By  circumstances and by the time that is to come the East and West, the world’s two poles, are wakening and are coming together. The East is wakening to life’s needs, the West is wakening to life’s purpose. The East is changing its side and the West is rubbing its eyes. The East is realizing the end of commercial and industrial development and is considering social and political problems; on the other hand the West is thinking, wondering about occult and mystic science, and is trying to waken to religious and spiritual ideals. You may call it involution or evolution, or may see it as the East going downwards and the West going upwards, but it is a circle, and action only makes a step forward in evolution.

          Now taking the circumstances before our view, we see that all such things as the wars and disasters and conflicts between nations and races which the world has experienced recently, all these things have wakened man to think and to pursue the deeper side of life. No doubt the all-prevailing materialism and commercialism as they are today, keep man still absorbed in his daily occupations, so that he has not sufficient time to attain something his soul craves after. Nevertheless the people in Europe and America, whatever be their occupation, more or less are inclined toward the spiritual ideal. No doubt very often seekers after Truth, who give their precious time to spiritual things, become disappointed before they come to realization when these things are not presented as they ought to be. And when they find that it is not real, what they were seeking after, they think, what is reality? Worldly occupation is not real, and under the cover of something real there is also falsehood. Then where is reality? A wise person who has become disappointed says, “I shall pursue my material life. I am craving for reality, but I give it up. Perhaps some day I shall find it myself.”

          It seems that there are four different kinds of persons who pursue the spiritual path. The one kind is the person who is after phenomena. He thinks, “In order to strengthen my faith in the hereafter, in the soul, in the deeper side of life, I must have some proof.” He is willing to make any sacrifice or to pay any price for it. But when once he sees a proof that there is something wonderful and something different from what he experiences in every-day life, he meets with people who are clairvoyant or mediumistic or who have some such occupations as to tell the future or to see at a distance, he sometimes thinks it is true, and sometimes he is disappointed. But at the same time nothing of these things brings him nearer to reality; they keep him on the surface, he remains groping on the surface, or perhaps his patience becomes exhausted and he has found nothing. Today, when materialism is prevailing, people think that the best way to give belief in the spirit and in the hereafter is to have some proof of the life of the other side and that they can have this proof by spirit communication. And what has happened is that many have become curious, ten times more curious, and perhaps after one year they are still more curious. And where does curiosity end? It ends in outer communication. They communicate with a relation, and then with a king, and then with a prophet. There is no end to it. And when there is one proof there are ten mistakes; and in this way it goes on. Those who are not ready to believe, after having thousands of messages they will not believe in the soul and the hereafter. And only spirit messages and plays and phenomena, if they could attract a wise and serious person, it would be different. But this is not so. It is the sincere seeker who is the first to doubt; and before he comes to the right thing he has perhaps met ten wrong examples and is finished with them.

          And there is another kind of person. This kind is wanting a certain knowledge, a knowledge which he does not find in the ordinary learning such as is given in colleges and universities. He has finished the learning of grammar and all these books concerning knowledge and learning. Now he wants another learning of an intellectual type – that in the moon there is a shrine, and on the top of the Himalayas, in a remote place, there is a sacred centre, that there are planetary influences over the world, and that a thousand years ago mankind had a different sense and after a thousand years mankind will be still another sense, the features will change and mankind will become quite different. Then he believes more in the book than in a living person; and that which tickles his curiosity he is pleased with. He must have something to think about which is not every-day knowledge.

          And there is a third person; for him the letter counts, for him what is first is the law. He wants to know about different religions, dogmas and principles, and fixed virtues and sins, and what is wrong and right as it is written in the record; and that this belief is older than the other, and that great teacher is not so great as another teacher, and the other teacher is different from another teacher. He proves it by their lives, he sees their differences from what history tells him or he sees it in one book or another book. This is something he considers spiritual knowledge. Besides that, the meaning of different symbols, as to which perhaps, if ten wise men were asked, each wise man would give a different answer. These things interest him, he considers that spiritual knowledge. Out of this, what he can find is nothing but the difference between aspects of wisdom, which is one and the same. You will find this person very often learned and well versed, knowing all the differences that exist between different religions. This knowledge we will call the classical knowledge of spiritual beings.

          There is a fourth person; and he has no interest in all those things. He says, “I only see the need of the world, and I am waiting, waiting for an extraordinary event to occur.” Either he is looking to the sky, that from there should drop something, from space, which not everybody had seen, or he is expecting that something will happen, so that everybody would be shaken and everybody would kneel down and would begin to pray. But these things never happen. Jesus Christ came and spoke to a few fishermen and has gone. Muhammad was driven out of his country. Moses taught and gave the law; but the world did not know him. Nevertheless what they have given has reached the world, directly or indirectly. Some think that the world must be changed in a moment. It is a great ideal, but it is a question if it comes true. They are waiting and will continue to wait.

          And then there is a fifth person who really thinks rightly on the spiritual subject, that what is the need of the world and of every individual is that the spirit may waken to reality, that the latent inspiration and power may manifest, that man may find eternal life within himself, that every possibility of expanding one’s sympathy and love may be attained. It is by this ideal, if individuals will proceed in the spiritual path, that they will fulfil the words of Christ: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all things shall be added unto you.”

          Now to tell you, how does one pursue the right spiritual course? In the first place we must find out, physically, what are the possibilities of experiencing the inner life as closely as one experiences the outer life. There comes the spiritual culture, that these very eyes, that only can see things of matter, are then able to see beyond. There is quite a different sensation, a liberation. There is one experience one makes with the physical body which one calls sensation; but that experience which is made by the senses and yet which penetrates and reaches further than the ordinary senses and touches deeper than average sensation is that experience which allows one to attain the first step in the spiritual path. Never think that these two eyes can only see what they see. No, they are capable of seeing further than what they see if one were to explore the truth of life. Besides that, the physical organs such as the head and the body, one thinks that the head is for thinking and the body for working; but one does not see the other possibilities in the physical body.  The body is so constructed that the study of ordinary anatomy is not sufficient to understand it. There are nervous centres which are finer than what material instruments can examine and feel, there are finer fluids, there is a finer life which can be experienced, there is a joy, there is a peace, there is a greater knowledge which can be obtained by the help of some particular organs situated in different places of the human frame.  And that shows that as capable man is of acting outwardly with the organs of the body, so capable he is of using his physical frame to make intuitions and inspirations clear to himself.

          One knows from a scientific point of view that the brain registers thought-forms, impressions. But that is what comes from without. But man does not know that there are centres in which intuition is born, instinct is born, not in the human being alone, but also in the lower creation. What teaches fishes to swim without sinking, and birds to fly? It is instinct. And where does it come from, what in mankind we call intuition and which in the lower creation is instinct? The source of instinct and intuition both is to be found within and not without. And the body which is made as capable as it is of working outwardly, so capable it is to perceive intuition. And when that sense is overlooked naturally one lives but a half life and a certain part in man becomes blunted, when he no more can feel intuition he no more can believe that he has something like intuition. Therefore the real source of knowledge is stopped, because his intuitive faculty does not work. Then he finds knowledge outside, in books, in discussions. But no words can give that knowledge that one’s self can teach when intuition is awakened. The great gurus and teachers of humanity, the knowledge they have given is little, but their work is to waken the knowledge that the real Teacher from within may teach.

          Now coming to another aspect, and that is the faculties of mind. The mind has five faculties: memory, thinking, judging, feeling, and reasoning. Feeling is the most important faculty. Therefore that part of mind is called the heart. Thinking comes on the surface, and that part is called mind. Heart and mind is one and the same thing. It is the surface of the heart which is mind and the depth of the mind which is heart. When a person says, “I feel in mind a great affection,” it is in the heart; when he says, “I think very highly of someone,” it is his mind. A great mystic of Hyderabad said in his poetry that the whole cosmos can become as a bubble in the heart of man if it is sufficiently enlarged. If there is such a possibility that the heart can become like an ocean in which the universe may seem to be a bubble, how great and how mysterious is man himself. His pursuit after little mysteries is in vain. Man is a mystery himself and such a great mystery, if he can explore his mind, dive deep into his own heart and see its phenomena. Then the whole life becomes a phenomenon.  Every moment he would see nothing but a phenomenon; no other wonder in the world would surprise him, for this wonder in himself is much greater.

          And then there is a moral world which is greater still, and which is to be explored within ourself also. If one knew what a bitter feeling makes and what an affectionate feeling makes; how one separates, and how they expand and penetrate through the space and what they bring about, one would marvel in life. You see so many living beings, people moving about with their eyes open, and yet their heart is closed to this truth.  There is a psychological action which is caused by every person in the whole cosmos. Every little thought and feeling arising in a person’s heart, before it is materialised, manifest on the surface, has its action in the inner world. Whether it is joy or sorrow or harmony or disharmony, it creates that in the inner world, and it all acts upon those who know and those who do not know. A person may feel and not say, or he may say and it may not be heard, or he may do something and it may not be seen, and yet what is done has its effect, whether it is a wrong or right or good or bad effect. And though man thinks that it is his individual action or thought or feeling, it can have an effect upon the whole cosmos. One never thinks about it, and yet it is so, a person may do something in the North Pole, and he may go to the South Pole; it is waiting there for him. With all the thieves and criminals and treachery and deceit in this world, can you say, with open eyes, that anyone can get away with anything that was not his right, that did not belong to him? Perhaps on the surface. But then there is a government, an inner government, and that government has officials everywhere, who will catch a person wherever he goes. Every grain of feed we eat and every drop we drink, every breath of fresh air we take, all has its tax which we shall have to pay. That is the moral phenomenon, which so few think about. We live in this world intoxicated by what we want to do, and that intoxicates us so much that we do not see further. And there is much to be seen which is worthwhile.

          And then we come to the spiritual aspect of our being to be explored. And that aspect is connected with our Source and with our Goal. Call it God or call it Spirit, or call it our real self, or the Absolute, it is one and the same. And by knowing that relation we can know and understand many things, we can understand why we come here and why we go back, and what is there to fulfil in this world, and where lies our real happiness and peace. We can understand the meaning of Truth, which words can never explain, and the relation with and the difference that kept us distant from God.

          If man explores the faculties which can be explored in his body and in his mind and their moral effect and influence, if he can realize this, he can attain to that spiritual bliss which connects him with God and which keeps him connected while on earth with the Heavens, and which makes him an entity which is connected with the whole cosmos. It is with this realization that man lives a fuller life. We need not live the life of a wonder worker or of an empty, curious man. What is needed today is for us is to live a fuller life by discovering inspiration. If that is our occupation, it is a part of our occupation in life, we ought to think, we have come here to accomplish.