London Lectures of 1907 | Page 8

widens out to the boundaries of the nation, and he is conscious of a
larger Self than the self of the family, or the community within the
State. And just in proportion as the love widening does not grow
superficial and shallow (for if you have only a certain amount of water
and you make your dish wider and wider, the water will become
shallower and shallower) does it approach spiritual love. Too often love
becomes unreal with those who try to love the far-off when they do not
love the near. But if you avoid the temptation, and remembering that
the Spirit has no limitations, and that you can draw and draw and draw
on the love within you and never find the bottom of the source of love;
if you are strong enough to do that, then the love of the family, of the
community, of the State, will widen out into the love of humanity, and
you shall know yourself as one with all, and not only with your family,
or your community, or your nation. All these local loves are
schoolmasters to bring us to the wider love of man. But do not blunder
in the idea that you can have the wider unless you have gone through
the narrower; for the bad husband, the bad citizen, the bad patriot, will
never make a real lover of humanity. He must learn his alphabet before
he can read in this book of love, and must spell out the letters before he
may pronounce the word. None the less, these successive stages are all
stages towards the spiritual life, and prepare the man for the
consciously spiritual realisation. And if you would really train yourself
for the unfolding of this life within you, practise it on those who are
nearest to you by meeting them with love and sympathy in the daily
paths of life. Not only those whom you like, but those you care not for
as well; not with those who love you only, but with those who dislike
you also. Remember that you have to break down barriers--barriers of
the bodies that bar you out from your fellow Selves in the worlds
around you, and that breaking down of the barriers is part of the
training in the spiritual life. Only as barrier after barrier is broken down,
only as wall after wall is levelled to the ground, will the freedom of the
Spirit become possible in manifestation on every plane and in every
world. The Spirit is ever free in his own nature and his own life, but,
confined within the barriers of the body, he has to learn to transcend
them, before, on these planes of matter, he can realise the divine
freedom which is his eternal birthright. So long as you feel yourself

separate from others, so long are you shut out from the realisation of
the unity; so long as you say "my" and "mine," so long the realisation
of the Spirit is not yet possible for you. Love of individual possessions,
not only physical but moral and mental, not the vulgar pride of physical
wealth only, but moral pride, intellectual pride, everything that says "I"
as against "you," and does not realise that I and you are one--all this is
against the spiritual life. Hardest of all lessons when brought down to
practical life; most difficult of all attainments when effort is made to
realise it, and not only to talk about it and imagine it. It is best practised
by continual renunciation of the individual possessions on every plane,
and the constant thought of unity. When you are trying to live the life
of the Spirit, you will try to be pure. You do well, but why? In order
that you may be pure, and leave your impure brethren in their impurity?
Oh no! You must try to be pure, in order that there may be more purity
in the world to share amongst all men, because you are pure. You are
not wanting to be purer than others, but only gathering purity that you
may spread it in every direction, and most joyous when your own
purity lifts someone from the mire, who is trampled into it under the
feet of the world. You want to be wise. You do well; for wisdom is a
splendid possession. But why? In order that you may look down on the
ignorant and say: "I am wiser than thou," as the pure man might say: "I
am holier than thou"? Oh no! but in order that the wisdom that you
gather may enlighten the ignorant, and become theirs and not only
yours. Otherwise it is no spiritual thing; for spirituality does not know
"myself" and "others"; it only knows the One Self,