Apart from all evil—from all that seems to you evil—your Soul, my friend, that towards which you aspire, which will become you one day—your true Self—rides,

Above your phantasmal self continually.

* * * * *

Do not fear: it is there.

Through all the baffling and confusion, through all the seeming haphazard and labyrinth darkness of life, it is there—overseeing; quietly selecting, directing, ordaining. It is lord of all.

If there were chance, it were evil: but there is not. The soul surrounds chance and takes it captive;

And all experience—what you call good and what you call evil, alike—it takes and greedily absorbs, nor ever can have enough.

* * * * *

Are you not sometimes aware of your own body how it goes about, moving hither and thither? are you not aware of it in the street among others, exchanging greetings (and those who exchange the greetings absolutely equal before you)?

Are you not aware of it at night, lying awake, perhaps in pain? Are you not aware of it wandering over the hills at sunrise, or out at sea—in the agonised white faces of the people on board—and the ship is foundering?

Are you not aware of it North and South, East and West, by day and night, in winter and summer, in childhood and in age, gathering, culling, assimilating, without end, and with unerring instinct?

And You, all the time—YOU?

What?—Like some great Egyptian King-God, seated, marble, with wide eyes looking out over the procession, chariots and horsemen, which creeps past in his honour—over them to the plains and the winding river.

* * * * *

Do not fear; do not be discouraged by the tiny insolences of people. For yourself be only careful that you are true.

The dreams of the dark-faced yearning swift-souled Egyptians, conceiving into stone eternal types of calm passion, the dreams of Pheidias, the dreams of the dreamers of all the earth falling passionate before the visionary beauty of womanhood and manhood—Are true.

The dust, the wretched blur and distortion are but for a moment. They are no more than they are. When you shall behold yourself in the clean mirror of God you shall be wholly satisfied.

* * * * *

The body is a root of the soul. As the body in air, so the soul sustains itself in love.

The medium in which the Knowledge of Yourself subsists is Equality. When you have penetrated into that medium (as the young shoot penetrates into the sunlight) you shall know that it is so—you shall realise Yourself—but not till then.

* * * * *

Hereafter the face of Nature, the faces of the sea and the fields, the faces of the animals—hereafter the faces of them that pass in the street—are changed.

Nothing escapes, the line is cast over them all, they cannot choose but yield themselves—to you, my friend—delivering the essence of their life to you.

Hereafter certain things, all-important before, become indifferent; certain thoughts with which you had tormented yourself torment you no longer; the chains fall off. On the other hand the ways which were forbidden and inaccessible become accessible—on all hands the doors stand open to your touch.