The Life Radiant

by Lilian Whiting

Mrs. Besant notes that it seems almost impossible for the ordinary student to discover the law according to which a prayer is or is not productive. "And the first thing necessary in seeking to understand this law," she says, "is to analyze prayer itself." Mrs. Besant classifies prayers as: (1) those which are for definite worldly advantages; (2) those which are for help in moral and intellectual difficulties, and for spiritual growth; and lastly, those which consist in meditation on, and adoration of, the Divine Perfection; and then we find her saying:—

"In addition to all these man is himself a constant creator of invisible beings, for the vibrations of his thoughts and desires create forms of subtle matter, the only life of which is the thought or the desire which ensouls them; he thus creates an army of invisible servants who range through the invisible worlds seeking to do his will. Yet, again, there are in the world human helpers, who work there in their subtle bodies while their physical bodies are sleeping, whose attentive ear may catch a cry for help. And to crown all, there is the ever-present, ever-conscious life of God Himself, potent and responsive at every point of his realm,—that all-pervading, all-embracing, all-sustaining Life of Love, in which we live and move. As naught that can give pleasure or pain can touch the human body without the sensory nerves carrying the message of its impact to the brain centres, so does every vibration in the universe, which is His body, touch the consciousness of God, and draw thence responsive action. Nerve cells, nerve threads, and muscular fibres may be the agents of feeling and moving, but it is the man who feels and acts; so may myriads of intelligences be the agents, but it is God who knows and answers. Nothing can be so small as not to affect that delicate omnipresent consciousness, nothing so vast as to transcend it."

In the most literal sense we live and move and have our being in the realm of spiritual forces. "Our life is hid with Christ in God." That assertion is no mere mystic phase, but a plain and direct assertion of an absolute spiritual truth. Our real life, all our significant action, is in the invisible realm, and the manifestation in the physical sphere is simply the results and effects of which the processes and causes are all in the ethereal world. Prayer, in all its many and varied phases, is simply activity on the spiritual side, and because of this it is the motor of life. It is the key to that intense form of energy which is the divine life, and its highest development is reached when the soul asks only for one thing,—the one that includes all others,—that of union with God.

"Anxiety and misgiving," wrote Fénelon, "proceed solely from love of self. The love of God accomplishes all things quietly and completely; it is not anxious or uncertain. The spirit of God rests continually in quietness. Perfect love casteth out fear. It is in forgetfulness of self that we find peace. Happy is he who yields himself completely, unconsciously, and finally to God. Listen to the inward whisper of His Spirit and follow it—that is enough; but to listen one must be silent, and to follow one must yield."

The quiet and perfect obedience to the divine will, taught by Fénelon, has nothing in common with a mere passive and blind acceptance of events as they occur. Obedience to the Heavenly Vision is not in standing still, but in following. It finds its best expression in energy and not in inactivity. The more absolutely one abandons himself to the divine will, the more unceasingly will he fill every hour with effort toward the working out of the higher and the more ideal conditions. An ideal once revealed is meant to be realized. That is the sole reason for its being revealed at all, and the way of life is to unfalteringly work toward its realization. It is a curious fact that there can be no achievement of life so improbable or so impossible that it cannot be realized by the power—the absolutely invincible power—of mental fidelity. Let one hold his purpose in thought, and the unseen forces thus generated are working for it day and night. Like one of the new inventions in electricity, so thought—a force infinitely more potent than electricity—sets up a certain rate of vibration in the spiritual atmosphere and works as with irresistible sway. The individual who is held to possess great strength of will is, really, simply the one capable of holding the thought, of keeping a certain tenacity of purpose. This power alone redeems one from living on shifting sands, and being perhaps, at last, engulfed and swallowed up in the quicksands of his own shattered visions and ideals, which never grew to fulfilment because of his infirmity of will and his closing his eyes to the star that had shone in his firmament.

The very pain and trial and multiplying obstacles that one may encounter who definitely sets his steps along a certain way, are only helps, not hindrances. One gains the strength of that which he overcomes. He transforms obstacles into stepping-stones. For we live and move and have our being in an ethereal atmosphere, which is universal, and which unerringly registers every thought and every energy, and transmutes these into living forces. Thought is creative, and if the thought be held with sufficient intensity, it acts upon every element that has to do with the final achievement. Imagination—which is simply clairvoyant vision—discerns the ideal in the dim distance, and thought is the motive force by means of which it is achieved. To be "infirm of will" is, therefore, the greatest of misfortunes, as it inevitably produces complete failure in all the affairs of life. However hopeless a certain combination of events may look, it really is not so. Nothing is ever hopeless, because nothing is final. Conditions are forever flowing like a river, and may be modified and transformed at any moment.

Failure or success is optional with the individual, for each lies in character, and is not a matter of possessions or external conditions. To become cynical, despondent, indifferent, is failure, and one has no moral right to fall to that level. Associations that induce these feelings should be abandoned. The happy conditions of life are to be had on the same terms. The fretful, the ill-tempered, the selfish, the exacting, must, somewhere and some way, learn their lesson and grow toward the light; but their influence should not be allowed to poison the spiritual atmosphere. It is neither a moral duty, nor is it even true sympathy to share the gloom and depression generated by these qualities. The inward whisper of the Spirit is the summons to a nobler plane on which all the higher powers find their expression. It is a fatal mistake to enter into the dark and unreasoning moods of every unfortunately constituted person. To do this habitually is to so deplete the forces of the spirit that one has nothing left. Let one keep his heart and mind in the currents of the Divine Power; let him actively follow the vision that is revealed to him, and he shall achieve and realize his ideals. It is the law and the prophets. A force as resistless as that of the attraction that holds the stars in their courses will lead him on. "The love of God accomplishes all things quietly and completely."

The mystic truth that lies enfolded in the words, "Cast thyself into the will of God and thou shalt become as God," is one of marvellous potency. To achieve the state of absolute peace and reconcilement with the Divine will is to achieve poise and power. For to be thus "cast into the will of God" means no mere languid acquiescence or hopeless, despairing acceptance; it means no merely negative and passive state that accepts the will of God for lack of sufficient stamina to assert its own will. But, instead, it means an intelligent recognition of the divine order; it means the will to gain the higher plane of life; it means the glad entering into a new and finer atmosphere charged with the utmost potency, and to become so receptive to it, so much a part of this energy as to command its expression in various forms of activity. The "will of God" is, indeed, the atmosphere of heavenly magnetism; it is liberation, not captivity; it is achievement, not renunciation. People talk about being "resigned" to the will of God; as well might they phrase being "resigned" to Paradise! That has been an inconceivably false tradition that repeated the prayer, "Thy will be done," as if it were the most sorrowful, instead of the most joyful, petition.

There is another phase of experience into which those of a certain sensitiveness of temperament are apt to fall when encountering the loss or pain that, in one form or another, seems a part of the discipline of the present life; a phase that can only be described as spiritual loneliness and desolation, in which no effort seems possible. It is an experience portrayed in the following stanzas:—

"I see a Spirit by thy side,
Purple-winged and eagle-eyed,
Looking like a heavenly guide.
Though he seems so bright and fair,
Ere thou trust his proffered care,
Pause a little, and beware!
If he bid thee dwell apart,
Tending some ideal smart
In a sick and coward heart;
In self-worship wrapped alone,
Dreaming thy poor griefs are grown
More than other men have known;
Though his words seem true and wise,
Soul, I say to thee, Arise,
He is a Demon in disguise!"