And one night a little girl came out of her hut, with a cup in her hand, seeking water for her ailing mother. The girl, failing to find water anywhere, lay down on the grass in the field and fell asleep. When she woke up and tried to |Hck up her cup she almost spilled it. It was filled with fresh and pure water. The little girl rejoiced and was about to drink when she remembered her mother, and fearing that there might not be enough for her, she ran home with her cup of water. She hurried so that she failed to notice a little dog at her feet, and she stumbled and dropped her cup. The little dog moaned piteously. And the girl stooped to \'7bdck up the cup.
She was afraid that she had sfHlt all the water out of it, but found the cup standing upright on its bottom and it was still full of water. The little girl poured some water into the palm of her hand and the dog licked it up and was happy. When the little girl finally lifted the cup it had turned into silver. The child took the cup home and gave it to her mother. But the mother said to her: "I must die anyway, drink it yourself." And in that instant the cup turned into gold. And the little girl, no longer able to resist, was about to put her lips to the cup, when a pilgrim entered and begged for water. The child immediately offered the cup to the pilgrim. And suddenly there appeared on it seven wondrous diamonds and a current of fresh and pure water issued out of it.
But the seven diamonds rose higher and higher till they reached heaven and became a constellation of seven stars known as Ursa Major
10. That which you give to others is yours, that which you have withheld belongs to others.
If you have given anything to another person depriving yourself, you have done good to yourself and this good is eternally yours, no one can rob you of it.
But if you have kept that which another desires, you have withheld it for a season only, or until you will be compelled to part with it. For you will surely have to part with it when death comes.
11. Will the time never come when people will learn that it is as easy to live for others as they find it to die for others while participating in wars the cause of which may be unknown to them? Only the elevation and the illumination of the spirit in man will bring this about.
Broum.
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
He Who Employs AH His StreagA in the Gratification
of His Animal Desires Exclusively Destroys His
True Life
1. If a man thinks of himself atone and seeks his own gain in everything he cannot be happy. If you would truly live for yourself live for others. Seneca.
2. In order to understand how needful it is to renounce the life of the flesh for the life of the spirit it suffices only to picture to oneself how repulsive would be the life of man if it were given up completely to Ws animal desires. The true life of man commences only with his renunciation of animalism.
3. In the parahle of the vineyard Christ explains the error of men who accept the imaginary life—their own personal animal life—as the true life.
Men living in a master's vineyard conceived the idea that they owned it. As the result of this error they were led to commit a series of mad and cruel acts leading to their expulsion and exclusion from life. Even so have we conceived the idea that the life of each one of us is our personal property, that we have a right to it, that we may use it as we see fit, and that we have no obligations to anyone. And the same series of mad and cruel acts and misfortunes, followed by exclusion from life, for a certainty awaits us who have conceived such errors. Just as the dwellers in the vineyard either forgot or refused to realize that the vineyard had been turned over to them planted, fenced in and provided with a well, in other words, that someone had labored in it before them, and therefore expected that they also should labor therein, even so men who live a personal life forget all that has been dpne for them before their
coming into the world, and all that is being done for them while they live, which shows that something is expected of them.
According to the teaching of Christ just as the workers dwelling in the vineyard which was prepared for them by their master must realize their eternal indebtedness to their master, even so must men realize that from the day of their birth until their death they are irretrievably indebted to some who lived before them, who still are living and will live, as well as to that which was, is and ever will be the principle of all things. They must realize that every hour of their life confirms this obligation, so that he who lives for himself and denies this obligation which binds him to life and to the principle thereof, deprives himself of life.
4. People imagine that self-renunciation is a violation of freedom. Such people do not know that self-renunciation gives us true freedom, liberating us from our own self and from servitude to our own corruption. Our passions are our most cruel tyrants; renounce them and you will realize freedom. РЫИоп.
5. If a man realizes his calling but does not renounce his personality, he is like to a man who has the keys to inner apartments—but has no key to the outer door.
6. The realization of one's calling which includes the law of self-abnegation has nothing in common with the enjoyment of life. If we cared to mix the consciousness of our calling with enjoyment and offered this mixture like a medicine to the ailing soul, the two principles would separate themselves of their own accord. But if they failed to do so. and the consciousness of the high calling of man exercised no effect, and the life of the body had from a striving after enjoyment acquired some strength supposedly
proportionate to that calling, moral life would vanish beyond recall. Kant. VI.
Deliverance from Situ is Possible Only Through
Self-Renunciation
1. Renouncing animal happiness for the sake of spr-itual blessedness is a consequence of a change of consciousness, that is the man who has previously considered himself an animal cmly, begins to recognize himself as a spiritual being. If this change of consciousness has been accomplished, that which previously was considered privation and suffering no longer appears as privation and suffering, but as a natural preference of that which is better to that which is worse.
2. They are wrong who think and say that in order to fulfill the calling of life and to attain happiness we require health, comfort and outwardly favorable conditions in general. This is untrue. Health, comfort and outwardly favorable conditions are not necessary for the fulfillment of our calling and for our happiness. We have the possibility of the happiness of spiritual life which nothing can violate, the happiness of increasing love within. But we must have faith in this spiritual life and concentrate all our efforts upon it.
You may live the life of the body and labor in it, but the moment obstacles appear in this bodily life betake yourself from the bodily life into the spiritual life. And spiritual life is always free. It is like the wings to a bird. A bird may walk on his feet, but no sooner is an obstacle or peril encountered than the bird having faith in his wings tmfolds them and soars upward.
3. There is nothing more important than inner labor in solitude with God. This inner labor consists in с
to seek the happiness of your animal personality, in reminding yourself of the senselessness of bodily life. You can do this only when you are alone with God. When you are in the company of other people it is too late. When you are in the company of other people your actions will be good only if you have prepared in yourself the capacity of self-renunciation through solitary communion with God.
4. Every man sooner or later will more or less clearly experience an inner contradiction: I would live for myself and I would live rationally, but to live for myself is irrational. This seems to be contradictory, but is it? If it be so, then there is contradiction in the decaying seed which as it decays puts forth a sprout. It is a contradiction only if I refuse to listen to the voice of reason. Reason shows the necessity of removing the consciousness of life from personal life into the germinating life of the spirit. It shows me the needlessness, the senselessness of personal life, and makes me a promise of new life, just as the seed grows by breaking through the cherry pit. A contradiction is only then to be seen when we seize the outward discarded form of life, refusing to part with it, as thou^ the outward envelope of the seed after the seed had burst through insisted on asserting its life. That which appears to us a contradiction is merely the pangs of being bom into a new life. We need only cease resisting this inevitable superseding of the bodily life by the spiritual life and yield ourselves up to the spiritual life, and a new, a better, life—the true life—will reveal itself to us.