THE VISIBLE IS ONLY ITS SHADOW. 



69 



Reality we must realise that everything on the physical plane is 

 only a shadow form or symbol of that which is on the Transcen- 

 dental, and we must thus look upon Nature. Every leaf and blade 

 of grass is as it were a letter or word conveying some portion of 

 that wonderful " Thought " of God which we call Creation; as 

 every word in a book conveys a portion of the thought contained 

 therein. 



Under finite physical conditions we are lookmg outwardly, 

 namely objectively on, say, a forest tree, we say the trunk is 

 brown and hard, the bark rough, the leaves green and the 

 branches spreading out into space, that the branches wave about 

 and creak, and the leaves rustle in the breeze; but these are only 

 movements under the illusions of time and space. When we 

 have escaped from this limited outlook and are able to look 

 inwardly, namely subjectively, these outward forms will cease 

 to have any value for us, we shall then understand the meaning 

 of that tree in the scheme of creation. It is sad to see how 

 many there are in this age of enlightenment who still confine 

 their thoughts entirely to the outward material forms of everyday 

 life, and have no thought of or desire to know the real meaning 

 of their sojourn here; they are indeed like children who cannot 

 read ; they confine their attention to the printed letters and words 

 and think that these outward visible forms are all that the book 

 contains ; they have no knowledge of the truth underlying these 

 symbols. This is, I think, to a great extent, the result of the 

 great advance in Intellectualism experienced during the last fifty 

 years, which has tended to stereotype thought into Scientific 

 formulae and hard and fast dogmas, and these m their turn have, 

 among the thoughtless, succeeded in strangling initiative and 

 quenching desire for advancement in a knowledge of the true 

 inner meaning of our surroundings. It is an age obsessed by 

 controversy, dominated and camouflaged by intellectual gym- 

 nastics. We need to take a leaf out of the daily log of primitive 

 man, or from little children, of whom we ar'e told is the Kingdom 

 of Heaven, and learn again to develop the power of wondering 

 at and loving the beautiful in nature. 



The old pictorial Hebrew description of the creation contains 

 a fundamental truth sadly overlooked by those who, in fear that 

 the Great Architect of the Universe should be thought to have 

 made a serious structural error in an important part of the build- 

 ing, introduced Adam and Eve and the apple to account for the 

 paradoxical existence of evil in a world created by a Being who 

 was absolutely Perfect, Omniscient, Omnipotent, and All -loving. 



" When God looked upon everything that He had made, behold 

 it was very good. " 



From the infinite outlook of the Spiritual, the whole Universe, 

 being the expression of His thought, must be absolutely perfect. 



