INFINITY IN THE FINITE

It becomes obvious, once we give it close consideration, that man not only is at war with nature, but actually is at war with himself. We are such battlegrounds within that often we cannot contain our turmoil and our entire psyche becomes permeated with a sickness that makes it of little use to the world or ourselves. Whatever the human being is, he is more than a physical body, and the misty shape of his invisible aura is something that cannot be contained within boundaries or assigned categories or weighed or measured or counted. All that we are and can hope to be is mental, is the essence of some gigantic intelligence in the lap of which we nestle and from which we are fed and nurtured as if from subterranean springs. This gigantic intelligence is the Secret Self of the universe; it is also, paradoxically enough, the Secret Self of each of

us. No amount of rhetoric prevails against disbelief; no argument dissuades the man of faith. Still, the enigma is there. How is it possible that something infinite in size and scope, like a universal mind, can be housed within the tiny, finite body of an individual man? To be infinite is to be one. More than one of anything infinite automatically is not infinite, for anything infinite occupies all the space there is and therefore does not leave room for anything else. Thus anything infinite is exactly the same as anything within it, for all of anything infinite has to be at each particular place at each particular time. Now this may be a pretty hard dose to swallow, but it is perhaps as scientifically sound as the Quantum Theory of physics, and what it essentially means is this: if there is intelligence behind life, and there is every reason to believe there must be, then all of that intelligence is innate in each creation of that intelligence. Thus universal mind or the Secret Self is complete and entire within each of us. We have only to discover it for its power and perfection to be ours. But neither the search nor the finding are easy. We are so steeped in our egotism, so encysted within our myriad surface selves, that vision to penetrate the illusion is hard to acquire, is developed only by arduous mental effort and spiritual discipline. Underlying all the turmoil, supporting the contest between the surface selves, giving each life direction and purpose, is the garden from which springs personality, the Secret Self, a place of calm and certitude within each of us. There is no struggle in the Secret Self. It knows. Its mere act of perception is an act of creation, fore seeing precedes being in this most mental of all places where thought and idea are always prior to physical fact.