We are part of one great Life, which knows no failure, no loss of effort or strength, which ‘mightily and sweetly ordering all things’ bears the worlds onwards to their goal. The notion that our little life is a separate independent unit, fighting for its own hand against countless separate independent units, is a delusion of the most tormenting kind. So long as we thus see the world and life, peace broods far off on an inaccessible pinnacle. When we feel and know that all selves are one, then peace of mind is ours without any fear of loss.
All our troubles arise from thinking of ourselves as separated units, and then revolving on our own mental axes, thinking only of our separate interests, our separate aims, our separate joys and sorrows. Some do this as regards the lower things of life, and they are the most dissatisfied of all, ever restlessly snatching at the general stock of material goods, and piling up useless treasures. Others seek ever their own separate progress in the higher life, good earnest people, but ever discontented and anxious. They are ever contemplating and analyzing themselves: ‘Am I getting on?, Do I know more than I did last year? And so on, fretting for continual assurances of progress, their thoughts centered on their own gain. Peace is not to be found in the continual seeking for the gratification of the separate self, even though the gratification be of the higher kind. It is found in renouncing the separated self, in resting on the Self that is One, the Self that is manifesting at every stage of evolution, and in our stage as much as in every other, and is content in all.
- Annie Besant
Splendour, August 2009
