The Inner Development of Man

So all thoughts that connect us with finiteness and transitory matters must be silenced. Then, when such silence has been produced in the soul and for awhile all our surroundings, be they of the era, the nation, the race or the century we live in, are subdued and eliminated, the soul will begin to speak of its own accord. This will not happen immediately. First, the soul must be prepared for this point and there are means and directions that will call forth this inner sounding. Man must give himself up to thoughts, concepts and sentiments that originate not in the temporal but in the eternal. Their content must be true not only for today, yesterday, a century or tomorrow but forever. Such thoughts are found in the various religious books of all people. They are found as an example in the Bhagavad Gita, the hymn of human perfection. Too, they are found in the Old and New Testaments, particularly in the Gospel of St. John beginning with the thirteenth chapter. Again, effective thoughts are to be found in the first four sentences of the book, Light on the Path, by Mabel Collins, familiar to members of the Theosophical and Anthroposophical Movements.[^2]