Chapter 6

The Inner Life III

‘’IF you want to know the way, ask the one who has travelled it,” is a wise saying. If we would learn how to tread the Path of Attainment we must go to the One who has successfully passed through it. Entrance to the Kingdom of God is not to be found through a mere assent to creeds and dogmas. They may be true and sound enough, but they cannot save. If we are to learn how to climb the steep ascent to God we must go to the One who has already climbed it, and has prepared the way for us. This One is Jesus Christ.

By examining His life and living a life like it, and not only hearing (or reading) His sayings, but doing them, thus becoming doers of the word and not hearers only, we find the inner secret path which admits us to eternal life, or the Kingdom of God.

About the teaching of Jesus we must speak later, but about what Jesus did, the most outstanding thing is our Lord’s dependence upon prayer and communion with the Unseen. Jesus did not attain to mastery over His human self and its weaknesses, the powers of darkness, and the forces of nature, by idle wishing; neither was it given to Him without any seeking on His part. Having taken upon Himself all our weaknesses and limitations, our Lord had to win His way into the Kingdom of the Higher Consciousness in just the same way that we have to do, viz., by prayer, meditation, and communion with the Unseen.

Jesus would not have attained if He had neglected the inner life and been satisfied with five minutes spent in prayer night and morning. He spent hours and whole nights in prayer. If it had not been necessary Christ would never have spent all this time in prayer, for it would have been a waste of time. The fact that Jesus spent so much time in meditation is, we think, the best possible proof that much prayer and communion was necessary.

If prayer was a vital necessity in the case of Jesus, it is, to say the least, equally necessary to each one of us who would seek to scale the heights of spiritual attainment. Yet how much time do we spend, each day, in prayer, meditation and communion?

It is true that by making use of the Mental Law of Association it is possible to condense what might take hours of meditation into, say, half an hour; but how many are prepared to spend even that short space of time, night and morning, in the Quiet Place?

Better a short time than none at all. Far better to spend only five minutes in real touch with our Divine Source than to neglect communion altogether, for this will save our spiritual life from entire extinction. But how much better to spend as much time as possible in the Secret Place, where, by making contact with our Divine Source, we draw upon inexhaustible fountains of Life, Wisdom and Power!

Not enough time, the reader may say. It may seem so, but it is our experience that if we neglect meditation and prayer, either for sleep or work, we are the losers thereby. The extra sleep does us no good, and no more work seems to get done, while that which is done deteriorates in quality. On the other hand, if we go without sleep in order to pray, we never miss it, or suffer any ill effects; while our work still gets done, and done more easily, at the same time being of more value to others.