Thus, to the onlooker, and in accordance with the general misinterpretation of the law of karma, he will be thought to have reaped a “bad” karma, while as a matter of reality, he will be making very rapid strides on the path to godhood.  Said a famous Japanese high priest: 

“Desire is the bird that carries the soul to the object in which his mind is immersed, and thus his future actions are the result.”

This means that by the law of desire, acting in accordance with the evolutionary pilgrimage of the soul, the karma is produced.  The American poet, Lowell, says:  “No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him.”  However, whether or not this applies to man in the first stages of his upward climb to the goal of attainment of conscious godhood, it most assuredly applies to those souls who have become aware of their purpose, and who have made a conscious choice of their karma.  And of this class of souls, the world to-day has a goodly number.

The end of a kalpa finds many avatars, and angels on earth, and however obscured the mind of these may become in the fog of Illusion, the inner light guides them through its mists to the safe accomplishment of their mission.

There is a story of a Buddhist priest, who when dying, was comforted by his loving disciples with the reminder that he was at last entering upon a state of bliss and rest.  To which the earnest one replied: 

“Never so long as there is misery to be assuaged, shall I enter Nirvana.  I shall be reborn where the need is greatest.  I shall wish to be reborn in the nethermost depths of hell, because that is the place that most needs enlightenment; that is the place to point out the path to deliverance; that is the place where the light will shine most brightly.”

Thus it will be seen we may not readily determine what is “good” and what is “bad” karma, by judging from external conditions.

As we are told that we may entertain “angels unawares,” so we may pass the world’s avatars upon the street, and judging from the external, the physical environment, we may not know them from the vampire souls that contact them.

The point of our present consideration is that this “year of grace,” meaning not the mere twelve months of the calendar year, but the century, is the end of the present kalpa (cycle), and demonstrates that period of evolution has terminated, and the era is at hand when spiritual alchemy shall transform the old into the new, and that the desire, which has so long ministered to the wants of the physical body, shall be turned (converted) into the channels that lead to spiritual consciousness.

The undefined, instinctive urge that has actuated so many intrepid souls, is becoming recognized for what it is—­the awakening of the inner Self; the blind groping in the dark will cease and there shall arise a race of human beings liberated; free; aware of their spiritual origin and their inherent divinity.