The End ?

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.