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If this is so, we serve God best and obey God best by trying to perfect our nature in response to a stimulus, a pressure, and a guidance which is at once natural and divine. In other words, we serve God best by following the path of self-realisation. And the better we serve God, the more truly and fully do we learn to know him.
And the particular point of view where he stood on this September evening had been often associated in his memory with flashes of self-realisation which were, on the whole, more of a torment to him than a joy.
He will love and serve his fellow-men, both as individuals and as members of this or that community, not because he is consciously trying to live up to a high ideal, but because he has reached a stage in his development beyond which he cannot develop himself except by leading a life of love, because the path of self-realisation has led him into the sunshine of love, and if he will not henceforth walk in that sunshine he will cease to follow his path.
With this Divine self-realisation the Spirit assumes control and mastery, and you are saved from the follies of error, and from the consequences of error. Repent ye turn from your trespasses and sins, from your lower conceptions of life, of pleasure and of pain, and walk in this way. The lower propensities and desires will lose their hold and will in time fall away.
It is only after the body has been developed, and presents a relatively independent system capable of performing the necessary functions of daily life, that it rises beyond itself and gradually unfolds to conscious psychical life in increasing self-realisation. Edward von Hartmann has attempted to apply this principle of the unconscious as a principle of all cosmic existence.
The author maintains that the original motive in all living things was self-preservation for self-realisation; and that this elementary law was in itself necessary and good, the essential condition of progress. But just as we to-day know well how hard it is to draw the line which distinguishes a right self-seeking from the wrong, so it has been from the outset.
And it was religion that broke through when Fichte in his little book, “Anweisung zum seeligen Leben,” set being before becoming, and God above the creatures struggling towards self-realisation. Religion knows in advance that this is so. And calm reflection confirms it.
We cannot cite another hero of the modern world who more fully and with greater intensity realised the main end of human life, which is self-effectuation, self-realisation, self-manifestation in one of the many lines of labour to which men may be called and chosen.
What I have to say leads back through Hegelianism to the old Greek thinkers, and beyond them again to the wise men who lived and taught in the East ages before Jesus was born. It is that this finite universe of ours is one means to the self-realisation of the infinite.
We may, however, accept it as a resting-place in our search for the final answer. It is on the religious aspect of self-realisation that I now propose to dwell. The function of Religion is to bring a central aim into man's life, to direct his eyes towards the true end of his being and to help him to reach it.
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