“Sometimes naked, sometimes mad,
Now as a scholar, again as a fool
Here a rebel, there a saint,
Thus they appear on the earth
—­the Perfect Ones.  Paramhamsas”—­Viveka Chudamani.

If you accept the report of the senses as final, you will say “soul for nature”—­but if you can gain the spiritual point of view, you will say “no-nature for soul.”  Evolution, devolution and involution are all in nature and will go on cyclically and eternally.  All this is merely due to the wish of the soul to manifest itself.  But such expression can come only when the soul lives on its plane.  Say “Money is my slave, not I.”  Say “Nature is my slave, not I”.  Give up life, give up body, give up all desire for enjoyment on the relative plane.  So shall you transcend all limitation.  Your real nature is Infinite and Absolute.  Only when you lower your nature by limiting it to the “particular self,” do you become bound and unhappy.  On the relative plane, you are a slave to the pair of opposites—­life and death, pleasure and pain, and so on.  Here is limitation.  Here you are a slave to competition, and “Survival of the Fittest” is the law.  Be not blinded by the flashing light of the glare of modern civilization.  Every morsel you eat is ground out of your brother’s blood.  Slave to a breath of air, slave to food, slave to life, slave to Death, slave to a word of praise, slave to a word of blame—­“Slave—­Slave—­Slave”—­that is your condition.  The Soul cannot stoop to any compromise.  It refuses to conquer nature by obedience.  It will conquer nature by renouncing the body and by knowing itself.  Find thyself bodiless.  Power felt within is soul; without, nature.  “We must crush Law (nature) and become outlaws.”

“Deliver thou thyself, by thyself
Ah, do not let thyself sink
For thou art thyself thy greatest friend
And thyself (the relative ‘I’) thy greatest enemy.”

This, student, is not the ravings of a lunatic.  It is the secret of SAT-CHIT-ANANDA—­eternal existence, knowledge and bliss.  Attainment of perfection means absolute Freedom.  Do you or would you know the meaning of Life?  It is the search after Sat-chit-ananda.  But man is trying to realise this Perfect Existence in the transitory things of the earth-plane.  Only when he knows that not attachment to the things of the “world, the flesh and the devil” but renunciation of same and the bringing of the Impersonal Ideal into his everyday life would lead him to it, then Maya will have fulfilled its purpose—­which is to show man his divinity.  “Kill out the desire for life.  Kill out Ambition.  Kill out desire for comfort; yet work as those who love life.  Respect life as those who are ambitious.  Be happy as those are who live for happiness.”

So says Mabel Collins in the Light on the Path.  Yes, you must work constantly, train your intellect, develop your personality but do not do all this for your own personal self but for the Higher Self, The BRAHMAN, Eternal—­to manifest through.  As soon as you lose this view-point your personal strivings end in Pain and Disappointment.  Work as hard as the ambitious man and the lover of pleasures but remember your actions are inspired by different motives.  Here Spirit is the director.