The Quest for Meaning: Origins, Purpose, and Destiny

Man seeks purpose amidst existential questions and struggles to align beliefs with ethical living.

### The Eternal Quest: Understanding Existence and Our Purpose
* 🌌 The fundamental question of existence—**where did we come from, why are we here, and where are we going**—has puzzled humanity throughout history.
* 🤔 Materialism suggests that we exist **without purpose**, merely as a result of **chance**, leading to a bleak outlook on ethics and morality, where life is viewed as **ultimately meaningless**.
* 🙏 In contrast, theological perspectives posit that humans are created for a **divine purpose**, yet this raises questions about the **nature of suffering** and the **inconsistencies within various religious beliefs**.
* 🔄 Philosophical views like reincarnation offer a broader perspective, suggesting that life is a **continuous journey of growth and learning** rather than a singular event.
* ⚖ However, the challenge remains: how do our beliefs translate into actions, and do they truly **inspire ethical living** or simply serve as **abstract concepts**?
* 🌱 The importance of ethics is highlighted as a **guiding principle for living**, yet many ethical individuals still face hardship, questioning the **effectiveness of living an ethical life** in a materialistic world.
* 🌍 Science provides insights into the universe but lacks a comprehensive ethical framework, emphasizing the need for a **balance between scientific understanding and ethical living**.
* ✨ Ultimately, the journey towards understanding our existence requires **individual responsibility** and the transformation of **beliefs into actions** that contribute to a **more harmonious world**.

you know the one big question, or we might say the one question in three parts, that has been asked since the beginning of time is the one that nobody seems to have an answer for. The great question is where did we come from, why are we here, and where are we going. Now, to go on century after century without really giving much investigation to this subject seems remarkable. We would think that it would be the first thing everyone would think of, but I suppose it's been the frustration of not having a good answer. But the fact remains that until we have some concept of our own purpose, it is very difficult to expect us to solve problems and make the proper progress in civilization. We are here for a reason of some kind. Most people are willing to admit the possibility of it; others are not at all sure. Now, there are three schools of thought on the subject. The first is the materialistic. In this school, it's very simple. We are here for no reason. We are simply a continuing pattern of accidents. We will continue as long as we

make mistakes as long as our processes of perpetuation go on. And when that ends, we end with it. We came from nowhere in particular; we are going nowhere after we pass out of here, and our little life is rounded by asleep. Now, this is not very satisfactory. It has helped to establish one of the most difficult situations we face, and that is materialism as a way of life. If we are going nowhere, if we came from nowhere in particular and are here for no reason in particular, then all ethics, morality, culture, our illusions. We are simply something that is going to be active and animated as long as we breathe. As soon as the death hits, we are finished. There's nothing more to be expected, nothing more to be hoped for. Well, many people in the modern world have been following that belief. In fact, it is regarded as the intellectual superior attitude. It explains everything by denying everything and expects to build upon this foundation an enduring culture. This materialistic point of view is obviously a perfect reason for the trouble we're in.

If there are no principles in life, if there are no realities, and each individual lives for himself and for what he can get, and we'll all lie down and sleep forever, there is very little meaning to existence. There is no hope, no purpose, no outlet into the future, no fulfillment of dreams or hopes or aspirations, simply this dogged continuance of birth, death, and decay. Well, for a long time, they reconsidered this history rather and elegant attitude, but now in the emergencies of life, we are not quite so certain. We're very worried if all there is is what is here, and all we can do is what we have done. It's more of the same; the future does not look very bright. Now, the second point of view is the theological. The theological point of view has been held in all parts of the world by various groups, but strangely enough, the allure theology is not consistent in all of its branches. All theologies do not have the same beliefs, but all of them do believe that the human being has a reason for

existence. The theology believes that man was created by a divine power, that he is here to fulfill a divine destiny, and that after he is finished here, he will depart to a place of punishment and reward according to the merits of his life. Will this seem like another nice package, and it has been followed and accepted, but again it is rather difficult to explain it because while we now place everything in the hands of deity, deity doesn't seem in this sense to have a reasonable purpose for all the work that has been done. The deity is not very practical if it is creating things in its own image, treating them according to its own will, and returning them to itself regardless of what happens. This seems to mean that there's a great deal of waste energy, wasted time in the divine process. If all things are created by deity, they could have been created correctly in the first place, and that would have been the end of it. We would all be good, we would all be enlightened, and we would all be children of the eternal. This is not the

way it is, and after having created us with the wisdom of a divine power, this divine power has left us to struggle as best we can against the troubles and worries and problems of mortal existence. So we have this next problem: is that man is a spiritual being, that the man, that the human being is a creation, is a type in itself, that it was fashioned for a purpose, and that this purpose rests in the mind of deity, that man has not yet fully understood. The purpose is obvious, but theology affirms that there is a purpose and that why we may not be able to prove it scientifically, we can experience through the mystery of faith the importance of this purpose. After it is all said and done, we will depart according to our method from our demerits, but it again difficult to understand this because so many different kinds of merits and demerits present themselves for consideration. We find the thor of the suffering refined individuals beyond the hope of pote of life that is worthwhile. We find wars and pillage and all the

difficulties and in humanities of man to man, and we wonder how all this can exist within a world created by a benevolent deity. So again, there are questions, there are doubts, there are problems as to how many people are good enough to go to heaven and how many people are bad enough to go to hell. Then, me seems to be a sort of middle distance for most folks, mingled in a confusion of virtues and vices. All of this seems to indicate a very inadequate explanation of the realities of existence. There should be something better than this. It is something that has been accepted on faith. Well, faith is a wonderful thing, and we all have to have it, but we'd like to see a certain reasonable demonstration of the verities of faith. We like to believe that behind and beyond all of our human uncertainties, there is a divine or universal plan of some kind suitable to meet the needs of all these creatures, not only human but all the other creatures of nature. But we are told in many religions that all

creatures great and small a part of the great pilgrimage of life to matter which we call evolution. The theory approach to the matter is the philosophical approach and that is very largely in the keeping of oriental people's or was. Although it was held in high esteem by the Greeks and penneth also came into some play in the early Roman Empire and that is the doctrine of reincarnation. Reincarnation makes the life of the individual only a chapter in a larger existence. Well, doesn't necessarily solve anything but it gives a larger perspective. The individual is not just brand new each time he gets here and he's not all worn out ready to cease 22 Fox and the various developments and degrees of intelligence. The various unfoldment sub virtues and vices are according to laws and principles. Therefore, out of the doctrine and metempsychosis as it was called with the Greeks came the belief that each of our little embodiments is a chapter in a development of a great over soul, a great power as Emerson calls it.

power, which is manifesting itself through a creation in which it embodies itself and goes on through ages of growth and unfoldment. The doctrine of reincarnation has certain attractions to it also. It becomes the basis of the hope of the realities. It gives us the possibility of planning a little bit as to what we are going to do. It gives us the hope that we'll get some more of it done later, and it also will help us to realize that part of what we have now, we have earned at some past time. So, we have this rather philosophical attitude of being willing to live now because it's part of a greater life, and we have escaped the single life concept. We do not have the belief or feeling that in a few years all things must be solved. We're other hooks to that things will go on, on, on through long periods of time. Now, all this center also enters into another consideration here. We have deity as a power, whether we desire to have to consider it as a being, as a person, as a

principle as an energy as a concept is a con can fix conviction or as merely a belief. We have the idea of a sovereignty of virtuous intelligence replace at the head of life a deity. Now this is not necessarily easily provable but there is enough evidence accumulating as bacon fight it out to indicate that there is a sovereignty of intellect that guides all things. There is a poll in nature that predisposes all natural things to come in the full fulfillment of themselves. Therefore there is a predestination for salvation. There is something that we must expect. We must expect to have the opportunity to overcome our limitations and also to come into the direct participation in the glory and goodness of deity. So we have all these things and we believe them all and we have all kinds of little beliefs not quite so strong or powerful to the sincere us not complicated but still believes that the held by Aboriginal peoples and ever L long ago and have faded away but we're part of our heritage of believing all these things together them constitute a

situation. Now comes the more important part of this situation. Is it enough to affirm that such possibilities exist? What do we do with the beliefs that we hold? If we have a certain belief, are we doing anything with it? Are we all doing exactly the same thing with different beliefs? Is the materialist and the theist, are they both doing the same kind of things in daily life, although their beliefs are entirely different? Because they to ourselves, is the atheist who believes in nothing in any way superior to or inferior to atheist were believing much continues to act exactly as he did before. How we defined any nd indication that the beliefs that we hold result in major changes in living. Are we living toward a belief, from a belief, or alongside of one which we have never actually embraced? Here we have a belief, for example, in metempsychosis or reincarnation, that we are here to experience and to learn, and then we find millions of people doing everything they possibly can to escape experience and learning. The one thing they want is to be left alone to do as

they please well. That is more or less a frustration of a law. If they believe there is a law, there are realities, there are rules, and then pay no attention to them. Nothing much has been accomplished. Even the most beautiful orb of all beliefs dies aborning if nobody accepts it. So we have individuals now who believe they will live again but are not building anything to use if they should live again. They are quite certain they will be back, but what will they be like when they come back? What would they like when they came here this time, and why do they come with a mass of unfinished business and after a certain number of years depart with most of that business still unfinished? Therefore, we have an inconsistency. We have a belief in integrity, but they do not impel the individual who claims to believe in this integrity to live according to them. There are many, many different schools of thought on reincarnation, for example, of different types of believing in connection with it, with the reasons that caused it, the reasons that manifest through it, the purposes for

which it is intended, but the majority of persons who claim to believe it today are not practicing any of those virtues any better than the individual who has no such belief. Now, the same is true of all the others. Those who believe in heaven according to the Good Book and are waiting for the advent of the Messiah are not living today as though they believed in anything. They want to go and exactly as they are going now. They want to continue their investments now, box and stocks and bonds. They wish to have their private quarrels and their private difficulties. It's just the way they have always had them. So, the fact that they believe in a better hereafter does not, in many cases at least, induce them to live to marriage or better Hereafter. You can go to church every Sunday for the rest of your life, but if you don't live any of it in daily living, it is not certain that your attendance to the church is sufficient to guarantee salvation. It has something to do with conduct, something to do with ethics.

something to do with morality and these things that today are not generally practiced even by those who claim to believe things. So, we have the individuals who have theological hopes, the fuel some time rested in the arms of the Lord, but they continue to foreclose mortgages just as they did before. In fact, in many instances, the debtor, particularly recently, there's been a great deal of exploitation of religion. There have been many cases in which these gullibility has been injured or the hopefulness of the people has been double-crossed by these exploitations of religious beliefs. So, there is no definite certainty that these beliefs are producing what they claim to produce. There is also an indication that we have to consider that while the good book tells us that the good man has no place to lay his head, most of our modern religionists have found some place to rest comfortably. They are not inclined to suffer too much for their causes. So, all these things come together and we have an interesting problem. We have all kinds of statements made and I have them.

come to me frequently. Someone will say, Well, I want to get a better religion. I want to believe in something that's really going to do things. So, you try to help them define something, can you find rather difficult to get yet find anything which you can hardly recommend as actually doing something that is necessary. So, you can only suggest that one or two have seemed to have a little better reputation than the others, but all of it to run sums up again to this question: Why are we here? Where did we come from? And where are we going? We have every theory you can imagine about it, but we have very little solid, substantial footing upon which to build personal character. So, this brings us back again to what constitutes, to my way of thinking at least, a very important phase of learning, and that is ethics. Ethics are very important. Ethics are the practice of integrity. An ethical life is a life which contains within it a maximum of ethics or a maximum of constructive expects pan-asian and experience. The ethical aspect of life then will say, That is why we should be.

good is because that's ethics, and if we're good of its ethics, that's going to be a big help to us. But is it? We've mostly found that ethical people, really ethical people, are poor and downtrodden. Most of the ethical individuals are not actually benefiting from ethics, nor do they know where they are going. The ethical life doesn't mean that you're going to have immortality. It is not instant in any sense of the word a solution to materialism in it. It doesn't necessarily represent materialism. The individual ethically could be mortal and disappear into the earth with his ancestors, and still, he would have died a good man. Brannen to some other belief, he might have died a bad man, but these things do not seem to solve anything. So we come in the end to the great problem that has faced us from the beginning of time. What kind of a world are we living? Now we would think it'd be quite easy and pleasant to depend upon science, which has done so much to expand our understanding of worlds and world.

conditions science therefore might well describe the kind of universe or the kind of nature that is permeating all experience or justifying all the worlds in which we function in our daily living. But now science also has its limitations. Science, for some unknown reason, has never quite been able to get its way into and add true reason, universal ethic. The science is exact as far as it goes, but most of its exactness has to be revised occasionally. There is no true complete system of approved and immovable ethics in science, and without ethics, science is dangerous. And with the ethics, it could be very constructive. But science is not aware of a pattern which it can scientifically demonstrate to be ethical, and ethics does not seem to arise in nature. But I think the excited distt has overlooked something. He's overlooked the fact that he can't find any ethics in nature because nature itself is one ethics in itself. Nature is the supreme example of ethics. And Chris continues this way, but with us models, we are constantly trying to destroy the ethics of nature. We are trying to prove that the

illusions of science are more real and valuable than the realities of nature. So we go to the rules that we have ourselves invented and neglect the rules which were invented long before we existed. So the table comes back again to the problem of the administration of the universe. Is there a god? Some say yes. I'll say no. Some say it's a principle. Some say it's a person. Some say it's a structure of laws. It's an infinite mind, an infinite will, an infinite purpose. It is ultimate reality. All these words and terms are important to us, but we do not always know what they mean. So we have now come to another problem: how to explain ourselves to ourselves or to each other in a manner that can help to move us into a new dimension of life in the century ahead. We have all these questions. We have all kinds of good ideas. We have all kinds of ethical ideals and idealistic thinking, but nothing seems to happen. The good is always, in a sense, in the abstract. The discomforts are all in the

concrete. We are daily suffering in a world in which we are constantly creating patterns of beauty, magnificence, and divine order. So, we have now to kind of flip it all over and see what we're working with. What is man? What is man that thou should be mindful of it? What is it that's trying to grow here? Is the individual an eternal being moving through a non-eternal atmosphere or environment? Is the individual a spark of the divine? Is humanity collectively the nature of a divine being? Is the human being a creation of divinity, or is it a result of the unfoldment of natural laws in the material world? The question of man's place becomes terribly important in determining his future. So, we can look around and say to ourselves, Let's see what is happening here. We have a competition. We have two forces pulling against each other for control of human destiny. On the one hand is the invisible force of life itself, the divine pattern, whatever it may be. This stays, remains, and remains unchangeable. On the other hand, we have

man creating a private universe of his own. These are the scientists, the mystic, the theologian, the ethical thinker. All are working together to create a universe of their own, the universe which has its roots in realities which they postulate. So that we have now on one side a materialistic creation of one group and on the other side an idealistic creation by another group. And the answer, of course, is rather obvious: which is the most comforting? The answer, of course, is the idealistic is the most comforting. But what is the most difficult to obtain? The idealistic. Therefore, many people are willing to settle for material comforts, material success, material benefits in order to create the little pattern of their living. So here little soil comes into the world. This child comes in. Did this trial begin within the body of a parent, or was there a spark of eternal life that took form and grew and was finally born among us? Where is the way it did man come from? Credit Humanity begin. Where is that spark from which animates everything that comes into the world? Is this spot

part of an eternal flame, or is this part merely the despite nearly a fragment of a spark that has gone on from generation to generation in the perpetuation of species? What is the beginning of the oldest? It's very hard to answer some of those questions, but the more we think about it, the more we have forced to realize that most of the answers we have created are not adequate. The answers that we have come from our ignorance rather than from my wisdom, and yet we have to do something. We can't live forever in a mystery, so we try to clear that mystery by our own mentation. We try to think our way out of this mysterious situation which we have created for ourselves. I think then that the problem becomes very closely to all of us that we are not forced to decide one of two or three things. We can say that each of us is born as a completely separate being, that we never existed before, and we will never exist afterwards. We live a little time in the light and darkness of

material existence and then fade back into the darkness from which we came. And in the meantime, flavor in this world we have progeny that goes on after us, and in turn, this progeny has progeny, and each generation dies, and things go on forever through a principle of generation. This is what one answer to it, but is not very comforting, and it's not very meaningful. If there is a deity, if there is a power behind things, why should this power create a situation that goes on indefinitely without improvement of those on forever without fulfillment or continues to present conflict? If there is a deity behind and in everything, how can there be continual conflict? Is God in fact conflict with himself? Is God in conflict with his own creation? Is there any other creation but he? Is the devil was introduced at this point as a convenience, but he's lost based entirely. He has practically ceased to exist as a factor in our thinking. So we came down to very interesting things here. We are each of us trying to live a decent life.

we are doing what we can. We are hoping for the best. We are tired of war. We are tired of exploitation. We are tired of corruption. We want to know where it came from, and we also want to know what to do about it. Now, if we are accidents in space and we just there, then there's nothing much we can do about it. We just have to go along with the unfoldment of generations until either they, we wake up to something new, or else we go to sleep forever. But there is no way in which we can solve the problem on the basis of the thinking that we are doing at the present time. So, we go down to the problem of a better way of life. BIA wearing constantly about the future. We are concerned over the 21st century that is about to come. We do not know where we are going, no why you not note where we came from or what happened to us, but we are here isolated, cast away like a sailor on the desert island. We are here, and every time

We try to do something; it is conflict every time we try to create something better. Said, if someone opposes it, it when we seek for peace, war breaks out. When we ask for virtue of crime, you rape is rampant in the land. All of these things constitute conflicts that the average person does not know how to solve. But if we add them all up, there's only one way of explaining them. If there is an intelligence, if there is a constructive power, if there is a God, then all these things that happen have a purpose. They mean something, whether we understand it or not. But if they are protector pused, and if they can be understood, then they should be understood because we are desperate need of a trip, a practical working explanation of the problems of our own existence. We know that it has to be change. If there is not change, we are all destined to some kind of a strange annihilation. And we also realize that we cannot believe in God and come to the conclusion as an all-powerful power can.

lead us into temptation and destroy us. Whatever is in there that is of deity must be good and must be of salvation, not of corruption. So little by little, we are arguing, we are in and out of the problems of our own existence. So now we come to a little better understanding. We now want to think better of what to do to do it, and we want to pick out of the world around us those laws and principles which will most certainly contribute to a better way of life for all of us. And of course, one of the problems we immediately arise, immediately arises with connection with it, is that materialism is inadequate because it is concerned only with something that is itself inadequate. Material existence is mostly a pain, a suffering cast upon the human race. Materialism solves nothing, attains nothing for, and justifies nothing. It is simply placed upon the concept that why we're here, we should get everything we can because when we die, we'll never live again. Therefore, to be completely objective to strife or the immediate fulfillment of things is the

materialistic answer, and we find it today in the narcotics, in alcoholism, and all these things that the moment of joy, the great moment of fulfillment through corruption, ends in the destruction of all concerned. So, that is not the answer. Then we look to the various faiths of the world to find if we can find among them an answer. We do find one thing in the face that is important, and that is that faith has to be in faith in something. Faith has to be an endorsement of some value, of some recognition, and the theist can definitely discover a very reasonable cause for faith, a reasonable explanation for it. Faith becomes a constructed believing. It is the acceptance of the benevolence of a parent, invisible but ever-present. It is also based upon the simple statement that this vast structure must have a purpose. The moment we conceived that it has a purpose, it also becomes obvious that it has not fulfilled that purpose, that it could fulfill. It is also a potential. We are therefore concerned with the in religion, with the faith in the reality.

of powers that will serve, will save, and will perfect the creation of which we are a part. Therefore, we take great hope in theology in the sense that it becomes an answer. It makes the power at the root of things benevolent. It makes it also a conscious power, and it also makes the supreme master of all works and moral and ethical creature. God becomes an integrity. God becomes something that cannot be corrupted by the conduct corruptions of mankind. So, faith does give us, if faith in the substance of a better condition than we have ever known, and we see it around this now. We see evidence of it. We see the effects of faith upon the private life of people. So, we can compare the effects of unbelief and belief in the workings of civilization. We see the materialist. We see no good come out of it. We see that the best that the materialists can give us is certain materialistic satisfactions, which are themselves passing. And either they pass or we do, so there is not complete fulfillment of anything. But in the case of faith, we

have an inspiration to explore the unknown and to discover it to be essentially good. Faith, therefore, gives us the belief in the final integrity of life and that we can all do one way or another, can unfold and become part of this integrity. But also, faith is a little bit disciplinarian. Faith in any belief, as in religion or ethics, is an operating force. Therefore, an individual who has faith must live it. If he believes in certain principles, he must apply them. A faith that is in the mind but violated in conduct is of no value. So, we have lost most of our essentials of faith as we've known them simply because they have been corrupted by ulterior motives. But we could have corrupted or uncorrupted. It remains that faith in a Power greater than ourselves is one of the foundations of our survival since our foundations of going on to something. Now, if you have faith that there is something to be done, as there is a future to be achieved, there is a growth that can be accomplished, and that in the universe there is a divine

benevolence that is guiding all things into harmony with themselves and with their cause. Under those conditions, we then have to consider the application of faith. A belief held and not applied is really in hypocrisy. It is necessary for the individual who has faith in God, faith in truth, and faith in human beings to live according to that concept. He must gradually overcome the doubts, fears, and uncertainties of his own mind, and fortunately, nature has provided him with the means to do this. Some people consider it mere imagination, but a very short survey of effects in nature proves conclusively that there is an integrity in every step of natural procedure, that everything in nature is in harmony and in ethics, and the great destroyer is the human being. Man, up to the present time, is the great destroyer of nature. As far as he is able to understand nature, he is constantly using his own skills to destroy the potentials of survival. So, we have today the problem of the environment and what we have to do about it. We have the problem of essential materials for survival, food.

We have all kinds of problems of war and peace, all kinds of problems of prime and error, and our ignorance and wisdom, and vast problems in the field of education. All these things, therefore, tell us that if we believe, then we have to do something about it, and that is where we have fallen down. If we have considered materialism as merely an affectation, we are also inclined to view idealism as an affectation. We keep right on saying, I'm an idealist, but we close the mortgage on the innocent and the poor just the same. We say we are definitely dedicated to principles of good citizenship, but we buy on the black market and we use all kinds of subterfuges to corrupt the business systems the tree ourselves have created. So, in the ethical system, we have another problem, the problem of not being able to live up to it. And so, as if we are talking about a divine world, then we are taking this divine world and corrupting it by a human selfishness. So, we go to

the final and end of the whole thing. Beyond all of this, we go finally to the nature of the creating power itself, and I think that the Greeks and some of the Oriental peoples have given us our best interpretation of the nature of this power. That is, that actually the deity is infinite life in infinite manifestation, that everywhere in the world there is evidence of one shrah mendes creative power. This creative power is not a person; we do not know really what it is, but it is an infinite, and it might very well be an extrange body-like thing, like ourselves. The body we deal in is not a person; if the person that dwells in the body is not really a person, we are dealing with principles, forms of life that are beyond our estimation, yet constantly active, and the real sources of all the things we want to know are in a grass mass of causal circumstances. And this was found in the mystics of the Middle Ages in Europe. The Mystics discovered the universe of infinite benevolent causes bearing the

law many others of this group found the inward experience that beyond and behind all physical things it is infinite love in infinite manifestation. But there is always and forever a tremendous divine outpouring, and that this outpouring in some way is our hope, is our fulfillment, and that there is a promise in this fulfillment and in this hope that we will not be deceived. So we come now to the times when we're going to look forward to another century. We're coming into this century having broken practically every rule in nature. We have done everything possible to be wicked, and about all we've accomplished it to be nasty. We are not able to be wicked; we don't know how really. All that we know is that we are selfish, and we want to do the things we want to do. We want, well, we want on earth; we want all the luxuries of existence. You would like to have them at the same time with a good strong cup. Can't possibly conscience, but it can't be done. But we have now this

come to a new realization of things, and I think it comes down to the only answer that ever has been and ever will be, that each individual must take on the cell his own salvation. The moment we trust to anybody else, we are in difficulty. The only power that we can trust in is the inevitable eternal, which we can only glimpse, perhaps remotely, in moments of meditation or prayer. But we cannot depend upon the various peoples of the world to give us the support and security that we have to have in the next few years. Then we must transform our daily believing into something stronger, something more Bachelor the to us. Most people have asked with what they believe was they. They believe in peace, but they have war. Something has to happen so that the believer in peace becomes strong enough and vital enough to create the fact of peace in his own life. We cannot necessarily convert the world, but each individual who believes in ethics and integrity, everyone who is philosophically and mystically minded, has to go to work on themselves. They

have to do everything possible to make sure that they are fulfilling their own integrity. Now, into instance, an individual says, I believe in Brotherhood, but you're having a terrible time with neighbors. This is a point to be considered. The consideration is that the individual who believes in peace or believes in Brotherhood has to practice it himself. We would like to have governments pass great rules that there would be no more Wars, but those rules will never be passed. The only end of war is when the human being demands peace. The only time we can end all these confusions is when we decide to put integrity above every other consideration. We cannot compromise. You cannot serve God with one hand and the devil with the other. So, to space, we cannot be idealistic on Sundays and materialistic the rest of the time. Looking around today in the development of various religious beliefs, we find something that I think we should be very careful in mind that we, by finding new ways of expressing our integrities, there are new beliefs coming along, some of them have pretty bad, some

of them are fitted, but all of them have some bearing upon the recognition of the need for change. We've got to move from theory to practice because the top talking about Brotherhood's and start practicing it. If you have to gain gradually the strength to dominate the mistakes which we are inclined to make. Now to do that, we have to have some kind of strength. We cannot be strong internally if our philosophy of life is based on an incomplete pattern of believing. We cannot have the strength inside if we do not have certain values inside. We have to recognize as superior to all considerations the infinite purpose that is locked within ourselves. Somewhere in this little body of ours is a spark of infinity. This spark has always been there, and it always will be there, and it is representing constantly an infinite need that is awaiting fulfillment. A generation after generation, embodiment at the embodiment, we allow this germ to remain undeveloped. We have within ourselves this principle that says love your neighbor, but when the time comes to practice, we say love ourselves to heck.

with the neighbor, we have to recognize that the answer to our ethics is the fact that there is an ethic in ourselves. All of the virtues we seek around us are in us. The only reason we believe in them is because we are them. We couldn't believe at all, and it was believing. We still do not fulfill the action necessary to transform a belief into a living fact. In order to transform our believing into facts, we have to practice them. And we have all kinds of met problems of this nature. Now, all our fans, testers working with this problem, found out that there were certain people who apparently were particularly endowed with the probabilities of growth immediately. They are something. There's something in them that saw the need and were so vitalized by that seeing that they had to transform their life to the fulfillment of it. So, we have constantly around us this recognition that these changes must come in order to survive. We know we cannot go on as this course. We know that we are going to exhaust all the resources that we have, but we also

know that there was no intention on the part of the creating power to leave us as a derelict, a dead planet floating in space. We were not supposed to see, you're not supposed to die, you are not supposed to live in constant conflict until we destroy the world and ourselves. The thing that has come about is that there has been a gradual increase of selfishness, a gradual increase of the corruption of values. Now the Divine Principle, the ethics of things, will always stand with value. At the moment we break the rules, we break the contact with reality. The moment weeds break the laws of life, we destroy our own lives. Therefore, that thing we must get these things back to conscious effort. Now the conscious effort to say, I think there's one interesting point. We have friends, the churches, we have a great many people and various groups that are sincerely interested in making a better world, but for the most part, these people are simply members of something. They go and assemble and discuss matters, they have conferences, there's meetings and clubs, delegations which are sent.

here and there and elsewhere, whether all of it in a sense has to do only with a kind of talking. It has a meaning, again a statement of what is necessary, but not a doing of what is met. We have got to begin to take hold of ourselves and look ourselves over, something like this. Then someone can say, Well, I think I want to be more peaceful. I want to have understanding. I want to have as my years at that. I want to have a gentle life. I want to have a friendly life and a kindly one. Well, that's fine, but between that kindly knife and our present state, there are a few problems to solve. We have, for instance, a relative we haven't spoken to in 40, 40 years. And one I chose told me when they, if they ever speak to me, are up dead. Know this person with this attitude has become an active member of a religion, but they still hate the relative just as they did before. In other words, it does not change the attitude because they change the name of the affiliation. Another

individual is very much against everything because they've had to retreat their marriages, and they'll never get over the loss of the money that they wasted or the time and help that was expended in these conflicts. Therefore, they want peace, they want to live in harmony, they want to nourish the good life, but they also want to remember to the bitter end that they were deceived and deluded by material circumstances. Another person still has all their life. I've been a bit of a Gorman. They have beaten things they shouldn't eat, all that type of thing. So around 50, they get chronic dyspepsia, and when they get Spanish description, of course, one of the first things they do will be to join a religious organization because that's very good for this bachelor. But the trouble is after they join it, they do nothing to change themselves in this sexy stage. So we find a member of an organization demands of hoping for good health who joins the organization that remains sick. These well maybe get up stable firm Jim.

Whitney mantra soul takes on the emotional stress of joining, but after a while, gets right back where they were. Everything that has to do with growth, as the Greeks pointed out, and also most of the Oriental peoples and even the Near Eastern people, the beginning of a reformation of living, is an acceptance of discipline. The individual must prove his own integrity. It cannot go on in the development of the spiritual resources. No, it doesn't mean they may not try, but there is an automatic function that the individual who does not improve his own nature will not receive instruction reserved for those who do improve their natures. All paths that lead to wisdom, true wisdom, are through purification, through dedication, and through the gradual restoration of integrities. The individual who wants to be wiser, especially, is better, and they've got to live better before they become wiser. They cannot assume that then they fill out a blank or something of that nature, that they are ready for advanced instruction in something when they have never corrected one of their own shortcomings. He is constantly for growth, calls for

constant increase in discipline. Now, if the Greeks pointed out very successfully when you displaying a bro, the instruction comes the problem of fighting the teacher is not very serious because the finding of a teacher means that the development within the person makes it possible for them to recognize a condition superior to that received beforehand. So that in Greece, those who really wanted to get wise to true let's do periods of discipleship and novitiates. The Pythagorean school required five years before it accepted a tuple for the development of higher things before they went into meditation before they went into esoteric doctrines before they studied rounds of races and all this type of thing. They had to do the discipline of purification, regeneration, and innocent relaxation. They had to clear their own mind of its fables and foibles before it was available for the study of realities. Therefore, the individual who joins up already burdened by every problem they can think of join some religious group in the hope of it procuring them to stop and remember that that is not the way.

nature does it. If they cure themselves, then the religious group can help them to grow. But as each individual must correct his own faults, and no doctrine is a panacea for the failure of the person to discipline it all, nature. So we now have this problem of going on forever, which we suggest in the title of our lecture this morning. Here we are wondering what that goes on, how far do we go, who knows, who knows what lies beyond any point that astronomy or physics or even the higher mathematics have ever pointed out. We are in the presence of an infinite life, in infinite manifestation. We are in the presence of eternal realities unfolding through us and becoming clearer as we become clearer, and becoming confused as we become confused. But all through this entire process, there is an infinite going. We do not know what is next to man when humanity makes the adjustment to the present problem, and Ranaut grows itself. What's going to happen to it? There have been various oriental beliefs and so forth concerning what is going to

happen to it. Think of the entire internal structure of the human being. It will change as them ethics and then integrities change in Raja yoga. For example, the two great systems of the nervous ganglia, its centers of the sympathetic, bringing Vangelis structure of the central nervous system. These two, that like the caduceus of Hermes, two separates wound around the spinal cord as men unfold. These two are going to become one, and the tools of nervous systems will unite. And in so doing, whatever, and the conflict between the cerebral spinal and the autonomic nervous systems. Because means an entirely different humanity, different in appearance. Because appearance must take on the needs of the powers within the body. Differences of opinion, but always a greater growth by means of which new revelations of internal power are represented. Also, with each of these discoveries, becomes another sensitivity. Today, to the abuse of psychic faculties, we can get into serious trouble. These faculties become more and more developed, the esoteric state of our own.

consciousness is released. We are more sensitive than we ever have been now or could be now, and the Lord would be quite causes headache though if we knew more and with more informed and we made a mistake, particularly intent intentionally. We try to corrupt a misuse power. We would fight a tragedy vibrator, and we're faces today because we know more, and the more we know, the more is expected of us. The more we grow, the more growth becomes, and the time will probably come when the human being will be coming very much more complete than anything we see today. The human being will be able to perpetuate itself. It will have its own ways of life and death. It will have its own bodies and patterns which may not even resemble what we have now, but always it will be a growth towards reality, and reality is always one thing, a kind of perfect harmony in which the individual's life is in perfect harmony with the divine life stream. Until we are in harmony with the stream of life, we will suffer, but when we become able to join

in with growth as a principle going in as it in Integrity's of these friends we will find that we have come a long way on my journey so somewhere in the long we forgotten past behind all that we have ever thought on live alone for a Ahn's beyond the stars starks fine floating in infinite space gradually embodied creating great waves of life great orders of creation great kingdoms of nature gradually going on and on but always for a purpose the purpose being that through the experiencing of all things we become capable of disciplining ourselves and through the experience of this discipline we are able to be patient with those were yet too weak and we also have the discipline and the courage to protect the values which we have discovered the whole root of the religion and rule of ethics because of matters man learning to respect that which is best and having learned to respect it learns to practice it and all this is part of the trope we don't know where it's going to win we hear people and the gods are referred to as

everliving eternal powers in space, far beyond anything we call galaxies or black holes. The great news: a version of visible phenomena gradually fades away little by little. The worlds become shadows, and the new world reveals itself at the highest depth in the great laws and practices of creation. And this higher step, we go falling forward to what we go forward to: a destiny for which we were intended. For it is nothing basic. Must be remembered that in a sense, we are all gods in the making. And when we become gods in reality, we will be the most humble of all creatures. We will not be proud that we rule; we will be sad that we cannot rule better. Little by little, life is coming to every atom of space. Every tiny molecule is flowing up. Every grain of sand which becomes a star. And we are part of the carpentry, being a part of the working crew that brings us about. You're already transmitting all kinds of forces within our own bodies. Our own alchemy is at work alone. Kabbalah is estimating and

studying our proportions of our understanding of astronomy is about broadening out to recognize the universe of values rather than a universe of forms. Everywhere we are growing, and growth begins with sincerity, and sincerity begins with the realization that as long as there are mistakes in our own thinking, we are going to suffer at least a little. But if we correct these mistakes, we will then become disciplined servants of the largest and most noble of all authorities: the regeneration of universal life and the fulfillment of an infinite plan that are beyond our comprehension.

Manly P. Hall - The Challenge of Forever Becoming

Promienie Gwiazd

The fundamental question of human existence—where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going—has remained largely unanswered throughout history.

There are three main schools of thought on this subject: materialism, which posits that we are here for no reason and are simply a product of accidents; theology, which suggests that we have a divine purpose and will be rewarded or punished after death; and a third perspective that seeks to find a reasonable demonstration of faith and a universal plan to meet the needs of all creatures.

The Philosophical Perspective on Reincarnation and Life's Evolution

The doctrine of reincarnation offers a larger perspective on individual existence, viewing each life as a chapter in a greater journey of growth and development.

This belief provides hope for planning and overcoming limitations, while also emphasizing the continuity of life beyond a single embodiment.

However, there is a discrepancy between holding beliefs and actively living them, as many individuals fail to align their actions with their beliefs, leading to unfinished business and a lack of personal growth.

The Complex Relationship Between Morality, Religion, and Ethics

Many individuals who claim to have strong religious beliefs often engage in morally questionable practices, leading to the exploitation of vulnerable people.

The ethical life, which should promote integrity and constructive experiences, often leaves ethical individuals poor and downtrodden.

Science, while expanding our understanding of the world, struggles to provide a universal system of ethics, and the true nature of ethics may be found in the very fabric of nature itself.

A group of scientists, mystics, theologians, and ethical thinkers are working together to create their own universe, with materialism and idealism as opposing forces.

The struggle to understand the origins of life and existence leads to a quest for meaning, with many settling for material comforts instead of seeking the idealistic.

The conflicts and challenges of life raise questions about the role of a deity and the purpose of suffering, ultimately leading to a desire for change and a better way of life.

Faith is essential for finding purpose and fulfillment, contrasting with the destructive nature of materialism and corruption.

It offers a belief in a benevolent, conscious power that guides creation and promotes integrity.

Living according to one's faith is crucial, as hypocrisy undermines its value, and the application of faith is necessary for personal and societal growth.

The inward experience reveals that infinite love is the essence behind all physical things.

Each individual must take responsibility for their own salvation and practice the values they believe in, such as peace and brotherhood.

The gradual increase of selfishness and the breaking of life's rules have led to the need for conscious effort and personal transformation to create a better world.

The Journey of Self-Improvement and Growth

Self-improvement requires introspection and addressing unresolved issues from the past.

Changing external affiliations or joining organizations does not guarantee personal transformation or growth.

True wisdom and growth come from self-discipline, purification, and the gradual restoration of integrity.

The Transformation of Humanity through Raja Yoga

Raja Yoga is believed to change the internal structure of the human being, uniting the sympathetic and central nervous systems.

This transformation is expected to lead to a different humanity, with new sensitivities and powers.

The journey of growth and self-discipline is seen as a path towards perfect harmony with the divine life stream, ultimately leading to the realization of our potential as gods in the making.