“I smile at my early idea of happiness, though it wasn’t unique at all, but quite common—the ideal of all the undeveloped.
“Now I know that happiness is a spiritual condition—spiritual healthfulness—spiritual unfolding the heaven within one which comes when self is forgotten and we see our oneness with all that is. It is our unfolding, our growth or evolution into knowledge, truth and light.
“It comes when we learn how to love,—when we see ourselves in every other self, and the supreme self in everybody and everything.
“What matter whether we call the great ocean in which we move and live and have our being, God, soul, energy, force or thought, we are its offspring or manifestation, and can never for one instant be separated from it. We are because it is. And see how this divine principle ever strives for our highest health and happiness. If I but cut my finger, it miraculously heals the wound. Out of its boundless resources it forms a new cuticle to cover the abrasion. If my spirit becomes sore the same power brings to me from every side, the sympathy and love, the spiritual sunshine and air which heal that too.
“The hunt for happiness is a true instinct of the soul, a prophecy of its divine destiny. We were intended for happiness, but a happiness far beyond our usual ideals.
“A great seer has said that ‘love is life, and love in us is the life of God in the soul of man.’
“My soul has always been homesick for its native land and its own people—which are but other names for love and sympathy—infinite love, changeless sympathy. Others, too, are familiar with this kind of hunger. All feel it and give expression to it in the chase of one phantom after another, and to each phantom they give the name of Happiness.
“Does it not prove that all souls are irresistibly drawn toward the great source of love from which they sprang, but know not the way thither? The bosom of infinite love is the happiness they long for, but in their ignorance of their true being and destiny, they pursue every will o’ the wisp that dances before their eyes.
“It is the soul’s quest for its home, which is not place, but state. We need not wait for death to let us in, for it is no more beyond the grave than here. The pure in heart have reached it.
“We can experience resurrection before death, if we will. When our spiritual nature is awakened, and we are set free from thraldom to material gods, we have been raised from the dead. We can take hold on eternal life now, for it, too, is a state of the soul. It is to know and live and be the good.