Subdue the animal within you; conquer every selfish uprising, every
discordant voice; transmute the base metals of your selfish nature into the
unalloyed gold of Love, and you shall realize the Life of Perfect Peace.
Thus subduing, thus conquering, thus transmuting, you will, O reader! while
living in the flesh, cross the dark waters of mortality, and will reach
that Shore upon which the storms of sorrow never beat, and where sin and
suffering and dark uncertainty cannot come. Standing upon that Shore, holy,
compassionate, awakened, and self-possessed and glad with unending
gladness, you will realize that
"Never the Spirit was born, the Spirit will cease to be never;
Never was time it was not, end and beginning are dreams;
Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the Spirit for ever;
Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems."
You will then know the meaning of Sin, of Sorrow, of Suffering, and that
the end thereof is Wisdom; will know the cause and the issue of existence.
And with this realization you will enter into rest, for this is the bliss
of immortality, this the unchangeable gladness, this the untrammeled
knowledge, undefiled Wisdom, and undying Love; this, and this only, is the
realization of Perfect Peace.
O thou who wouldst teach men of Truth!
Hast thou passed through the desert of doubt?
Art thou purged by the fires of sorrow? hath ruth
The fiends of opinion cast out
Of thy human heart? Is thy soul so fair
That no false thought can ever harbor there?
O thou who wouldst teach men of Love!
Hast thou passed through the place of despair?
Hast thou wept through the dark night of grief?
does it move
(Now freed from its sorrow and care)
Thy human heart to pitying gentleness,
Looking on wrong, and hate, and ceaseless stress?
O thou who wouldst teach men of Peace!
Hast thou crossed the wide ocean of strife?
Hast thou found on the Shores of the Silence,
Release from all the wild unrest of life?
From thy human heart hath all striving gone,
Leaving but Truth, and Love, and Peace alone?