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The Fourth Lesson: The Unity of Life.755
there being a bond of unity and connection underlying all the apparently
separated forms. Unless the student gets this idea firmly fixed in his mind and
consciousness, he will find it difficult to grasp the higher truths of the Yogi
Philosophy. That all Life is One, at the last,—that all forms of manifestation
of Life are in harmonious Unity, underlying—is one of the great basic truths
of the Yogi Teaching, and all the students of that philosophy must make
this basic truth their own before they may progress further. This grasping
of the truth is more than a mere matter of intellectual conception, for the
intellect reports that all forms of Life are separate and distinct from each
other, and that there can be no unity amidst such diversity. But from the
higher parts of the mind comes the message of an 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