Cool The Planet PLANT A TREE.. M. Sonalee

Planting trees has often been the first line of defence against global warming.  Trees, after all, cool the atmosphere by drinking in the carbon dioxide from the air.  Scientists say that trees absorb and store the key greenhouse gases emitted by cars and power plants.  All plants absorb carbon dioxide but trees process significantly more than smaller plants do, due to their large size and extensive and root structures.

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Says environmentalist Subhas Datta, "In essence, trees are like the kings of the plant world.  They have much more "woody biomass" to store carbon dioxide than smaller plants."  Subsequently, they are considered nature's most efficient carbon sinks.

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According to Datta, certain trees are better absorbents of carbon dioxide than others.  "There 'carbon traps' usually grow quickly and live long," says Datta.  Unfortunately, both qualities cannot be found together in foliage.  Normally younger trees grow faster but their older partners are better absorbents.

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It has been found that trees that grow slower can store much more carbon over their significantly longer lives.  A study shows that tropical, evergreen forests are better at tackling global warming.  According to a study by Dr Govindasamy Bala of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, evergreens like confers and red cedar, "cut down on emissions and help keep the planet cool."  Dr Bala also observes that the further a person moves away from the equator these gains are eroded.  According to researchers, planting trees in mid and high latitude locations do not have similar effects.  In fact, on the contrary they could increase temperatures by 2100.

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Therefore, you need to plant the right tree at the right location to avail of the benefits of carbon sequestration.  If one takes the US into consideration, each specific region will have a tree that is the best absorbent in that region.  For instance, in Hawaii, it is the eucalyptus; loblolly pine acts best as an absorbent in the Southeast while poplars are best in the Great Lakes.

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Stan Wullschleger, who is a researcher at Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory specialising in the physiological response of plants to global climate change, observes that there are dozens of tree species that could be planted depending on location, soil and climate.

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It is prudent to remember that ultimately a tree of any shape, size or genetic origin can help absorb carbon dioxide.  "The least expensive option is to plant a tree in your garden (if you have one) as it will help offset the production of carbon dioxide," suggests Datta.

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Trees that are low maintenance are the best absorbents.  This has been pointed out by Dave Nowak, a researcher at the US Forest Service's Northern Research Station in Syracuse, New York.  While studying the use of trees for carbon sequestration in 2002, he discovered that trees like the common horse-chestnut, black walnut, London plane, American Sweetgum, Douglas fir, ponderosa pine, red pine, white pine, hispaniolan pine, scarlet oak, red oak, Virginia live oak and bald cypress are very good at absorbing and storing carbon dioxide.  In his research paper, Nowak advises urban land developers to avoid trees that require a lot of maintenance, as the burning of fossil fuels to power equipment like trucks and chainsaws will only erase the carbon absorption gains otherwise made.

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So, if you want to tackle global warming, all that you need to do is to plant a neem tree in your garden or anywhere in the vicinity! Simple, isn't is?

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Work Like A Master.... Swamy Vivekananda...

We read in the Bhagavad-Gita again and again that we must all work incessantly.  All work is by nature composed of good and evil.  We cannot do any work which will not do some good somewhere; there cannot be any work which will not do some harm somewhere.  Every work must necessarily by a mixture of good and evil; yet we are commanded to work incessantly.  Good and evil will both have their result, will produce their Karma.  Good action will entail upon us good effect; bad action, bad.  But good and bad are both bondages of the soul.  The solution reached in the Gita in regard to this bondage-producing nature of work is that, if we do not attach ourselves to the work we do, it will not have any binding effect on our soul.  We shall try to understand what is meant by this "non-attachment" to work.

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As the tortoise trucks its feet and head inside the shell, and you may kill it and break it in pieces, and yet it will not come out, even so the character of that man who has control over his motives and organs is unchangeably established.  He controls his own inner forces, and nothing can draw them out against his will.  By this continuous reflex of good thoughts, good impressions moving over the surface of the mind, the tendency for doing good becomes strong, and as the result we feel able to control the Indriyas ( the sense-organs, the nerve-centres).  Thus alone will character be established, then alone a man gets to truth.  Such a man is safe for ever; he cannot do any evil.  You may place him in any company, there will be no danger for him.  There is a still higher state than having this good tendency, and that is the desire for liberation.  You must remember that freedom of the soul is the goal of all Yogas, and each one equally leads to the same result.  By work alone men may get to where Buddha got largely by meditation or Christ by prayer.  Buddha was a working Jnani, Christ was a Bhakta, but the same goal was reached by both of them.  The bad tendencies are to be counteracted by the good ones, and the bad impressions on the mind should be removed by the fresh waves of good ones, until all that is evil almost disappears, or is subdued and held in control in a corner of the mind; but after that, the good tendencies have also to be conquered.  Thus the "attached" becomes the "unattached".  Work, but let not the action or the thought produce a deep impression on the mind.  Let the ripples come and go, let huge actions proceed from the muscles and the brain, but let them not make any deep impression on the soul.

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How can this be done?  We see that the impression of any action to which we attach ourselves, remains.  I may meet hundreds of persons during the day, and among them meet also one whom I love; and when I retire at night I may try to thin of all the faces I saw, but only that face comes before the mind-the face which I met perhaps only for one minute, and which I loved; all the others have vanished.  My attachment to this particular person caused a deeper impression on my mind than all the other faces.  Physiologically, the impressions have all been the same; every one of the faces that I saw pictured itself on the retina, and the brain took the pictures in, and yet there was no similarity of effect upon the mind.  Most of the faces, perhaps were entirely new faces, about which I had never thought before, but that one face of which I got only a glimpse found associations inside.  Perhaps I had pictured him in my mind for years, knew hundreds of things about him, and this one new vision of him awakened hundreds of sleeping memories in my mind and this one impression having been repeated perhaps a hundred times more than those of the different faces together, will produce a great effect on the mind.

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The whole gist of this teaching is that you should work like a master and not as a slave; work incessantly, but do not do slave's work.  Do you not see how everybody works?  Nobody can be altogether at rest; ninety-nine per cent of mankind work like slaves, and the result is misery; it is all selfish work.  Work through freedom!  Work through love!  The word "love" is very difficult to understand; love never comes until there is freedom.  There is no true love possible in the slave.  If you buy a slave and tie him down in chains and make him work for you, he will work like a drudge, but there will be no love in him.  So when we ourselves work for the things of the world as slaves, there can be no love in us, and our work is not true work.  This is true of work done for relatives and friends, and is true of work done for our own selves.  Selfish work is slave's work; and there is a test.  Every act of love brings happiness; there is no act of love which does not bring peace and blessedness as its reaction.  Real existence, real knowledge, and real love are eternally connected with one another, the three in one; where one of them is, the others also must be; they are the three aspects of the One without a second-the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss.  When that existence becomes relative, we see it as the world; that knowledge becomes relative, we see it as the world; that knowledge becomes in its turn modified into the knowledge of the things of the world; and that bliss forms the foundation of all true love known to the heart of man.  Therefore true love can never react so as to cause pain either to the lover or to the beloved.  Suppose a man loves a woman; he wishes to have her all to himself and feels extremely jealous about her every movement; he wants her to sit near him, to stand near him, and to eat and move at his bidding.  He is a slave to her and wishes to have her as his slave.  That is not love; it is a kind of morbid affection of the slave, insinuating itself as love.  It cannot be love, because it is painful; if she does not do what he wants it brings him pain.  With love there is no painful reaction; love only brings a reaction of bliss; if it does not, it is not love.  when you have succeeded in loving your husband, your wife, your children, the whole world, the universe, in such a manner that there is no reaction of pain or jealousy, no selfish feeling, then you are in a fit state to be unattached.

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Do you ask anything from your children in return for what you have given them?  It is your duty to work for them, and there the matter ends.  In whatever you do for a particular person, a city, or a state, assume the same attitude towards it as you have towards your children-expect nothing in return.  If you can invariably take the position of a giver, in which everything given by you is a free offering to the world, without any thought of return, then will your work bring you no attachment.  Attachment comes only where we expect a return.

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If working like slaves results in selfishness and attachment, working as masters of our own mind gives rise to the bliss of non-attachment.  We often talk of right and justice, but we find that in the world right and justice are mere baby's talk.  There are two things which guide the conduct of men: might and mercy.  The exercise of might is invariably the exercise of selfishness.  All men and women try to make the most of whatever power or advantage they have.  Mercy is heaven itself; to be good, we have all to be merciful.  Even justice and right should stand on mercy.  Al thought of obtaining return for the work we do hinders our spiritual progress; nay, in the end it brings misery.  There is another way in which this idea of mercy and selfless charity can be put into practice; that is, by looking upon work as "worship" in case we believe in a Personal God.  Here we give up all fruits of our work unto the Lord, and, worshipping Him thus, we have no right to expect anything from mankind for the work we do.  The Lord Himself works incessantly and is ever without attachment.  Just as water cannot wet the lotus leaf, so work cannot bind the unselfish man by giving rise to attachment to results.  The selfless and unattached man may live in the very heart of a crowded and sinful city; he will not be touched by sin.

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This idea of complete self-sacrifice is illustrated in the following story:-

After the battle of Kurukshetra the five Pandava brothers performed a great sacrifice and made very large gifts to the poor.  All people expressed amazement at the greatness and richness of the sacrifice, and said that such a sacrifice the world had never seen before.  But, after the ceremony, there came a little mongoose, half of whose body was golden, and the other half brown, and he began to roll on the floor of the sacrificial hall.  He said to those around, "You are all liars; this is not sacrifice."  "What!" they exclaimed, "You say this is no sacrifice; do you not know how money and jewels were poured out to the poor and every one became rich and happy?  This was the most wonderful sacrifice any man ever performed."  But the mongoose said:  "There was once a little village, and in it there dwelt a poor Brahmin, with his wife, his son and his son's wife.  They were very poor and lived on small gifts made to them for preaching and teaching.  There came in that land a three year's famine, and the poor Brahmin suffered more than ever.  At last when the family had starved for days, the father brought home on morning a little barely flour, which he had been fortunate enough to obtain, and he divided it into four parts, one for each member of the family.  They prepared it for their meal, and just as they were about to eat there was a knock at the door.  The father opened it, and there stood a guest.  Now, in India, a guest is a sacred person; he is as a god for the time being, and must be treated as such.  So the poor Brahmin said, "Come in, sir; you are welcome."  He set before the guest his own portion of the food, which the guest quickly ate and said, 'Oh, sir, you have killed me; I have been starving for ten days, and this little bit has but increased my hunger.'  Then the wife said to her husband, 'Give him my share,' but the husband said, 'Not so."  The wife however insisted, saying, 'Here is a poor man, and it is our duty as a wife to give him my portion, seeing that you have no more to offer him.'  Then she gave her share to the guest, which he ate, and said he was still burning with hunger.  So the son said, 'Take my portion also; it is the duty of a son to help his father to fulfil his obligations.'  The guest ate that, but remained still unsatisfied; so the son's wife gave him her portion also.  That was sufficient, and the guest departed blessing them.  That night those four people died of starvation.  A few granules of that flour had fallen on the floor, and when I rolled my body on them half of it became golden, as you see.  Since then I have been travelling all over the world, hoping to find another sacrifice like that, but nowhere have I found one; nowhere else has the other half of my body been turned into gold.  That is why I say this is no sacrifice.

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This idea of charity is going out of India; great men are becoming fewer and fewer.

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Now you see what is Karma-Yoga means; even at the point of death to help any one, without asking questions.  Be cheated millions of times and never ask a question, and never think of what you are doing.  Never vaunt your gifts to the poor or expect their gratitude, but rather be greateful to them for giving you the occasion of practising charity to them....................

The Teacher And The Taught...Swamy Vivekananda...

My idea of education is Gurugraha-vasa.  Without the personal life of the teacher, there would be no education.  One should live from his very boyhood with one whose character is a blazing fire and should have before him a living example of the highest teaching.  In our country the imparting of knowledge has always been through men of renunciation.  The charge of imparting knowledge should again fall upon the shoulders of Tyagis.

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The old system of education in India was very different from the modern system.  The students had not to pay.  It was thought that knowledge is so sacred that no man ought to sell it.  Knowledge should be given freely and without any price.  The teachers used to take students without charge and not only so, most of them gave their students food and clothes.  To support these teachers, the wealthy families made gifts to them and they in their turn had to maintain their students.  The disciple of old used to repair to the hermitage of the Guru, fuel in hand, and the Guru, after ascertaining his competence, would teach him the Vedas, fastening round his waist the threefold filament of Munja, a kind of grass, as the emblem of his vow to keep his body, mind and speech in control.

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There are certain conditions necessary in the taught and also in the teacher.  The conditions necessary for the taught are purity, a real thirst after knowledge, and perseverance.  Purity in thought, speech and act is absolutely necessary.  As for thirst after knowledge, it is an old law that we all get whatever we want.  None of us can get anything other than what we fix our hearts upon.  There must be a continuous struggle, a constant fight, an unremitting grappling with our lower nature, till the higher want is actually felt and victory is achieved.  The student who sets out with such a spirit of perseverance will surely find success at last.

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In regard to the teacher, we must see that he knows the spirit of the scriptures.  The whole world reads Bibles, Vedas and Korans; but they are all only words, syntax, etymology, philology-the dry bones of religion.  The teacher who deals too much in words and allows the mind to be carried away by the force of word loses the spirit.  It is the knowledge of the spirit of the scriptures alone that constitutes the true teacher.  The second condition necessary for the teacher is sinlessness.  The question is often asked: 'Why should we look into the character and personality of teacher?'  This is not right.  The sine qua non of acquiring truth for oneself, or for imparting to others, is purity of heart and soul.  He must be perfectly pure and then only comes the value of his words.  The function of the teacher is indeed an affair of the transference of something and not one of mere stimulation of existing intellectual or other faculties in the taught.  Something real and appreciable as an influence comes from the teacher and goes to the taught.  Therefore, the teacher must be pure.  The third condition is in regard to the motive.  The teacher must not teach with any ulterior selfish motive, for money, name or fame.  His work must be simply out of love, out of pure love for mankind at large.  The only medium through which spiritual force can be transmitted is love.  Any selfish motive, such as the desire for gain or name, will immediately destroy the conveying medium.

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It is not easy to be a disciple.  The first condition is that the student who wants to know the truth must give up all desires for gain.  What we see is not truth as long as any desire creeps into our minds.  So long as there is in the heart the least desire for the world, truth will not come.  The rich understand truth much less than the poor people.  The rich man has no time to think of anything beyond his wealth and power, his comforts and indulgences.  I do not trust the man who never weeps; he has a big block of granite where his heart should be.  Therefore knowing what prosperity means and what happiness means, one should give up these and seek to know the truth and truth alone.  Unselfishness is more paying, only people have not the patience to practice it.  It is more paying from the point of view of health also.  Love, truth and unselfishness are not merely moral figures of speech, but they form our highest ideal, because in them lies such a manifestation of power.  Self-restraint is a manifestation of greater power than all outgoing action.  All outgoing energy following a selfish motive is frittered away; it will not cause power to return to you; but if restrained, it will result in development of power.  This self-control will tend to produce a mighty will, a character which makes a Christ or a Buddha.
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The second condition is that a disciple must be able to control the internal and external senses.  By hard practice he has to arrive at the stage where he can assert his mind against the commands of nature.  He should be able to say to his mind, 'You are mine; I order you, do not see or hear anything.'  Next the mind must be made to quiet down.  It is rushing about.  Just as I sit down to meditate, all the vilest subjects in the world come up.  The whole thing is nauseating.  Why should the mind think thoughts I do not want it to think?  I am as it were a slave to the mind.  No spiritual knowledge is possible so long as the mind is restless and out of control.  The disciple has to learn to control the mind.
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Also, the disciple must have great power of endurance.  Life seems comfortable, and you find the mind behaves well when everything is going well with you.  But if something goes wrong, your mind loses its balance.  That is not good.  Bear all evil and misery without one murmur or hurt, without one thought of unhappiness, resistance, remedy or retaliation.  That is true endurance.  When my Master Sri Ramakrishna fell ill, a Brahmin suggested to him that he apply his tremendous mental power to cure himself; he said that if my Master would only concentrate his mind on the diseased part of the body, it would heal.  Sri Ramakrishna answered, "What! Bring down the mind that I've given to God to this little body!"  He refused to think of body and illness.  His mind was continually conscious of God; it was dedicated to Him utterly.  He would not use it for any other purpose.  Remember also the man on the Cross!  He pitied those who crucified him.  He endured every humiliation and suffering.  He took the burden of all upon himself: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."  Such is true endurance.  How very high he was above this life, so high that we cannot understand it!
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The next condition the disciple must fulfill is to conceive an extreme desire to be free.  No one is desiring anything beyond the body.  What is the world but a combination of stomach and sex?  Look at millions of men and women-that is what they are living for.  Take these away from them and they will find their life empty, meaningless and intolerable.  Such are we.  And such is our mind; it is continually hankering for ways and means to satisfy the hunger for the stomach and sex.  These desires of the body bring only momentary satisfaction and endless suffering.  It is like drinking a cup of which the surface layer is nectar, while underneath all is poison.  But we still hanker for all these things.  Renunciation of the senses and desires is the only way out of this misery.  If you want to be spiritual, you must renounce.  This is the real test.  Give up the world-this nonsense of the senses.  There is only one real desire: to know what is true, to be spiritual.  No more materialism, no more this egoism.  I must become spiritual.  Strong, intense must be the desire.  If a man's hands and feet were so tied that he could not move and then if a burning piece of charcoal were placed on his body, he would struggle with all his power to throw it off.  When I shall have that sort of extreme desire, that restless struggle to throw off this burning world, then the time will have come for me to glimpse the Divine truth.
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Our sole concern should be to know the highest truth.  Our goal is the loftiest.  Let us worship the spirit in spirit, standing on spirit.  Let the foundation be spirit; the middle, spirit; the culmination, spirit.  Stand thou in the spirit!  That is the goal.  We know we cannot reach it yet.  Never mind.  Do not despair, but do not drag the ideal down.  The important thing is: how much less you think of the body, of yourself as matter, as dead, dull, insentient matter, how much more you think of yourself as shining immortal being.  The more you think of yourself as shining immortal spirit, the more eager you will be to be absolutely free of matter, body and senses.  This is the intense desire to be free.
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There are the conditions which a man who wants to be a disciple must fulfill; without fulfilling them he will not be able to come in contact with the true Guru.  And even if he is fortunate enough to find him, he will not be quickened by the power that the Guru may transmit.  There cannot be any compromising of these conditions.  With the fulfillment of these conditions the lotus of the disciple's heart will open and the bee shall come.  Then the disciple knows that the Guru was within himself.  He opens out.  He realises.  He crosses the ocean of life, goes beyond, and in mercy, without a thought of gain or praise, he in his turn helps others to cross.
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With the teacher our relationship is the same as that between an ancestor and his descendant.  Without faith, humility, submission and veneration in our hearts towards the teacher, there cannot be any growth in us.  In those countries which have neglected to keep up this kind of relation, the teacher has become a mere lecturer, the teacher expecting his five dollars and the person taught expecting his brain to be filled with the teacher's words and each going his own way after this much is done.  But too much faith in personality has a tendency to produce weakness and idolatry.  Worship your Guru as God, but do not obey him blindly.  Love him all you will, but think for yourself.
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The teacher must throw his whole force into the tendency of the taught.  Without real sympathy we can never teach well.  Do not try to disturb the faith of any man.  If you can, give him something better, but do not destroy what he has.  The only true teacher is he who can convert himself, as it were, into a thousand persons at a moment's notice.  The true teacher is he who can immediately come down to the level of the student, as transfer his soul to the student's soul and see through and understand through his mind.  Such a teacher can really teach and none else.
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Development of Personality...Swamy Vivekananda

You see what is happening all around us.  The world is one of influence.  Part of our energy is used up in the preservation of our own bodies.  Beyond that, every particle of our energy is day and night being used in influencing others.  Our bodies, our virtues, our intellect, and our spirituality, all these are continuously influencing others; and so, conversely, we are being influenced by them.  This is going on all around us.  Now, to take a concrete example: a man comes, you know he is very learned, his language is beautiful and he speaks to you by the hour-but he does not make any impression.  Another man comes, and he speaks a few words, not well-arranged, ungrammatical perhaps; all the same, he makes an immense impression.  Many of you have seen that.  So it is evident that words alone cannot always produce an impression.  Words, even thoughts, contribute only one-third of the influence in making an impression, the man, two-thirds.  What you call the personal magnetism of the man-that is what goes out and impresses you.

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Coming to great leaders of mankind, we always find that it was the personality of the man that counted.  Now, take all the great authors of the past, the great thinkers.  Really speaking, how many thoughts have they thought?  Take all the writings that have been left to us by the past leaders of mankind; take each one of their books and appraise them.  The real thoughts, new and genuine, that have been thought in this world up to this time, amount to only a handful.  Read in their books the thoughts they have left to us.  The authors do not appear to be giants to us, and yet we know that they were great giants in their days.  What made them so?  Not simply the thoughts they thought, neither the books they wrote, nor the speeches they made, it was something else that is now gone, that is their personality.  As I have already remarked, the personality of the man is two-thirds, and his intellect, his words, are but one-third.  It is the real man, the personality of the man, that runs through us.  Our actions are but effects.  Actions must come when the man is there; the effect is bound to follow the cause.

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The ideal of all education, all training, should be this man-making.  But, instead of what, we are always trying to polish up the outside.  What use polishing up the outside when there is no inside?  The end and aim of all training is to make the man grow.  The man who influences, who throws his magic, as it were, upon his fellow-beings, is a dynamo of power, and when that man is ready, he can do anything and everything he likes: that personality put upon anything will make it work.

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Now we see that though this is a fact, no physical knowledge?  How much of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon-how many molecules in different positions, and how many cells, etc., etc., can explain this mysterious personality?  And we still see, it is a fact, and not only that, it is the real man; and it is that man that lives and moves and works, it is that man that influences, moves his fellow-beings and passes out, and his intellect and books and works are but traces left behind.  Think of this.  Compare the great teachers of religion with the great philosophers.  The philosophers scarcely influenced anybody's inner man, and yet they wrote most marvelous books.  The religious teachers, on the other hand, moved countries in their lifetime.  The difference was made by personality.  In the philosopher it is a faint personality that influences; in the great Prophets it is tremendous.  In the former we touch the intellect, in the latter we touch life.  In the one case, it is simply a chemical process, putting certain chemical ingredients together which may gradually combine and under proper circumstances bring out a flash of light or may fail.  In the other, it is like a torch that goes round quickly, lighting others.

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The science of Yoga claims that it has discovered the laws which develop this personality, and by proper attention to those laws and methods, each one can grow and strengthen his personality.  This is one of the great practical things and this is the secret of all education.  This has a universal application.  In the life of the house-holder, in the life of poor, the rich, the man of business, the spiritual man, in every one's life, it is a great thing, the strengthening of this personality.  They are laws, very fine, which are behind the physical laws, as we know.  This is to say, there are no such realities as a physical world, a mental world, a spiritual world.  Whatever is, is one.  Let us say, it is a sort of tapering existence, the thickest part is here, it tapers and becomes finer and finer; the finest is what we call Spirit; the grossest, the body.  And just as it is here, in the microcosm, it is exactly the same in the macrocosm.  This universe of ours is exactly like that; it is the gross external thickness, and it tapers into something finer and finer until it becomes God.

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We also know that the greatest power is lodged in the fine, not in the coarse.  We see a man take up a huge weight, we see his muscles swell, and all over his body we see signs of exertion, and we think the muscles are powerful things.  But it is the tin thread-like things, the nerves, which bring power to the muscles; the moment one of these threads is cut off from reaching the muscles, they are not able to work at all.  These tiny nerves bring the power from something finer still-thought, and so on.  So, it is the fine that is really the seat of power.  Of course we can see the movements in the gross; but when fine movements take place, we cannot see them.  When a gross thing moves, we catch it, and thus we naturally identify movement with things which are gross.  But all the power is really in the fine.  We do not see any movement  in the fine, perhaps because the movement is so intense that we cannot perceive it.  But if by any science, any investigation, we are helped to get hold of these finer forces which are the cause of the expression, the expression itself will be under control.  There is a little bubble coming from the bottom of a lake; we do not see it coming all the time, we see it only when it bursts on the surface; so, we can perceive thoughts only after they develop a great deal, or after they become actions.  We constantly complain that we have no control over our actions, over our thoughts.  But how can e have it?  If we can get control over the fine movements, if we can get hold of thought, before it has become action, then it would be possible for us to control the whole.  Now, if there is a method by which we can analyse, investigate, understand and finally grapple with those finer powers, the finer causes, then alone is it possible to have control over ourselves, and the man who has control over his own mind assuredly will have control over every other mind.  That is why purity and morality have been always the object of religion; a pure, moral man has control of himself.  And all minds are the same different parts of one Mind.  He who knows one lump of clay has know all the day in the universe.  He who knows and controls his own mind knows the secret of every mind and has power over every mind.

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Each man in his childhood runs through the stages through which his race has come up; only the race took thousands of years to do it, while the child takes a few years.  The child is first the old savage man-and he crushes a butterfly under his feet.  The child is at first like the primitive ancestors of his race.  As he grows he passes through different stages until he reaches the development of his race.  Only he does it swiftly and quickly.  Now, take the whole of humanity as a race, or take the whole of the animal creation, man and the lower animals, as one whole.  There is an end towards which the whole is moving.  Let us call it perfection.  Some men and women are born who anticipate the whole progress of mankind.  Instead of waiting and being reborn over and over again for ages until the whole human race has attained to that perfection, they, as it were, rush through them in a few short years of their life.  And we know that we can hasten these processes, if we be true to ourselves.  If a number of men, without any culture, be left to live upon an island, and are given barely enough food, clothing and shelter, they will gradually go on and on, evolving higher and higher stages of civilisation.  We know also, that this growth can be hastened by additional means.  We help the growth of trees, do we not?  Left to nature they would have grown, only they would have taken a longer time; we help them to grow in a shorter time than they would otherwise have taken.  We are doing all the time the same thing, hastening the growth of things by artificial means.  Why cannot we hasten the growth of man?  We can do that as a race.  Why are teachers sent to other countries?  Because by these means we can hasten the growth of races.  Now, can we not hasten the growth of individuals?  We can.  Can we put a limit to the hastening?  We cannot say how much a man can grow in one life.  You have no reason to say that this much a man can do and no more.  Circumstances can hasten him wonderfully.  Can there be any limit then, till you come to perfection?  So, what comes of it?  That a perfect man, that is to say, the type that is to come of this race, perhaps millions of years hence, that man, can come today.
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All great Incarnations and Prophets are such men; they reached perfection in this one life.  We have had such men at all periods of the world's history and at all times.  Quite recently there was such a man who lived the life of the whole human race and reached the end-even in this life.  Even this hastening of the growth must be under laws.  Suppose we can investigate these laws and understand their secrets and apply them to our own needs; it follows that we grow.  We hasten our growth, we hasten our development, and we become perfect, even in this life.  this is the higher part of our life, and the science of the study of mind and its powers has this perfection as its real end.
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The utility of this science is to bring out the perfect man, and not let him wait and wait for ages, just a play-thing in the hands of the physical world, like a log of drift-wood carried from wave to wave and tossing about in the ocean.  This science wants you to be strong, to take the work in your own hand, instead of leaving it in the hands of nature, and get beyond this little life.
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