Towards democracy

36 Towards Democracy KXV Apart from all evil—from all that seems to you evilyour Soul, my friend, that towards which you aspire, which

will become you one day—your true Self—rides. Above your phantasmal self continualiy.

Do not fear: it is there.

Through all the baffling and confusion, through all the seeming haphazard and labyrinth darkness of life, it is there —overseeing ; quietly selecting, directing, ordaining. It is lord of all.

If there were chance, it were evil: but there is not. The soul surrounds chance and takes it captive ;

And all experience—what you call good and what you call evil, alike—it takes and greedily absorbs, nor ever can have enough.

Are you not sometimes awate of your own body how it goes about, moving hither and thither? are you not aware of it in the street among others, exchanging greetings (and those who exchange the greetings absolutely equal before you) ?

Are you not aware of it at night, lying awake, perhaps in pain? Are you not aware of it wandering over .the hills at sunrise, or gut at sea—in the agonised white faces of the peaple on board—and the ship is foundering?

Are you not aware of it North and South, East and West, by day and night, in winter and summer, in childhood and in age, gathering, culling, assimilating, without end, and with unerring instinct ?