Who is my neighbour?

Young man, your life will be sad and bitter on earth, but sweet after that.

Things will transpire because of which your animal soul will embrace itself, and say—

This is joy.

But immediately, the still voice of the human soul in you will say—

This joy is but a Sodom apple, and—in that moment—you will know that it is so.

Hence, you will have ever a war between your animal soul, which is innate depravity, and your spirit, which is of God—Brahma—the One.

See in it the allegory of Adam and original sin—

It pulls your human soul down to death—

The other—the spirit—draws the human upward.

Attend then its sayings—

I will render them for you—

Before your eyes can see God, they must be incapable of shedding tears, for any suffering of your own.

Before your ears can hear, they must have lost sensitiveness.

Your voice may not speak eternal wisdom until it has no power to wound.

Before your Self can stand in the presence of the Eternal, its feet must have been bathed in the blood of suffering, penance and restitution.

Then kill the ambition to excel in the poor paths of fame.

Cease to regard this life as your best possession.

Then work for God, as earnestly as others work for Mammon, and respect your life, as those respect life who treasure it most—

Be happy, as those who live for happiness.

In the hearts of all is the source of all error—in disciple, as well as in the man of desire.

Study a plant of mustard—

Witness it grow and bud.

But if you will hew it down, so that it will never bear seed, behold a strange thing—

It will sprout again, and grow through the years if it never bears seed.

And this, although it is only a material form.

Now, therefore, if a human soul will not be cut down, yet will not enter into life as a creator by reason that it wills not, then the spirit of life everlasting will go into it, and it will contain itself, and therefore live forever.

Study the truth of mustard life.

Only the strong in God can act upon this teaching, and hold the lower nature.

The weak must wait its maturity, and then will come their struggle.

It will strive to keep the feet from the Path, and may succeed.

But if once all its power be wiped out—

If once you do the will of the Father earnestly—is His obedient child—that is the atonement, for it will give strength to do every work of the Creator of Being.

It will seem to take the very life.

That is because it takes the animal soul and throttles it.

But the human soul will recover, and the Spirit come into it.

This is the time of the Silence of the Soul.

Then it will be clear to you how dark are the lives of those who are around you and have no goal of union with the Spirit towards which to race.

And you will see and know karma.

Also, you will see that because of your past incarnations, your karma is inextricably interwoven with the karma of the world.

This is that saying, which the Nazarene answered when it was asked of Him—

Who is my neighbour?

If Walter Pierson, you will once be able to know the Peace of Silence—

You will then learn of all things about you, for the earth is Brahm's, and all in it teaches His works.

The old man said further—

If your soul once knows this peace, no storm of sin―or sorrow can ever more ward you far aside from the Path, for its knowledge is an abiding wisdom.

Heed also the words of Mendocus—

Read your Bible—

Read the Vedas—

Read Manu, and study.

It will all be a staff to your hand and a lamp to your feet.

Peace be with you.

An old man of unprepossessing figure speaks to Phylos, the Thibetan