Chapter VII
We had been occupied in this work for about two weeks when we went to the temple one morning and found our friend Chander Sen, who had apparently died and been resurrected, with not a vestige of old age about him. There was no mistaking him. As we came into the room he arose and came forward with a hearty greeting and handshake. You can imagine our surprise as we gathered around and began to ask questions. We were like a gang of schoolboys turned loose, all attempting to ask questions at the same time. But the fact remained, there he was, with the unmistakable form and voice but with not a trace of old age about him. Even the voice had regained the vibrant quality of middle age and everything about him showed the quality of a well-developed life, buoyant and keenly alive. The expression of the eyes and face was far beyond anything that I could put into words.
In the first few moments we could do nothing but picture to ourselves the contrast. When we had first seen him, he was a decrepit old man, leaning on a long staff for support, with long snow-white locks, halting step, and emaciated form. One of our party had remarked when we first met him, “Here we find among these great souls one so aged that he seems ready to pass to the great beyond.” Of course, the transformation which we had witnessed just a few days previous had left its impression, but his sudden disappearance had rather taken him and the incident out of our minds, as we did not think we would ever see him again. It was more than a rejuvenation. I can compare it only to the transfiguration of the One we love and respect so dearly. That soul was surely reborn, judging from the contrast between his appearance the first time we met him and the way he looked this morning. It is true that we had known him only a short time but we had been thrown in daily contact with him for a sufficient time to see and know that he was an old man. He was with us for nearly two years after this, acting as our guide and interpreter across the great Gobi. Years after, when two or three of the party would meet and our experiences were recalled, the experience of that morning would be the first subject brought up.
In recounting these events, I am not going to attempt to follow our whole conversation and record it word for word, for we consumed the greater part of two days in just talking and I believe a detailed account would be tedious reading. Therefore, in this instance I shall bring out only the main points.
After the first excitement had abated somewhat, we were seated and he began, “As the body represents the lowest degree of thought activities, so the Spirit represents the highest thoughts of Divine Mind. As the body is the outer expression of the thought, so the Spirit is that in which the form takes its initial impulse direct from the Divine Mind. It is the immortal and real Self, in which reside all the potentialities of Divine Mind.
“The thought atmosphere is a real, substantial thing and has in it all that makes the body. So many people consider the things that they cannot see as unsubstantial; and although they are told, over and over that they cannot conceal themselves, they go right on believing that they can. Did Adam and Eve conceal themselves when they were hiding from the Lord, or Law of God? It is well for us to know the truth that we carry around with us the open book of our lives, out of which all men read whether we realize it or not. Some people are good thought readers, while others are dull; but all can read a little and we cannot conceal ourselves. Also, our thought atmosphere is constantly precipitating its slowly cooling words on our body and there it is seen by all men. We can, with a little practice, feel the thought force of this atmosphere that surrounds us and gradually gain a realization of its existence as real as that of the outer world.
“I have learned that just as man may touch the earth with his feet, so on the wings of aspiration may he soar to celestial heights. Like those of old, he may walk the earth and talk with God and the more he does so, the more difficult it will be for him to discover where Universal Life ends and where individual existence begins. When man forms an alliance with God through spiritual understanding, the boundary line between God and man disappears. When this point is reached, man will know what Jesus meant when He said, `I and my Father are one.’
“The tendency to personalize all things has degraded that which is called the Blessed Trinity into the impossible conception of three in one, when it can be best understood as the Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience of the Universal Mind, God. As long as men consider the Blessed Trinity as three persons in one and as something that must be accepted even though it cannot be explained, they will dwell in the wilderness of superstition and thus, of doubt and fear.
“If the triune nature of God is spiritual rather than physical, then the trinity in man must be seen from a mental rather than from a material point of view. One of the wise philosophers has said,
`Despising everything else, a wise man should strive after a knowledge of Self, for there is no knowledge that is higher, or that brings more satisfaction of power, than a knowledge of his own being.’ If a man knows his real Self, he cannot do otherwise than discover his latent possibilities, his concealed powers, his dormant faculties. Of what avail, if a man should `gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ His soul is his spiritual self and, if he truly discovers his spiritual self, he can build a whole world if he is serving his fellow men by so doing. I have learned that he who would attain the ultimate goal must search the depths of his real Self and there he will find God, the fullness of all good. It is because man is a trinity in unity—composed of spirit, soul, and body— that, in a state of spiritual ignorance, he has the tendency to think on a level with the lowest degree of his nature, which is the physical.
“The ignorant man looks to his body for all the pleasure he gets and there comes a time when he gets from the senses all the pain that he can stand. What he does not learn through wisdom he must learn through woe and, after repeated experiences, he will not deny that wisdom is the better way. Jesus, Osiris, and Buddha said that with all our understanding, we must get wisdom.
“Thought, operating on the plane of the intellectual, raises the vibrations of the body to a point which corresponds to liquid. On this plane, thought is neither wholly material nor wholly spiritual. It is vibrating like a pendulum between materiality and spirituality but there comes a time when one must choose which one he will serve. If he chooses materiality, a world of confusion and chaos awaits him. He may choose the spirit and, if he does so choose, he may ascend to the dome of the temple of God in man. This state of thought can be compared to the gaseous in matter, which is elastic and tends to expand indefinitely. God always leaves it for man to say whether he will control his fluidic stream of thought in the direction of those celestial heights which bear him above the fog line of doubt, fear, sin, and sickness or let it sink to the sordid depths of the animal in man.
“If, in thinking of man as a trinity of spirit, mind, and body, we consider him principally from the standpoint of mind, or soul, we shall see that he occupies a position between two great extremes of mental activity, the lower of which is the body, and the higher, the spirit. Mind is the connecting link between the visible and invisible. Operating on the plane of the senses, the mind becomes the seat of all the animal appetites and passions. It is the serpent in man’s Garden of Eden which beguiles him into partaking of the poisoned fruit. When Jesus said, `As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up,’ he was not referring to the raising of his body on the cross but to the elevation of the soul or mind above sense delusions. Standing between spirit and body, though separated from neither, the soul or mind is capable of thinking even lower than the brute thinks; or it may enter into conscious union with pure spirit where there is an abundance of peace, purity, and God Power.
“When the son of man is lifted up to that realm in which he rises above the fallacies of the physical realm, he thinks and acts on the plane of pure intelligence. There he discriminates between those instincts which he shares with every other animal and those divine intuitions which he has in common with God. I have been shown that when man thinks on a plane with pure spirit, the soul enters consciously that realm wherein it perceives the ideal of things, rather than the things themselves. It is no longer dependent upon the senses but, with clearer vision, it sees the broad horizon’s grander view. It is here that truth is revealed by Divine Intelligence and speaks the inspiring and health-giving message.
“When the son of man has been lifted from the depth of his material world and has been surrounded by pictures of tranquil beauty and refinement of the mental world, after a time he is seized with a healthy dissatisfaction and the ever-upward urge of the soul bears him to higher realms. There he no longer sees the pictures of tranquility but dwells in the land of tranquility, surrounded by perpetual beauty. He has glimpsed the inner and to him that has become the all; and the outer has become the inner. He lives in a world of causes where before he moved in a world of effects.
“The spirit of triune man is pure intelligence, that region of his being where neither sense testimony nor human opinion has any weight against ascertained truth; it is the Christ within, or the Son of God in the son of man, the discovery of which sets at rest doubt and its discouragements. It is from this pinnacle of his being that man views all things with the clear vision of the educated soul. He beholds more things in heaven and upon earth than are dreamed of in any philosophy. When he has learned that he is not body with a mind which is ruled either from within or without, but that both can be made obedient servants to his real spiritual self, he has brought into expression that God- given dominion with which he was originally endowed.
“Spirit is the supreme essence of man’s being. It is never diseased and never unhappy for, as that great soul, Emerson, says, `It is the finite that suffers. The infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.’ Job of your Bible told you that man was Spirit and the breath of the Almighty gave him life. It is, indeed, the Spirit in man which gives life and that Spirit rules his lower activities. Spirit issues commands with authority and all things become subordinate to righteous rule.
“A new era, wrapped in the garment of approaching day, is dawning in the hearts of men; and soon again will the virgin Spirit of God shine forth from the heart and the door again will open, by which all who will may find entrance to a larger and fuller life. Young, vibrant, with perennial youth and hope and endeavor, the soul of man stands on the threshold of a new era, more glorious than any other that has brightened the sky since Creation’s dawn. The Star of Bethlehem shone brighter at Jesus’ birth than it had before but soon its brightness will be like a noonday sun, for this new light foretells the day when the Christ is born in the hearts of all men.”
