Our Goal in Life

As a single sun illumines the whole world
even so the One Spirit illumines every body. -- The Bhagavad-Gita, chap. 13


" . . . in him we live, and move and have our being: a certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." -- Acts XVII, 28


All are . . . parts of one stupendous whole, whose body Nature is and God the Soul." (Alexander Pope)


There is no matter without spirit and there is no spirit without matter.


Everything in the Universe is subject to an absolute and unerring Law of Cause and Effect that brings to every action an equal and opposite reaction. This law governs all actions involving atoms and universes and everything between these, whether visible or invisible, physical, psychic, mental or spiritual.


In order to learn by experience, it is necessary to repeat an act over and over again. It is also necessary that Nature should be consistent in her reactions. If we bounce a ball against the floor it rebounds in a direction that depends entirely on how it was thrown. It is because the forces of Nature obey definite and invariable laws that the ball thrower can profit by experience and produce certain desired results. If the forces of Nature were not constant, the ball might react differently each time and it would be impossible to predict what might happen. Under such conditions there would be nothing to base experience on and all progress would be impossible.


All activity in Nature is cyclic. That is, it repeats itself, and consists of periods of activity alternated with periods of rest. On a small time scale we see this law of Periodicity, or law of Cycles, operating in such phenomena as the return of the seasons, the ebb and flow of the tides, day and night, sleeping and waking, etc. On a larger time-scale, the same principle operates by means of repeated embodiments, life-periods, broken by death, and followed by rest-periods in other states of being, followed in their turn by new embodiments in the material world.


The goal of Man's existence on Earth is to become godlike, and to express actively and fully in his daily life the godlike qualities which, though dormant, are innate. It is Man's limited and self-centered personality that prevents these godlike qualities from finding expression. The purpose of Man's evolution is, therefore, to broaden, refine and raise the personality until it becomes a fit instrument to express the godlike qualities within him.

"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect" (Matt. V, 48).


These Portals lead the aspirant across the waters on "to the other shore."

Each Portal hath a golden key that opens its gate; and these keys are: --


1. DANA, the key of charity and love immortal.

2. SHILA, the key of Harmony in word and act, the key that counterbalances the cause and the effect, and leaves no further room for Karmic action.

3. KSHANTI, patience sweet, that naught can ruffle.

4. VIRAG, indifference to pleasure and to pain, illusion conquered, truth alone perceived.

5. VIRYA, the dauntless energy that fights its way to the supernal TRUTH, out of the mire of lies terrestrial.

6. DHYANA, whose golden gate once opened leads the adept toward the realm of Sat eternal and its ceaseless contemplation.

7. PRAJNA, the key to which makes of a man a god, creating him a Bodhisattva, son of the Dhyanis.