PDF-file (The same edition. Another cover. 2.2 Mb)

Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age 255an attempt to hide by their opposites and which therefore areas yet for the mass of mankind only words and dreams, God,freedom, unity. Three things which are one, for you cannotrealise freedom and unity unless you realise God, you cannotpossess freedom and unity unless you possess God, possess atonce your highest Self and the Self of all creatures. The freedomand unity which otherwise go by that name, are simply attemptsof our subjection and our division to get away from themselvesby shutting their eyes while they turn somersaults around theirown centre. When man is able to see God and to possess him,then he will know real freedom and arrive at real unity, neverotherwise. And God is only waiting to be known, while manseeks for him everywhere and creates images of the Divine, butall the while truly finds, effectively erects and worships imagesonly of his own mind-ego and life-ego. When this ego pivot isabandoned and this ego-hunt ceases, then man gets his first realchance of achieving spirituality in his inner and outer life. It willnot be enough, but it will be a commencement, a true gate andnot a blind entrance.A spiritualised society would live like its spiritual individuals,not in the ego, but in the spirit, not as the collective ego,but as the collective soul. This freedom from the egoistic standpointwould be its first and most prominent characteristic. Butthe elimination of egoism would not be brought about, as it isnow proposed to bring it about, by persuading or forcing theindividual to immolate his personal will and aspirations and hisprecious and hard-won individuality to the collective will, aimsand egoism of the society, driving him like a victim of ancientsacrifice to slay his soul on the altar of that huge and shapelessidol. For that would be only the sacrifice of the smaller to thelarger egoism, larger only in bulk, not necessarily greater inquality or wider or nobler, since a collective egoism, result ofthe united egoisms of all, is as little a god to be worshipped, asflawed and often an uglier and more barbarous fetish than theegoism of the individual. What the spiritual man seeks is to findby the loss of the ego the self which is one in all and perfectand complete in each and by living in that to grow into the