ver the path from the spiritual heights and sees the winding
road that led upward to the elevation, much as a traveller on the mountain
top looks back and for the first time sees all of the devious trail over
which he has, climbed to his present vantage point. During the journey
there had been many times when he could only see the next step ahead, and
nothing but his faith in the assurance of his fellow men who had attained
the summit of that mountain, could ever have sustained him through the
perils of the climb, but once on the heights, his backward view takes in
the details of the journey and sees not "through a glass darkly," but in
the clear light of achievement.

Such is the effect of cosmic consciousness to the one who has seen the
light.

"One of the benefits of a college education," says Emerson, "is to show the
boy its little avail."

Does this imply that an unlettered mind is desirable? Not necessarily, but
there is a phase of intellectual culture that is detrimental while it
lasts.

It is as though one were to choke up a perfectly flowing stream which
yielded the moisture to fertile lands, by filling the bed of the stream
with rocks and sticks.

The flow of the spiritual currents becomes clogged by the activities of the
mind in its acquisition of mere knowledge, and before that knowledge has
been turned into wisdom. The same truth is expressed in the aphorism "a
little knowledge is a dangerous thing." It is dangerous because it chains
the mind to the external things of life, whereas the totally unlettered (we
do not use the term ignorant here) person will, if he have his heart filled
with love, perceive the reality of spiritual things that transcend mere
knowledge of the physical universe.

Beyond this plane of mortal mind-consciousness, which is fitly described as
"dangerous," there is the wide open area of cosmic _perception_, which may
lead ultimately to the limitless areas of cosmic consciousness. If,
therefore, an education, whether acquired in or out of college, so whets
the grain of the mind that it becomes keen and fine enough to realize that
knowledge is valuable _ONLY_ as it leads to real wisdom, then indeed it is
a benefit; unless it does this, it is temporarily an obstruction.

Out of the lower into the higher vibration; out of sense-consciousness into
cosmic consciousness; out of organization and limitations into freedom--the
freedom of perfection, is the law and the purpose. This Emerson