James Allen: Complete Collection. Джеймс Аллен

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СКАЧАТЬ all beautiful forms. Having found the Divine Beauty within ourselves, it springs to life in every outward thing. To the beautified soul the world is beautiful.

      Undeveloped souls are merely unopened flowers. The perfect Beauty lies concealed within, and will one day reveal itself to the full-orbed light of Heaven. Seeing men thus, we stand where evil is not, and where the eye beholds only good. Herein lies the peace and patience and beauty of Love—it sees no evil. He who loves thus becomes the protector of all men. Though in their ignorance they should hate him, he shields and loves them.

      What gardener is so foolish as to condemn his flowers because they do not develop in a day? Learn to love, and you shall see in all souls, even those called "degraded," the Divine Beauty, and shall know that it will not fail to come forth in its own season. This is one of the Heavenly Visions; it is out of this that Gladness comes.

      Sin, sorrow, suffering — these are the dark gropings of the unopened soul for Light. Open the petals of your soul and let the glorious Light stream in.

      Every sinful soul is an unresolved harmony. It shall at last strike the Perfect Chord, and swell the joyful melodies of Heaven.

      Hell is the preparation for Heaven; and out of the debris of its ruined hovels are built pleasant mansions wherein the perfected soul may dwell.

      Night is only a fleeting shadow which the world casts, and sorrow is but a transient shade cast by the self. "Come out into the Sunlight." Know this, O reader! that you are divine. You are not cut off from the Divine except in your own unbelief. Rise up, O Son of God! and shake off the nightmare of sin which binds you; accept your heritage—the Kingdom of Heaven! Drug your soul no longer with the poisons of false beliefs. You are not "a worm of the dust" unless you choose to make yourself one. You are a divine, immortal, God-born being, and this you may know if you will to seek and find. Cling no longer to your impure and grovelling thoughts, and you shall know that you are a radiant and celestial spirit, filled with all pure and lovable thoughts. Wretchedness and sin and sorrow are not your portion here unless you accept them as such; and if you do this, they will be your portion hereafter, for these things are not apart from your soul-condition: they will go wherever you go; they are only within you.

      Heaven, not hell, is your portion here and always. It only requires you to take that which belongs to you. You are the master, and you choose whom you will serve. You are the maker of your state, and your choice determines your condition. What you pray and ask for (with your mind and heart, not with your lips merely), this you receive. You are served as you serve. You are conditioned as you condition. You garner in your own.

      Heaven is yours; you have but to enter in and take possession; and Heaven means Supreme Happiness, Perfect Blessedness; it leaves nothing to be desired; nothing to be

      grieved over. It is complete satisfaction now and in this world. It is within you ; and if you do not know this, it is because you persist in turning the back of your soul upon it. Turn round and you shall behold it.

      Come and live in the sunshine of your being. Come out of the shadows and the dark places. You are framed for Happiness. You are a child of Heaven. Purity, Wisdom, Love, Plenty, Joy, and Peace—these are the eternal Realities of the Kingdom, and they are yours, but you cannot possess them in sin; they have no part in the Realm of Darkness. They belong to "the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world," the Light of spotless Love. They are the heritage of the holy Christ-Child who shall come to birth in your soul when you are ready to divest yourself of all your impurities. They are your real self.

      But he whose soul has been safely delivered of the Wonderful Joy-Child does not forget the travail of the world.

4. Through the Gates of Good (1903)

      Introduction

      THE genius of the present age in matters spiritual is towards simplicity, and the hunger of the human heart is for Truth naked and uninvolved. That hunger will eventually bring about (is already bringing about) its own satisfaction, and here and there are men and women who, passing through the Gateway of Self-conquest, are entering into possession of the Transcendent Righteousness.

      The closing years of the nineteenth century witnessed the culmination of Formalism, and the spiritual reaction is now firmly established. Already "the end of old faiths and beginning of the new" is discernible to all who have removed from their mental vision somewhat of the textual dust of dying creeds, and have penetrated, however faintly, that sublime region of Truth which is discoverable only by practice, and which is made manifest by pure thoughts and holy deeds.

      The universal decay of effete religious systems which the world is witnessing today is matter for rejoicing; it is the death which precedes Life; it is the passing away of the false in order that the True may be more fully revealed. The True can, at worst, but remain hidden. It endures. It remains forever. Its invincibility cannot be qualified, and he who has but one momentary glimpse of the True can never again be anxious for its safety. That about which men are anxious is the false, which they mistake for the True, and this, in spite of all their anxiety, must fade away at last.

      In the lives of all the Great Teachers we see a manifestation of that Universal Truth, the majesty and splendor of which is as yet but dimly comprehended by mankind, but which must, during the gradual transformation and transmutation which the accumulating ages shall effect, at last become the possession of all. That Truth, as manifested by the Teachers, was written by them, as it only can be written, in thoughts and deeds of the loftiest moral excellence which have been permanently impressed upon the mind of mankind by their embodiment in preceptial form. It is to the sweet lives and inspiring words of these mighty Teachers that the eyes of a hungering and thirsty world are again being turned, and the Light of Life is being lighted up, the world over, in hearts that are ready to attune themselves to the Eternal Song of Love and Peace. What religions have failed to do, Religion will accomplish; what the Priest has obscured, the Spirit of Truth in the heart of man will make plain, and the world is now finding spiritual healing and refreshment in turning away from traditional and historic accretions, and going back to the pure Fountain of Truth as revealed to them so simply, clearly and beautifully by their blameless Teachers, and which had its inexhaustive spring within themselves.

      To aid men and women (more particularly those in Christian countries) more speedily to find this abiding Truth, these articles, setting forth the life and precepts of Jesus, were written. Formalism and self were heavy burdens to carry, and in directing the minds of men to blamelessness of conduct and purity of heart, I know I can leave the result with the Supreme Law, and that there are those who will read and, having read, will pass from the burdensome complexities of ignorance and formalism to the joyful simplicity of Enlightenment and Truth.

      James Allen.

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      The Gate And The Way

      Strait is the Gate, and narrow is the Way, which leadeth unto Life, and few there be that find it.

      Jesus A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things. Jesus

      The supreme aim of all religions is to teach men how to live; and the learning and the living are religion itself. The purification of the human heart, the building up of a blameless life, and the perfecting of the soul, these are the great underlying and enduring factors in all religions and creeds the world over. That which is vital in every religion is the striving after, and the practice of, Goodness; all things else are accretions, superfluities, illusions. Goodness — and by Goodness I mean sinlessness — is the beautiful and imperishable form of Religion, but СКАЧАТЬ