arms require the same first steps.

We never make conscious effort unless we remember to make it. Therefore the first step of this method, as of the others, is - *Remember it*. Remember to look for opportunities to cooperate with one's true human-being-abilities, to contend

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with one's impediments. Try to remember to do it whenever there is occasion. The need of remembering is so obvious that simply to mention it is enough. We should underscore it in our minds. If we are persistent it will gradually filter down into and impress itself upon a deeper and quicker intelligence. Once the need has become impressed upon this alert inward center, we will spontaneously remember to employ the method every time there is opportunity.

In order to contend with the evil in us, we must be aware of it. In order to reinforce the good in us, we must be aware of it. To deal with anything in ourselves, we must first see it. To see it we must watch for it. This is an effort to be aware of oneself, to practice "Know Thyself". Self-Observation requires us, as we may recall, to try to be aware of the body and its behavior. In the present practice we are to try to spot our psychological traits and manifestations. Note that I say spot. This is not a probing into oneself. We are not to search out the evil in us - not, at any rate, in the beginning. Nor are we to examine into our good. No introspection is involved here either. Rather it is an inspection, a straight observing of things as they arise in us and show themselves. At this stage of the method we are simply to see. Criticism and evaluation of what we see comes later.

Some of our emotions and other contents attract our attention as they arise. We see them involuntarily. This is good, but not enough. It is not enough for an intelligent ordinary life, much less for our purpose here. Involuntarily

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we see too little; much of what we contain escapes attention.
Usually, indeed, we fail to see even those characteristics
that, in the eyes of other people, stick out like sore thumbs.
Ordinarily we simply are not self-aware. It were better to
assume that we never see ourselves than to believe that we
always do.

It is necessary that we call our attention to what is
in us. It is necessary to do this voluntarily, making a con-
sistent practice of it. It is not enough to rely on the "spur
of the moment". We should try to be constantly alert for what-
ever may come to the surface. Unless we are watching, many of
our best and worst features will escape detection. You will
not see the subtler or even some of the glaring features of
your egotism unless you are on the lookout for them. You may
miss the quickenings of your own being. <u>Watch for it</u> must pre-
cede <u>See it</u>. <u>See it</u> should immediately follow <u>Watch for it</u>.

Be alert. Be aware. Train yourself to see yourself.
"Keep the inward watch". In situations which are not likely
to evoke either good or evil, you may turn your attention to
other practices. As you gain self-knowledge you will become
able to sense incipient arising, to read circumstances, to
foretell what a given situation is likely to call forth.

Watch for it. See it squarely. Continue to see it
squarely. In other words, <u>Face it</u>. This is the fourth step.
It is the effort to keep the gaze steady, not to blink, not
to avert our eyes. There is little use seeing it if, the next
moment, we look away. There is no use seeing it if, a minute
later, we have forgotten it. We must make ourselves remember

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what we may want to forget. The practice of facing it also includes the attempt to see freshly, to see newly and honestly, without preconception or bias, without rationalization. This is training in self-sincerity. We are preparing ourselves to judge correctly whether the given feature should be affirmed or denied.

The only time we are face to face with what is in us is *at the time* it shows itself and for as long as it manifests. If we see it in retrospect, we will not face it squarely but obliquely: it will be relatively dim and remote. This point bears repeating. The time to face the evil in us is at the time it shows itself. The time to face the good in us is when it shows itself. And, to anticipate a later stage of the method, the time to contend with the evil and to advance the good is at the time they manifest, not later. Otherwise we miss our chance, until the next time.

People are usually immersed in their persons. Most of us most of the time are identified with the body-ego, involved in our problems and prospects. In this condition, it is difficult if not impossible clearly to see and honestly to face our contents. We are so fastened to our weak points as to be blind to them. Through pride we are pretty firmly attached to what we habitually regard as our strong points. It may seem that this method would increase self-involvement. On the contrary, the right practice of it requires and leads to detachment.

The effort to detach is necessary in order that we may have a better look at ourselves - and for other reasons too.

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394

Only by detaching from the evil in us can we have and sustain the attitude that, though the evil is indeed in us, it is not inseparably of us. Though a part of us, it is not the whole, not an integral aspect of our real beings. As an alien deposit it can be removed. The importance of this attitude is obvious. No one will contend with the evil in himself if he believes it is himself. We will never try to overcome what we regard as really and inalienably ourselves. No one can exert leverage on the evil in him if he is stuck fast to it. We must step back from it if we are to have power over it.

Catharsis-development requires that we do two things, among others: detach from, nonidentify from what is not ourselves, not our real beings; and, attach to, identify with our true beings. Detachment from the false is a means of attachment to the true. Recognition that the body is not oneself is a means of realizing that the being is oneself. Only by knowing that the destructive powers are not truly of ourselves can we realize that the creative powers are of our very essence.

So then, the instant you see it, withdraw from it, try to objectify it. While you see and continue seeing it, face and continue facing it, also make effort to detach and to continue detaching. I list *Detach from it* as the fifth step, though in actual practice it enters into the earlier ones.

Now we are in a position to examine it with the aim of correctly judging it. Is it good or bad, a help or an impediment, of our beings or of the ego? Our decision will determine whether we will affirm or deny it. All further steps depend

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upon this step. If we go wrong here, if we misjudge, we shall
affirm what should be denied, deny what should be affirmed -
in short, we shall engage in wrong struggle. In this case the
method will produce results just the opposite of those intended.

And this step is as complicated and difficult as it is
important. It calls for discrimination, the ability to weigh
and evaluate, and candor, honesty. None of us are unbiased.
We are all set to say this is good, that bad. We shall have
to learn to suspend judgment, to examine freshly. None of us
are altogether self-honest, Self-deception at this point will
throw us completely off the track. What are we to do?

By long experience each one of us has learned, and learned
without doubt or deception, that certain things in ourselves are
definitely bad, and should be opposed and overcome; while others
are definitely good, and should be affirmed and advanced. So
then, when these manifest, it is but necessary to be aware of
them. We are ready to apply to them whichever of the further
steps of the method fit the case. We may go to work upon these
while waiting to make sure of the matters which puzzle us or
which only now are being seen for the first time.

Other people can be of considerable help to us. Those
who know us well, who have seen us in action, who have worked
with us or lived under the same roof, are usually able to con-
firm or correct some of our findings about ourselves, if we
but ask them. Often they can throw new light on our character-
istics. They may point to something that we ourselves have
hitherto been quite unaware of. We should make good use of

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396

each other for the purpose of mutual self-knowledge. We can
greatly help one another practice this sixth step of the method -
Examine it, Judge it.

**Thank you.** I thank you for evoking in me this weakness,
this fault, this prejudice, this hate, this evil. Thank you
for giving me the opportunity to contend with it while it is
manifesting. I thank you for evoking in me this strength, this
goodwill, this kindness, this love, this good. Thank you for
giving me the opportunity to develop it while it is manifesting.
**Thank you** is listed as the seventh step, though it should begin
much earlier and continue as long as we have cause to be thankful.

This practice is spontaneous in some cases, most diffi-
cult in others. One is readily grateful for the evocation of
a good impulse, a human feeling, a creative urge. But if it
is an impediment, a weakness, a sorepoint, a mean feeling, a
destructive urge? We are called upon to be grateful just the
same. Though the tendency will be to blame, to retaliate, we
are called upon to try to give thanks, sincerely, consciously,
voluntarily. For the truth is that we have reason to be thankful.

Here, after the seventh step, the method branches as it
were and becomes two-armed. This is necessary because the good
and the bad obviously require different kinds of treatment. The
denying arm applies to the evil, the affirming arm to the good.
We shall first consider the steps of the denying arm. It is
meant to apply to the entire range of our impediments, to what-
ever is anti-human, anti-developmental, anti-being: from one's
hidden attitudes to one's outwardly destructive behavior, from

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397

one's false beliefs and thoughts to one's hateful motivations.
This arm particularly promotes catharsis.

The first step of the denying arm, the eighth step of
the method, is - **deny it**. Having ascertained that the feature
you see in yourself is an impediment, that the force you feel
is destructive, that, in short, it should be denied, you men-
tally disavow it, discredit the rationalizations that rush to
its support. You side against it, instructing yourself that
this is something in you that should be overcome. Swiftly you
bring your will, your deeper forces into play against it. Active
opposition immediately follows denial. **Oppose it** is, then the
next step.

If the thing has some strength of its own, as prejudice,
hate, etc., have, it will not be readily downed, but will put
up a fight to express itself. You then must fight it, struggle
against it, and against whatever in you or in the surrounding
world would abet it. **Struggle against it** follows **Oppose it**.

Many of our negative features and emotions are self-
willed. They seek vent. They want targets. They strike out
at people, animals, even inanimate things. If they get out of
us they are likely to get away from us and harm others as well
as ourselves. This must be prevented. We must try to hold
these forces within ourselves, but not repress them. We are to
try to **contain** them within the confines of our own psyche, yet
let them live and stir in us. The usual alternative to expres-
sion is repression, a pushing of the thing back in us, down in
us, out of sight. But if we do this we forfeit our chance to
contend with it, to dissolve it. It may subside for the time,

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398

but only to show itself again and again. So I repeat, repression is not to be our practice here. We are to let the thing manifest in us, move around, thrash about within the limits of our own persons, visible to the inward eye, graspable by the inward hand. In fine, we are to *Contain it*.

If and as we contain it, neither expressing nor repres-
sing it, it is sure to distress us. It is unpleasant, undom-
fortable, often acutely painful to have one's weakness or anger
or fear stirring in one's consciousness, without vent. We will
experience an intolerable burning sensation, and will want to
get rid of it. But we are not to yield to this desire. The
evil thing, of itself, makes us suffer. We, then, are to turn
about and suffer it voluntarily. We are to accept and bear it,
with an understanding of the value and purpose of so doing. We
are to suffer it as long as it, by its activity, makes us suffer -
as long as, by our efforts to contain and struggle against it,
we make ourselves suffer. We are to hold this suffering in the
heart, though not cling to it. We are to allow it to flow freely
within us, and, in its own time, subside. *Buffer it.*

Suffering of this creative voluntary kind is necessary
to the practice of the present method. More than that, it is
in itself an invaluable way of effecting catharsis. In the
fire of such suffering our impurities are literally burned out
of us, and we are cleansed. Voluntary suffering is a spiritual
furnace that melts down our prejudices and hates, the very core
of the evil in us. What denying cannot do, what active oppo-
sition and struggle against may not do, suffering will accomplish.

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399

While suffering it is well to ponder it, to examine it anew, to see how this particular characteristic or force has impeded or harmed you and others in the past, when allowed automatic expression. Is it peculiar to you, one of your coils, or one common to men? If general, to what extent is it a cause of the human tragedy? This is an attempt to gain a deeper and firmer understanding of why it should be overcome. This is an effort to think and reason psychologically - and socially too - about the evil in man and the need and means of uprooting it.

**Ponder it.**

If, after denying, struggling against, containing, suffering and pondering it, there is anything left of the evil thing, any of its energy that has not yet been taken care of, you **Turn it**. Turn it to good use. Employ it in a constructive undertaking. Thus, what began as a destructive force becomes, in the end, a force contributing to creation. This is spiritualization. **Turn it** is the last practice of the denying arm of the method.

The several steps though presented in a definite order, are, of course, not in rigid succession. They may be interchanged. Some should be engaged in simultaneously. Take whatever step is called for by the situation. You may judge it desirable to **Turn it** soon after you have begun **Opposing it**. You may begin **Pondering it** as soon as you have spotted it. Instead of struggling against it you may do nothing more, nor less, than **Suffer it**. It will be seen, I think, that the practices, in the order given, do in fact tally with an actual psychological progression; but, as you put the method into practice, you will

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discover when to change the order. The important preliminary
is to remember the steps.

One further point is to be made as regards the use of
the denying arm. What in us practices the steps of this arm?
What denies, opposes, contains, suffers, ponders, turns it?
Our good powers. It is the positive in us that opposes the
negative in us, the good that contends with the evil. The
good is thereby properly exercised. Through exercise it develops.
The act that overcomes the evil simultaneously develops the
good. One and the same effort promotes catharsis and development.

Now to consider the steps of the affirming arm. It is
meant to apply to the entire range of our good forces, our true
abilities, to whatever is developmental, human, being: from
one's minor virtues to one's being-powers, from one's construc-
tive behavior to one's subtly helpful attitudes, from one's
splendid motivations to one's true beliefs and thoughts. This
arm directly promotes development.

The first practice of the affirming arm is, of course -
**Affirm it.** Once you have made sure that the impulse you sense
in yourself is good, that the force is creative, that, in short,
it should be affirmed, you mentally avow it, oppose whatever in
you or in the world would conflict with and impede it, deny
whatever would deny it. You side with it, and, if need be,
make yourself realize that this is something to be cultivated.
Immediately thereafter you reinforce it by use of will, by ex-
ertion of effort. You actively cooperate with it. **Cooperate
with it follows Affirm it.**

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Sometimes as the good that is in us seeks to come out and do its appointed work, the way is open. Nothing within us conflicts with it. Nothing in the world resists it. We go ahead without difficulty. Often, however, it encounters active opposition internally and externally. We must struggle for it to clear the way. Occasionally a higher power invades us, overpowers all contrary forces, makes us its willing agent. Usually, though, the truths that flash into the mind, the visions that illumine the heart, glimpses of new and greater possibilities, are contested. They arouse internal fear that if we act on them our little lives will be upset. They arouse hostility in the world. They are attacked by the "vested interests", their validity is contested, their way obstructed, their very life challenged. We, then, must struggle for them, that they may live and grow strong and fulfill their purpose. Every genuine human advance, in whatever field, has been opposed and would have been blocked had it not been fought for. Every movement towards a new and larger life will be contested and destroyed unless those who are in it struggle for its continued existence and development. The creative life is to be lived only by fighting for it. The life of the spirit is to be entered and sustained only by struggling for it. Struggle for it, accepting whatever suffering this may entail.

There are times when a creative urge should be held back, not allowed immediate expression. By containing it for awhile, the power ripens and matures. Premature expression is avoided. There are occasions when good impulses, splendid desires, new

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ideas, should be kept within us for a time. Sometimes there
are good reasons for containing love. But if we contain these
good things, certainly we are not to repress them. We are to
cultivate them, within. Sooner or later, however, the good in
us is to be expressed. Indeed, if it actively lives within us,
it will inevitably find expression. We are to express it in
human relationships, in the spoken and written word, in one or
another form of art, science, religion. By expressing it we
exercise it. By exercising it we further its development, and
offer its fruits to other human beings. Expressing is sharing.
*Express it.*

We are duty-bound to suffer the evil in us. Just as
surely we are morally and in every other respect entitled to
enjoy the good in us. Have joy in creativity. Have zest in
developing. Rejoice in the fruits of the effort to live as
human beings. Rejoice and be grateful. *Enjoy it.*

A minor creative impulse may not be strong enough to
impress us with a sense of its value. We, then, should impress
ourselves, by thinking about it, by giving it in our minds the
rating it deserves. It may not be insistent enough to make us
carry it into action. We may want to postpone action, for no
good reason. By power of thought we can both increase its
power and persuade ourselves to act on it without delay. A
major creative force will of course impress us with its value
and insist on prompt action; but, unless we ponder it, we may
not know how best to give it expression, we may not realize its
value to human life, we may not recognize that what is possible
to one man is possible, sooner or later, to all. *Ponder it.*

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This is the effort to deepen our understanding of the good in man, of the great in man, to awaken ourselves to the need, and the means of releasing and developing it.

And finally - Relate it. Our good forces and even our being-powers, as they come through to us in exile, are bent towards results in this life, in this world. So, while allowing them to press towards the readily envisaged ends, we should relate them, in our consciousness, to the far goal, to the large purpose of being-development and transformation, to the great purpose of growing up to God.

The right use of the method not only overcomes specific bad properties, and furthers particular good ones, it is also a means of developing the very faculties that are exercised upon these properties. It is a means of increasing consciousness itself. It is a means of developing our capacity to struggle for and against, to contain, to express, to suffer creatively and to enjoy creativity, to ponder, to spiritualize, to place and keep ourselves in training, to relate our lives to the meaning of living.

The entire method may be represented in outline as follows.

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Social Application

Though the method as described can only be used by
the individual in relation to himself, some of its practices
may be adapted for use in one's relationships with others.
Only the person who employs them upon himself has the under-
standing and the right to employ certain of them upon others.

Like oneself, other people are mixtures of good and
evil. They have in them that of God, and that of the devil
too. How treat them? As one should treat oneself. Affirming
and denying, cooperating with and opposing - both practices
are necessary. It will not do to affirm the person in toto,
for in this case you affirm the evil along with the good. Nor
will it do to deny the person in toto, for in this case you
deny the good together with the evil. Here too we must dis-
criminate, and apply to each class of characteristics the kind
of treatment called for.

For the sake of helping other human beings to promote
their development, we should affirm whatever in them or of
them should be developed. For the sake of helping them to
promote their own purification, we should deny whatever in
them should be overcome. For the sake of all concerned we
are to cooperate with, if need be struggle for, and enjoy
their splendid qualities, their being-powers, themselves as
human beings. As beings, as people of good will, they must
not be thwarted, if we can help it. Also for the sake of all
concerned we are to oppose, if need be struggle against or

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suffer their faults, their bad properties, their destructive forces, their anti-human egos. As egotists, as people of evil will, they must be stopped.

In order to act as suggested above, we shall have to remember to be alert for the opportunity. We shall have to examine and weigh, so as to arrive at an unbiased and impartial understanding of what in them should be affirmed and what denied. The danger of opposing ego to ego is obvious. That this and other malpractices may be avoided, one must concurrently practice the method upon oneself.

Always we are to try to affirm human beings as beings. This is relatively easy when their good side is foremost; yet, even when people behave wonderfully, it is not as easy as may appear. We are prone to affirm others - and ourselves - not as beings but as personal selves. Unless it so happens that they are impressively revealed as beings, we shall have to make determined effort to search out the being in them, When the evil side is uppermost, the effort to affirm them as beings must be doubled, tripled. How difficult this is! Nevertheless we must try to do it. We, as beings, endeavor to cooperate with the being-part of them, in the effort to help them overcome that in them which limits and corrupts them as beings.

This might be called Co-Opposition - cooperation occurring together with opposition. We cooperate with their beings while opposing that which impedes them as beings. While contending with the evil in them, we are to affirm and work with the good in them, even though the good is submerged at the

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time. We must recognize that though the evil is in them it
is not irrevocably of them, though a part it is not the whole.
We are to realize that our purpose for opposing them as ego-
tists is precisely so as to cooperate with them as beings.
Indeed only by cooperating with them as beings can we effec-
tively oppose them as egotists. For the effectiveness of our
help depends, in last analysis, upon their response. It de-
pends upon their good forces responding, their being-powers.
We are to speak to that of God in them as we struggle against
that of the devil in them.

Of course there are many situations in which it is not
right nor possible actively to oppose the faults that others
show, the prejudice they express, the egotism they parade,
the evil that leaps from them. You see it, you face it.
Mentally you disavow it. What more can you do? Suffer it.

You suffer it as you see it, as you face it. You suffer
it as you ponder it. If it strikes at you, you suffer it. And
you contain this suffering, using yours to understand his. You
flow with it, putting yourself in his place. You feel with him
in what he is up against in himself. He suffers it, though
subconsciously perhaps. You suffer it consciously, voluntarily.

You do not pity him. What exile has grounds for pity-
ing his fellow exiles? You feel sorrow for him in his plight
which is so similar to yours, and, by extension, you sorrow
for the plight of men. He exemplifies the common human tragedy.
I call this the Meditation of Sorrow. You see and feel that in
people which, as you ponder it, evokes sorrow for mankind. You

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suffer with this human being, the victim of his mortal coils,
and, tied though your hands are, you send him your good will
and loving-kindness.

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V The Great Progression

In the condition of exile there are, we may say, three levels, a bottom, a middle, and an upper level. Some of us are on the lower level, in maximum darkness, almost completely cut off from our inner beings and the surrounding world. Others are midway, beginning to open both to inner and outer reality. Still others have reached the upper level. They continue to grow and outgrow, to open, to awaken. They have developed to the point where they are all but ready to transform, to be born again, to emerge from exile into Being.

Each one must of necessity make way from the level at which he finds himself. His immediate aim should be to outgrow his present level, to grow into the next higher one. Those on the bottom should aim to reach the middle level, those midway to reach the upper. Only those at the upper level are in a position to transform out of exile and enter Being as their established life-condition.

A man midway will have false expectations if he thinks, by any means, to lift himself from there straightway into a sustained condition of Being. He will have true expectations if he hopes, by use of effective methods, to work out of the middle level and into the upper level. All exiles should work with the aim of reaching and maintaining themselves in the upper level. For, as said, it is only from this level that we can pass into Being as our firmly established life-condition.

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410

* The same view may be expressed in terms of consciousness. In this ordinary awareness of ours, this body-mind-consciousness, this personal-self-consciousness, there is a level close to sleep, a semi-awake level, and a level close to Being-Consciousness. Those on the bottom who are virtually somnambulists, should somehow reach the middle level. Those semi-awake should aim and work to awaken still further, to reach the upper level. All should try to attain and sustain themselves in the upper level, at the highest limit of ordinary consciousness. For it is from this level, not from the lower ones, that we will permanently awaken to Being-Consciousness.

Flash experiences of Being-Consciousness and perhaps even of a higher Consciousness may come, it would seem, to those midway in the ordinary state. I would call my experience of Being-Consciousness a flash; for though it lasted over a period of about two weeks, it certainly was not my firmly established condition. When it came I was, I think, in the middle level of the waking state. There was nothing about my condition to make me suppose I was at the upper level. Yet the flash came to me, and there may have been people whose average level of awareness at that time was considerably higher than mine, to whom it did not come. The truth is that we do not know to whom or when these flashes will occur.

Thanks to that experience, I discovered Being-Consciousness to be our normal state and was assured that it can become an enduring condition. I knew that it is possible for us to

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4/11

become as established in Being-Consciousness as we now are
in the waking state. We can become as securely centered in
our real beings as we are now fixed in our separated selves.
But this possibility will become an actuality only for those
who stay wide awake in the waking state, and keep close to
their real beings.

The methods and practices outlined in the foregoing
chapters are among the means whose right use will enable us
to move forward in the progression as thus far indicated.
They can be rightly used by those in the middle level of our
ordinary condition in their efforts to reach the upper level.
They can be rightly used by those in the upper level to main-
tain themselves there and to make ready to transform out of
it into Being.

Would these several methods be of use to those who have
attained Being-Consciousness as an established condition?
Methods to effect detachment from the body would not be needed.
Those in Being-Consciousness would already have achieved non-
attachment. Practices to overcome the personal self would not
be needed. That self would have been transcended. But as
beings in Being-Consciousness are not yet thoroughly purified,
some means of promoting further catharsis would be necessary.
As they are not yet completely developed, some means of pro-
moting further development would be required. And, to judge
by my own experience, beings in Being-Consciousness continue
to need to practice the presence of God.

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4/2

Being-Consciousness also may be said to have several levels. On first attaining this Consciousness, it is not likely that we shall find ourselves at the upper reaches or even at the middle. For a time we shall experience and explore the lower level, growing within it, gradually growing out of it into the middle. We shall experience and explore this middle range, expanding within it and gradually expanding out of it into the upper. Only after we have reached and can sustain ourselves in the upper range will we be ready to transform out of it into that still higher condition called Cosmic Consciousness.

Here then are our aims, all included in the one comprehensive aim of growing up to God. Aim one - to work upwards through exile and attain the highest level of that condition. Two - to transform out of exile into Being. Three - to work upwards through Being-Consciousness and attain the highest level of that condition. Four - to transform out of Being-Consciousness into Cosmic Consciousness. Five - to press up through Cosmic Consciousness to an ever present and enduring God-Consciousness. This, as I understand it, is the progression.

Was it this progression that Christ called us to undertake when he said, Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you?

I believe that Jesus and Gautama, having developed through all of the lower conditions, were, at the time of their ministry, firmly established in some level of Cosmic Consciousness - in other words, Christ-Consciousness, Buddha-

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4/3

Consciousness. Cosmic Consciousness was as securely their condition as ordinary awareness is ours. In this Cosmic Consciousness of theirs were included all of the essential abilities of both Being-Consciousness and body-mind-consciousness. But since they were in it, they knew it was attainable; so they directed men to it. Cosmic Consciousness, fully manifest in them, is potential in us. Their teaching pointed the way. It was and still is a steady ray of light shafted into our darkness. It was and still is the implementation.

Christianity, in essence, is a means of moving forward towards this high mark. It touches us on the shoulder and says, You are the children of God. It would take us by the arm and lead us there. Buddhism, in essence, is a means towards the same mark. So are the other genuine major and minor religions. So are the contributions of every man and woman of true greatness. And the lesser people, those who truly move and grow, contribute in their measure to our progress towards that goal.

It is a long way from where we are to our long home. It is the immeasurable distance from the surface of oneself to the very center of our being - from this imperfect and incomplete development to that complete and perfect development. The distance and the difficulties might well stop us before we really start, were they foreknown, were it not that we minimize them until we have reached a station along the way where the forward movement has us in its power and is irresistible.

- 294 -

We start with zest, enthusiasm, resolve - to discover
before long that it is uphill work. The condition of Being
may be a plateau with mountains in the distance, but the path
from exile to Being is sufficiently steep from beginning to
end. So many things in us weight and drag us, pull in just
the opposite direction. Other ends so often seem more attrac-
tive, more important, more imperative. And the weight of the
world is against us, the world that organizes itself apart
from God.

Mistakes, relapses, weariness, doubt, and many another
thing will plague us. There are pitfalls and some very real
dangers along the way. More than once we shall look at our-
selves wondering, with feelings of discouragement, disillusion,
bitterness, why we change so little, why our progress is so
slow. This will be because we underestimate what it takes to
re-make a man, because we impatiently expect to accomplish in
a year what can be brought about only by many years of devoted
effort.

Yet, more potent than our emotions, stronger than our
conscious wills and our intellectual sense of purpose, there
are powers in us which, if released, become the motors of our
ascent. Deep within we find forceful allies of the educated
mind. These allies are determined that we will make the grade.
Though we become wayward, they are insistent. Though we forget,
they remind us. Though we flag they spur us on. We find, in-
deed, that we are under orders. Something greater than our-
selves is commanding obedience to it, and movement forward.

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4/5

I think that those who really start never really stop,
though they may seem to. I think that those who awaken some-
what are recalled from their relapses and, in time, awakened
more. Once the inward fire has been kindled it is never there-
after altogether extinguished. Though it dies down and smoul-
ders, the time will come when it will burst into a brighter
flame. Once we have been called we shall hear the call again
and again. Once we have really started we will not stop, or
find any resting place, short of the goal.

What starts us on this way? A primary response, a turn
of the heart, a sufficiently mysterious inner event. It cannot
be predicted. It cannot be explained by reference solely to
Though dissatisfaction with our present selves and our present life evidently plays a part,
one's ordinary experiences, It is something of which we know
very little. Those who speak with understanding of this matter
point out that though it may seem to us that we initiate the
quest, it is not so. Not we but the seed in us, not our wills
but the Power is the initiator and the prime-mover. We respond.
We follow. We cooperate - or, oppose. We initiate our own
efforts to do what the Power would have us do. We move our-
selves to do our part. But ever the Power is back of it. And
thus it happens that even those who seem to die are resurrected.
For we are in the sway of a force greater than any we can call
our own, and greater than our weaknesses. We are moved by the
force that moves the substance of the universe. How great a
companion, this!

Even so, we will feel forsaken from time to time, some-
times for long dreary stretches. We are left, it would seem,
utterly on our own - and how inadequate we feel and in fact are.

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416

And then, after a time, indeed at precisely the right time,
the inner companion returns. He returns to move us on the
way, to rekindle our flagging interest, to revive the meaning
and the value, to empower our efforts and again light a torch
in the heart. We will sink but we will rise. We will want to
stop but find we cannot. We will move on until the great pur-
pose has been fulfilled.

Each one must earn his right to this ascending life,
but when the right has been earned there are powers not only
in ourselves but in the universe and in the earth that make
the life possible. This implementation affects things great
and small. Whatever we may need is made available. It is
absolutely true that if and as we first seek the kingdom of
God, other things are added unto us, not as we may desire them
but as they are necessary for progress towards the goal.

The Power that created man proposes to create a greater
Man. As the reproduction of the species is an imperative of
the biological order, so the re-creation of beings, through
transformation and new birth, is an imperative of the spiritual
order. Though we look away and are unheeding the Power is
there. Sometimes it beckons. Sometimes it compels. Once we
recognize what it would have us do, once we have convincing
experience of what it can do for us, we come within its sphere
of influence. No longer is life merely the attempt to get away
from what we do not want, but a vital action to attain what we
do want. This is no pedestrian pace, no drudgery. This is
adventure. Our life takes wing.

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417

We shall grow tired and return to earth. We shall encounter more obstacles than we imagined possible - but also discover resources we had not dreamed of. We will go on. An undertow will be sweeping us towards its source, which is our true center, our long home, our only possible resting place.

Those who start on the way may find themselves, for seemingly unending years,

Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born.

With the path ahead apparently blocked, they will try to go back, but cannot. The world they have left, though it continues to exist as the only world for millions of their fellow men, will never again exist for them as their home. Whatever has died by decree of the unfolding spirit cannot be revived. Whatever is as yet unborn will be born, if it is in the order of creation and is willed by the indwelling creative force.

Once we have experienced even the frontiers of the real and the radiant we can never be satisfied with less. Then and thereafter we are moved by what an earlier people called divine discontent. We have somewhat awakened to our beings. Our souls have in some degree come alive. We must go that way. God has his design for us, his Power its will for us, More and more we shall desire as it wills. When the two become one, the path is made straight.

Authors and Books Referred To

Abu-al-Mawahib. In Edward Jabra Jurji's Illumination in
Islamic Mysticism. (Princeton)

A. E. The Candle of Vision (Macmillan)
Imaginations and Reveries "
Song and Its Fountains "

Barclay, Robert. An Apology for the True Christian Divinity.
(Society of Friends)

Bhagavad-Gita. Translated by Swami Prabhavananda and
Christopher Isherwood (Marcel Rodd)

Brinton, Howard H. Creative Worship (Allen and Unwin)
Diving-Human Society (Society of Friends)

Brother Lawrence. The Practice of the Presence of God (Revell)
Spiritual Maxims (Griffith and Rowland)

Brunton, Paul. A Search in Secret India (Dutton)

Bucke, Richard Maurice. Cosmic Consciousness (Dutton)

Byrd, Richard E. Alone (Putnam)

Coster, Geraldine. Yoga and Western Psychology (Oxford)

Courtney, Robert. Beyond Behaviorism (Grant)

David-Neal, Alexandra. Buddhism, Its Doctrines and Methods
(John Lane)

Dhammapada, The. Translated by Irving Babbitt (Oxford)

Einstein, Albert. The World As I See It. (Covici-Friede)

Fox, George. The Journal (Everyman's)
Epistles. In a Day-Book of Counsel and Com-
fort, compiled by L. V. Hodgkin (Macmillan)

Heard, Gerald A Preface to Prayer (Harper)
Training for the Life of the Spirit (Harper)

Huxley, Aldous. The Perennial Philosophy (Harper)
Ends and Means "
Time Must Have a Stop "

Inge, W. R. Personal Religion and the Life of Devotion
(Longmans)

Jones, Rufus M. The Faith and Practice of the Quakers (Methuen)

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience (Longmans)

- 2 -

Kelly, Thomas R.
A Testament of Devotion (Harper)
Reality of the Spiritual World (Pendle Hill, Wallingford, Pa.)

King, C. Daly.
The Psychology of Consciousness (Harcourt)

Lewis, C. S.
Beyond Personality (Macmillan)

Ouspensky, P. D.
Tertium Organum (Knopf)

Penington, Isaac.
Letters (Society of Friends, Phila.)

Penn, William
The Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers. (Society of Friends)
Advice to His Children (Society of Friends)

Saint-Exupery, Antoine de.
Flight to Arras (Reynal & Hitchcock)

Sinclair, May
The Divine Fire (Holt)

Stanislavski, Constantin.
An Actor Prepares (Theatre Arts)

Steere, Doublas V.
On Beginning From Within (Harper)
Prayer and Worship (Hazen)

Wolfe, Thomas.
A Stone, A Leaf, A Door (Scribner)
The Hills Beyond (Harper)

Wright, Richard
Black Boy (Harper)

Woodward, F. L.
Some Sayings of the Buddha (Oxford)

INDEX

Absence and presence, 168, 169, 212

Absent-I'd, 211, 212

Abu-al-Mawahib, 22

AE, 8, 15, 21, 51, 59

Affirming, 252, 390, 405, 406

Affirm it, 400

Agriculture, 345

Aloneness, 85, 281

Anonymity, 190

Another being, 124, 125

Arrestation, 25, 82, 240-243, 273, 274

Art, artist, 29, 30, 40, 41, 100, 351

Atom bomb, 5, 39, 45, 290

Awareness, see also Consciousness, 11, 138, 146, 193, 356, 410

Bad side, 69, 70, 71, 305

Barclay, Robert, 16, 43, 370, 371, 375

Barrier, inner, 25, 26, 27, 39, 65, 82, 371

Being-aware, 200

Being, condition of, 24, 65, 176, 243, 253, 254, 272, 274, 361, 409, 414

Being-Conscience, 283-289, 299, 303, 307, 321-325, 327, 332

Being-Consciousness, 120, 137, 138, 182, 205, 222, 247, 272, 320, 332, 410, 411, 412

Being-continuity, see also universal existence, 143, 282, 284, 295, 296, 314-316, 318

Being-desires, 75-78, 414

- 8 -

Occupational work, 311, 312

One fraternity, 269

One kind, 193, 194

Oneself a source, 210, 280, 292

Open, opening, 15, 34, 165

Oppose it, 397

Orage, A. R., 102, 106, 111, 112, 118, 355

Ouspensky, P. D., 102

Outer person, outer self, separated self, 26, 27, 29, 63, 66, 77, 371

Overcoming, 82, 138, 294, 303, 306, 309, 368, 389

Overpopulation, 35

Pall, 245, 246

Parasitism, 299, 300

Penington, Isaac, 43, 371, 375

Penn, William, 43, 370, 371, 374, 375

Personal self, see also outer person, 134, 136, 188, 230, 231

Personal will, 166

Perversion, 78

Ponder it, 399, 402

Possession, 186

Power, the, 123, 125, 127, 129, 147, 163, 164, 334, 374, 379, 415, 416

Practice of the Presence, 313, 347, 348, 364, 385-388, 389, 411

Practice of Waiting, 376-385, 389

Prayer, worship, 312, 362, 376, 377, 387, 388

Prejudice, 197

Pressure-groups, 79

- 10 -

Second body, 128, 256-258

See it, 391, 392

Self-centeredness, 171, 172

Self-imprisonment, 8, 172, 173

Self-interest, 292

Self-observation and nonidentification, 111, 348, 355-361, 366

Self-transcendence, 34, 48, 49, 51, 59, 132, 149

Separability, 141

Separated self, see also outer person, 77, 110

Shame, 301

Sin, 251

Sinclair, May, 170

Situations, developmental, 214, 255, 298, 311, 366, 367-369

Socialism, 90

Somnambulism, 8, 9, 10, 145, 216

Spiritualization, 399

Split, 4, 6, 26

Stanislavski, Constantin, 30

Steere, Douglas V., 344

Stillness, 16, 23, 336, 337

Struggle against it, 397

Struggle for it, 401

Struggle to survive, 35, 36, 90

Subconscious, 29, 30, 66, 238

Subjects, 250

Subnormal, abnormal, 271, 272

Suffering, 236, 237, 301, 303
involuntary, 212, 214, 305, 306
voluntary, 305, 306, 398, 407

Suffer it, 398, 407