underlying Unity, in spite of all apparent diversity, and if one will meditate upon this idea he will soon begin to realize the truth, and will feel that he, himself, is but a center of consciousness in a great ocean of Life—­that he and all other centers are connected by countless spiritual and mental filaments—­and that all emerge from the One.  He will find that the illusion of separateness is but “a working fiction of the Universe,” as one writer has so aptly described it—­and that All is One, at the last, and underlying all is One.

Some of our students may feel that we are taking too long a path to lead up to the great basic truths of our philosophy, but we who have traveled The Path, and know its rocky places and its sharp turns, feel justified in insisting that the student be led to the truth gradually and surely, instead of attempting to make short cuts across dangerous ravines and canyons.  We must insist upon presenting our teachings in our own way—­for this way has been tested and found good.  We know that every student will come to realize that our plan is a wise one, and that he will thank us for giving him this gradual and easy approach to the wondrous and awful truth which is before us.  By this gradual process, the mind becomes accustomed to the line of thought and the underlying principles, and also gradually discards wornout mental sheaths which have served their purposes, and which must be discarded because they begin to weigh heavily upon the mind as it reaches the higher altitudes of The Path of Attainment.  Therefore, we must ask you to consider with us, in this lesson, some further teachings regarding the Unity of Life.

All the schools of the higher Oriental thought, as well as many of the great philosophical minds of the Western world, have agreed upon the conception of the Unity of Life—­the Oneness of All Life.  The Western thinkers, and many of the Eastern philosophers arrived at this conclusion by means of their Intellectual powers, greatly heightened and stimulated by concentration and meditation, which latter process liberated the faculties of the Spiritual Mind so that it passed down knowledge to the Intellect, which then seized upon the higher knowledge which it found within itself, and amplified and theorized upon the same.  But among the Eastern Masters there are other sources of information open, and from these sources come the same report—­the Oneness and Unity of Universal Life.  These higher sources of information to which we have alluded, consist of the knowledge coming from those Beings who have passed on to higher planes of Life than ours, and whose awakened spiritual faculties and senses enable them to see things quite plainly which are quite dark to us.  And from these sources, also, comes the message of the Oneness of Life—­of the existence of a wonderful Universal Life including all forms of life as we know it, and many forms and phases unknown to us—­many centers in the great Ocean of Life.  No matter how high the source