The End
What is to be the end of this long struggle? What is the goal of
the upward climbing, the prize of the great battle? What does the yogi
reach at last? He reaches unity. Sometimes I am not sure that large
numbers of people, if they realised what unity means, would really
desire to reach it. There are many "virtues" of your ordinary life
which will drop entirely away from you when you reach unity. Many
things you admire will be no longer helps but hindrances, when the
sense of unity begins to dawn. All those qualities so useful in
ordinary life--such as moral indignation, repulsion from evil,
judgment of others--have no room where unity is realised. When you
feel repulsion from evil, it is a sign that your Higher Self is
beginning to awaken, is seeing the dangers of evil: he drags the body
forcibly away from it. That is the beginning of the conscious moral
life. Hatred of evil is better at that stage than indifference to
evil. It is a necessary stage. But repulsion cannot be felt when a man
has realised unity, when he sees God made manifest in man. A man who
knows unity cannot judge another. "I judge no man," said the Christ.
He cannot be repelled by anyone. The sinner is himself, and how shall
he be repelled from himself? For him there is no "I" or "Thee," for we
are one. This is not a thing that many honestly wish for. It is not a
thing that many honestly desire. The man who has realised unity knows
no difference between himself and the vilest wretch that walks the
earth. He sees only the God that walks in the sinner, and knows that
the sin is not in the God but in the sheath. The difference is only
there. He who has realised the inner greatness of the Self never
pronounces judgment upon another, knows that other as himself, and he
himself as that other--that is unity. We talk brotherhood, but how
many of us really practice it? And even that is not the thing the yogi
aims at. Greater than brotherhood are identity and realisation of the
Self as one. The Sixth Root Race will carry brotherhood to the highest
point. The Seventh Root Race will know identity, will realise the
unity of the human race. To catch a glimpse of the beauty of that high
conception, the greatness of the unity in which "I" and "mine," "you"
and "yours" have vanished, in which we are all one life, even to do
that lifts the whole nature towards divinity, and those who can even
see that unity is fair; they are the nearer to the realisation of the
Beauty that is God.
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