“A thousand ages in Thy sight Are like an evening gone, Short as the watch that ends the night Before the rising sun.”

And while my thoughts ran in this groove, I opened the book of the ’Secret of Life’—­and as if in answer to my inward communing, found the following: 

THE DELUSION OF TIME

“Time has no existence outside this planet.  Humanity counts its seasons, its days and hours by the Sun—­but beyond the Sun there are millions and trillions of other and larger suns, compared with which our guiding orb is but a small star.  Out in the infinitude of space there is no Time, but only Eternity.  Therefore the Soul which knows itself to be eternal should associate Itself with eternal things, and should never count its existence by years.  To its Being there can be no end—­therefore it never ages and never dies.  It is only the sham religionists who talk of death,—­it is only the inefficient and unspiritual who talk of age.  The man who allows himself to sink into feebleness and apathy merely because of the passing of years has some mental or spiritual weakness in him which he has not the Will to overcome—­the woman who suffers her beauty and freshness to wane and fade on account of what she or her ‘dearest’ friends are pleased to call ‘age,’ shows that she is destitute of spiritual self-control.  The Soul is always young, and its own radiation can preserve the youth of the Body in which it dwells.  Age and decrepitude come to those with whom the Soul is ’an unknown quantity.’  The Soul is the only barrier against the forces of disintegration which break down effete substances in preparation for the change which humanity calls ‘Death.’  If the barrier is not strong enough, the enemy takes the city.  These facts are simple and true; too simple and too true to be accepted by the world.  The world goes to church and asks a Divinity to save its soul, practically showing in all its ways of society and government an utter disbelief in the Soul’s existence.  Men and women die when they might as well have lived.  If we examine into the cause of their deaths we shall find it in the manner of their lives.  Obstinacy and selfishness have murdered more human beings than any other form of plague.  The blasphemy of sham religion has insulted the majesty of the Creator more than any other form of sin, and He has answered it by His Supreme Silence.  The man who attends a ritual of prayer which he does not honestly believe in, merely for the sake of social custom and observance, is openly deriding his Maker and the priests who gain their living out of such ritual are trading on the Divine.  Let the people of this Earth be taught that they live not in Time but Eternity,—­that their thoughts, words and deeds are recorded minutely and accurately—­and that each individual human unit is expected to contribute towards the general beauty and adornment of God’s scheme of Perfection.  Every man, every woman,