THE FIRST STEPS 21

omnipotent Being, and that it was neither the body nor the
mind, but beyond them all. So he was satisfied, but the poor
demon did not get the truth, owing to his fondness for the
body.
This word has a good many of these demoniac natures,
but there are some gods too. If one propose to teach any
science to increase the power of sense of enjoyment, he finds
multitudes ready for it. If one undertake to show mankind
the supreme goal, they care nothing for it. Very few have
the power to grasp the highest, fewer still the patience to
attain to it, but a few also know that if the body be kept for a
thousand years the result will be the same in the end. When
the forces that hold it together go away the body must fall.
No man was ever born who could stop his body one moment
from changing. Body is the name of a series of changes.
“As in a river the masses of water are changing before you
every moment, and new masses are coming, yet taking
similar form, so is it with this body.” Yet the body must be
kept strong and healthy; it is the best instrument we have.
This human body is the greatest body in the universe, and
a human being the greatest being. Man is higher than all
animals, than all angels; none is greater than man. Even the
Devas will have to come down again and atttain to salvation
through a human body. Man alone attains to perfection, not
even the devas. According to the Jews and Mohammedans
God created man after creating man He asked the angels to
come and salute him, and all did except Iblis; so God cursed
him and he became Satan. Behind this allegory is the great
truth, that this human birth is the greatest birth we can have.
The lower creation, the animal, is dull, and manufactured
mostly out of Tamas. Animals cannot have any high
thoughts; nor can the angels, or Devas, attain to direct
freedom without human birth. In human society, in the same
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way, too much wealth, or too much poverty, is a great

impediment to the higher development of the soul. It is from
the middle classes that the great ones of the world come.
Here the forces are very equally adjusted and balanced.
Returning to our subject, we come next to Pranayama,
controlling the breathing. What has that to do with
concentrating the powers of the mind? Breath is like the fly-
wheel of this machine. In a big engine you find the fly-
wheel first moving, and that motion is conveyed to finer and
finer machinery, until the most delicate and finest
mechanism in the machine is in motion in accordance. This
breath is that fly-wheel, supplying and regulating the motive
power to everything in this body.
There once was a minister to a great king. He fell into
disgrace, and the king as a punishment, ordered him to be
shut up at the top of a vey high tower. This was done, and
the minister was left there to perish. He had a faithful wife,
however, and at night she came to the tower and called to her
husband at the top to know what she could do to help him.
He told her to return to the tower the following night and
bring with her a long rope, a stout twine, a pack thread, a
silken threat, a beetle, and a little honey. Wondering much,
the good wife obeyed her husband, and brought him the
desired articles. The husband directed her to attach the
silken thread firmly to the beetle, then to smear his horns
with a drop of honey, and set him free on the wall of the
tower, with his head pointing up. She obeyed all these
instructions, and the beetle started on his long journey.
Smelling the honey before him he slowly crept onwards and
upwards, in the hope of reaching it, until at last he reaches
the top of the tower, when the minister grasped the beetle,
and got possession of the silken thread. He told his wife to
tie the other end to the pack thread,, and after he had drawn
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