Freedom Talks, number 2 | Page 5

we are always
strangers to ourselves and asleep in the manger of natural things and
natural senses. We go on for years, and as consciousness grows
stronger we search and search for we know not what; craving pursues
us, we go hither and thither seeking, seeking--finding and losing.
The world and the things tangible are never wholly satisfactory in
themselves; we know instinctively that they are not all there is, there is
a deep, vital something in us that speaks its hidden messages into our
being, and we are driven on from sensation to sensation, crying for that
open sesame of union which will bring peace to our soul.
Then passing into deeper unfoldment we come into the real work of life,
we meet with responsibilities and its experiences; we are baffled again,
buffeted, besieged by the perplexities of doubt and fear and human
discontent and we feel that, strive as we will, we are not yet at home.
The ten thousand things of the human life entangle us,--the touch of

sickness, the expressions of so-called sin,--the baffling consequences of
our seeming mistakes,--all these draw us from the cradle of
unconsciousness out into the vital power of a self-conscious life, and
push us onward to our union with Cosmic Consciousness, or the risen
Christ.
On the self-conscious plane life goes on, driven on every side by
human experiences and at last turns back upon itself, and then in the
Gethsemane of its own making, it stands where earth and its perplexing
joys are lost and heaven and its hidden joys are yet unknown, and then
facing the expressions of its now half-revealed consciousness it cries
out from the depth of its soul's despair, "If it is possible, let this cup
pass," and it does not see the purpose in Gethsemane.
Human life at this stage of unfoldment has _fixed laws_, and the soul
meets in them the inexorable command to pass on to its own
crucifixion, the worked out sentence of its own judgments, and it goes
onward bearing its own cross which is built from the consequences of
the laws with which it has related.
The laws of human self-consciousness are hard to work out; each life
faces sometime, somewhere the proof of itself. There comes a day to all
when anything that is less than the truth slips off, and the soul stands
bare at the bar of the universal justice ready to be judged by the laws
which it has made for itself.
There are hours of human crucifixion that it were well to die on, for the
soul that wanders back from these fierce Mounts of Transfiguration has
paid the price of human transgression of law by human pain, and is
purged and cleaned by the fierce fire of its own igniting.
The path of human living out leads every life up the steps of Calvary
carrying its own Cross and it plaits the thorns and pierces the side of
"Him who in our life again is spit upon and crucified" until, at last, the
great human God-self within us is released through transmutation, and
the grave clothes of our dead self no longer entomb us; then the
resurrection day is at hand, and the Consciousness of God bursts into
the self-conscious mind, and the stone is rolled away from the
sepulchre.
The human mind bursts forth in illumination and it passes with the
Christ birth on to the table-land of human comprehension and
revelation of its infinite union.

In this moment of glorified illumination we feel and know that every
moment behind us has been that this hour may be; we feel then that
every moment is a special moment; every life a special life, protected
by the ALL LIFE, and that everything on our human pathway, high or
low, has led us on to this supreme moment of conscious union with our
God.
When the Christ Consciousness is risen within us, we feel the
universality of life written everywhere on everything; there is but one
starting point for all thought--God. There is but one ending place for all
human faith-- God.
We are filled with a keener sense of the ONENESS of life, and we are
thrilled again and again by the nearness and greatness of God in the
world which He projected from Himself.
The Father which we sought in self-consciousness has become real and
tangible, and the sense of everlasting UNITY is in our hearts.
With this great God-self alive within us, we never fear that God will
ever pass away from any part of his Creation. We know too well, then,
the truth that "as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end," earth is destined to become a heaven in the lives of
men as fast