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CHAPTER VIII.

THIRD MENTAL STEP, ASPIRATION.

The aspirant is now ready to be instructed in regard to the third step in this heaven-given process of soulculture. He has become negative to all cares, unkindness, and pride, and a vacancy has thus been created in his soul for higher influences. He has become receptive to what may come, though a careful watch of the initiatory process has made him ready to receive from the good and not the bad, and he is now ready for the third step, which is to become aspirational. Each step grows easily out of the preceding one, being its natural sequence. This new step is a distinct advance in spiritual activity. From the quiescence of the negative stage, and the willingness of the receptive one, we pass readily into the active wishfulness of aspiration.

To aspire is literally to breathe towards. As the flame from a little candle streams up and away from the earth, so does the aspiring soul reach up and away from what is connected with the physical plane of life. It has been remarked that to long for a thing is to desire it so earnestly that we literally grow long in that direction. So does the aspiring soul stretch towards spiritual things and towards its infinite source.

"It upward tends to that abode,

To rest in its embrace."

One of old said, "I aspire while I expire." That is not always applicable. Many a dweller on earth is to

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ASPIRATION THE NORMAL CONDITION.

day more really in heaven than many a disembodied spirit whose wishes hold him to the earth-plane. That desire being contrary to the natural movement of his new mode of existence, he feels himself to be in hell. And in hell he remains until aspiration harmonizes him with his new state, and he joyfully joins the host of progressing souls. Happy those who learn to aspire before they leave the physical body.

What is the source of this spiritual aspiration? Is it natural to aspire, because this tendency originated in our own will, our own determined agency? Does the plant grow out of its own self-originated determination? It grows rather because a germ of life was implanted therein by the infinite activity; and so, hindrances being removed, and nutrient conditions being supplied, it grows, and it must do so. It is the same with our spiritual nature, this higher scion from the same infinite stock or source. The soul lives, because it is born of God, and when hindrances are removed, it grows naturally and inevitably towards the infinite All-Good, AllWise, All-Fair.

But being detached and individual agents, it is for us to prove our activity by removing so far as in us lies all hindrances to the onward growth of our soul. We have now made it lord and master over its physical envelop by conquering all fleshly appetites; we have tried to substitute kindness for hate, humility for pride, selfeffacement for self-will, and trust for anxiety. The hindrances being thus removed, we can reach upward to the source of all, and to those bright intelligences that depend on that everywhere pervasive energy, as the illimitable solar systems sweep their mighty orbits in

OUR RELATION TO INFINITE LIFE.

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obedience to the laws by which infinite intelligence expresses itself on the largest physical scale.

Why do we aspire? Because, as the sublime Plato said, "From God we came, and to God we shall eventually return." Plato's God was no selfish Zeus, no narrow Jehovah. It was the infinite truth, beauty, and goodness that expresses itself in all physical emanations, and in all individual souls, that may wander afar for awhile, but will eventually return to bask in the love of their mighty source.

On entering the third mental step our first aim is to realize our personal relation to the Universal Soul of all that is. Not with fear, as was taught by the old theology, do we seek to realize the truth of the Pauline statement that "in him we live and move and have our being." But rising beyond the personality implied in the use of the word "him," we let such thoughts as these have sway:

"I am alive. I live because of the infinite life of the universe. Life is every where, and as I am alive, I am a part of it. I am a part of God, though I am myself frail and small. But I fear not. I do not have to cling to this life, for it holds me; and as I am a part of it, my life can never end. I rest in it. I love to rest, mote that I am, in this infinite, beneficent life. As the little fish floats on the bosom of the great ocean which it does not comprehend, so do I float in this boundless life. As the little bird soars and is poised in the bosom of the atmosphere, whose scope is beyond its grasp, so do I soar and so am I poised in the bosom of this mighty life of which I am an integral part."

Having attained this state of mind, safely, joyfully

resting in the all of being, we are ready to express a definite aspiration, which we may do in words like these, varying them to suit our individual needs and longings, or, it may be, to suit a present creedal environment:

"In the name of Infinite Life, in which I live, and move, and have my own share of individual, conscious being, I now beseech all good, pure, true, loving, wise, and strong influences to come to me at this time." Thus do we, in conformity with our finite condition, call on special, finite influences or intelligences of the kind that we crave, to come to us; but we do it only in the name, and in the full consciousness of that Infinite Fountain, out of which we, and they, and all finite intelligences, came into individual and conscious existence.

Instead of Infinite Life, some will prefer to say God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Allah, or even Universal Force. The word matters not, provided we attain the mental state above described. But if there be any that deny a force, power, life, transcending all finite comprehension-if any deny their individual dependence on this "power not ourself that makes for righteousness," for them this book was not written. Denying these primal facts, they have no real ground for soul-culture. Conceiving that there is nothing higher than themselves, there is nothing for them to grow towards. Thinking that their strength is all self-produced, there is no room for reverence or aspiration. Such a one worships himself, and believes he is the petty god of his own little universe.

It may be granted that we are either finite or infinite. If we are infinite, of course there is no occasion for feeling reverence, anything mightier than we being excluded

THE KIND OF INFLUENCES WE WANT.

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by the nature of our own being. If we are finite, there is something beyond us, and to that it behooves us to look with reverence, aspiration and well-grounded hope. Infinity beyond us being conceded, that "we live and move and have our being" in it is the necessary sequence. So, in the name of this double consciousness of self and of our mighty environment, we beseech that such and such lesser beings may come to us.

The word "beseech" is suited to the occasion.

It

is not for us, "earth-darkened" as we are (to use Mrs. Browning's apt expression), to command or demand. aught from enfranchised spirits. For them to come to us in our present low estate is a condescension from our point of view, though if they felt it to be such they would not be the good and wise ones that we want.

The six epithets, "good, pure, true, loving, wise, and strong," were the outgrowth of my own special circum-. stances. At first I besought only good spirits to come to me. A longing for a purity and truth not found on earth led me to also beseech " pure and true" ones. As clairvoyance and general mediumship developed, I was sometimes a little timid in these new paths, but thought I could never feel timid if "loving" ones came. when, after many months the word came that I must give up my home, and go alone, so far as mortals are concerned, from town to town and from State to State to spread far and wide the light of the New, Dispensation, I felt that I did indeed need "wise and strong" ones to go with me, to tell me what to say, and to aid me with their own 66 derived" strength.

And

And we ask this aid "at this time," in the same spirit that led Jesus to teach his disciples to ask for "this