how to use it, and he dare not lose hold of the life he is familiar with till he has taken hold of that with which he is unfamiliar.  When he has acquired such power with his psychic organs as the infant has with its physical organs when it first opens its lungs, then is the hour for the great adventure.  How little is needed—­yet how much that is!  The man does but need the psychic body to be formed in all parts, as is an infant’s; he does but need the profound and unshakable conviction which impels the infant, that the new life is desirable.  Once those conditions gained and he may let himself live in the new atmosphere and look up to the new sun.  But then his must remember to check his new experience by the old.  He is breathing still, though differently; he draws air into his lungs, and takes life from the sun.  He has been born into the psychic world, and depends now on the psychic air and light.  His goal is not here:  this is but a subtile repetition of physical life; he has to pass through it according to similar laws.  He must study, learn, grow, and conquer; never forgetting the while that his goal is that place where there is no air nor any sun or moon.

Do not imagine that in this line of progress the man himself is being moved or changing his place.  Not so.  The truest illustration of the process is that of cutting through layers of crust or skin.  The man, having learned his lesson fully, casts off the physical life; having learned his lesson fully, casts off the psychic life; having learned his lesson fully, casts off the contemplative life, or life of adoration.

All are cast aside at last, and he enters the great temple where any memory of self or sensation is left outside as the shoes are cast from the feet of the worshipper.  That temple is the place of his own pure divinity, the central flame which, however obscured, has animated him through all these struggles.  And having found this sublime home he is sure as the heavens themselves.  He remains still, filled with all knowledge and power.  The outer man, the adoring, the acting, the living personification, goes its own way hand in hand with Nature, and shows all the superb strength of the savage growth of the earth, lit by that instinct which contains knowledge.  For in the inmost sanctuary, in the actual temple, the man has found the subtile essence of Nature herself.  No longer can there be any difference between them or any half-measures.  And now comes the hour of action and power.  In that inmost sanctuary all is to be found:  God and his creatures, the fiends who prey on them, those among men who have been loved, those who have been hated.  Difference between them exists no longer.  Then the soul of man laughs in its strength and fearlessness, and goes forth into the world in which its actions are needed, and causes these actions to take place without apprehension, alarm, fear, regret, or joy.

This state is possible to man while yet he lives in the physical; for men have attained it while living.  It alone can make actions in the physical divine and true.