FOREWORD.
"There is no limit to the knowing of the mind that knows."—
Indian Upanishads.
I wish to indulge in a little Foreword because in this way may be indicated a warning against contentment with a seemingly very sensible conclusion which will prove, on further thought, to be hasty and incomplete.
Five years ago I wrote in this identical place in our study these words:
"Fear will never go out of this world until pleasure loses value, desire ceases for want of an object, and reason no longer imposes responsibility.
"The best gift of Nature to primitive man, after reason, was fear.
"The imagination is reason's magnifying power.
"Fear observed and obeyed by reason is a friend.
"Fear and reason take care of man.
"Fear and imagination send him into a panic."
To many minds these statements will have the look of sanity.
But there are others who will instantly perceive that they represent thought on a comparatively low plane. I now observe:
The best gift of Life to primeval man, after love, was reason.
The imagination, void of love,—the feeling of harmony with all,— forgets reason and permits fear to enter the soul.
Fear is an ALIEN to our life, and never a friend. The real friend is reason, acting amid harmonic conditions.
When you are threatened by some hostile force or event, reason tries to induce self-protection, but you know no real fear if you are saturated with the feeling of harmony. You may believe it is FEAR that seeks your self-protection. But your REASON can do precisely the same thing without fear. Fear is, then, only an extra, a distressing extra, foisted in front of reason.
You are invited now to live the WHITE LIFE, to cast fear out, and to make real reason its substitute. By so much you will add immeasurably to personal comfort and power.
Love and reason alone can take care of man, so far as his own efforts are concerned. In properly blended proportions these constitute the very life of courage. What conceivable service then, can fear render any man or woman?
If you desire panic and distress, let imagination fill your soul with fears. But if peace, happiness, health and power be your desires, live the WHITE LIFE and hold fast only to reason.
By the reality called reason I do not mean mere cold calculation and hard logic. Such phases of reason are legitimate in their place, if freed from cunning and deceit, but the higher reason is to these as a woman's love—look is to the glitter of ice. The higher reason is not alone intellection, it is also intuition and harmonic assurance—what religious thought calls faith. The higher reason declares self-preservation to be the first law of life, and then, just because this is true, it cares for self and trusts the White Universe to assist. I really do not see what a human soul need actually fear when that soul and the White Universe are bent on the same goal, the soul's welfare.
The Universe is a growing organism. It is forever striving to realize its own best estate. This is the true goal for all individuals. It is saying the same thing if we affirm the goal to be Health—for worlds or man: Body-Health, Mind-Health, Self- Health.
When any form of health is threatened, you say, perhaps, it is FEAR that warns you to self-preservation. But I say it is REASON, and your fear-feeling is unnecessary and hurtful. If you can remember that the White Life or Universe and you have the same desire, your highest welfare, you can banish the fear-element, reserving only the reason-assurance element. All the fears in the world cannot benefit you. Harmony and courage will sublime your whole life.
I have never known a person whose reason has induced self- suffering. Suffer-fear is always a product of diseased imagination. What some may call reason-fear, when they think they are extremely sensible, is simply fear, and nothing but fear, and it is due to imagination, not to reason.
"But," you say, "are there not all sorts of evils in the world, and do they not threaten us, and should we not forefend against them? In this forefending, how can we escape fear?"
These questions show how thoroughly fear is knit into our very lives.
Now this is precisely the point. Fear has no rightful place with any rightful living, because the WHITE LIFE alone is rightful, and in that life reason-assurance only is possible, and, therefore, rightful.
The best way in which to forefend against evil is to deny it and cast out the fiction.
This entire question of evil is at your command. Evil exists because other people admit its existence. If all were to live the WHITE LIFE, each person might rightly declare, "There is no evil." The only real evil is that which can hurt your best self. When anything hurts your best self, it is your self that hurts your self. The only evil in the Universe is some one's act hurting others, but more, hurting self. If to you evil is, then, it is yourself. You can so live the sublime WHITE LIFE of harmony as to be able to say: "So far as I am concerned, evil has gone out of the world. There is no evil to me."
You see, surely now, that you need not fear "evil." I do not know anything more absolutely and sufficiently opposed to the permission of that self-acting which alone, for you, is evil, than reason. Fear has nothing properly to do with the matter. And reason-assurance has to do with it only by living the WHITE LIFE and denying fear and evil altogether.
You are invited to make these heaven-born truths your own.