man be, if that which tells us is true?

Now one of the great errors all along in the past has been that we have
mistaken the mere body, the mere house in which we live while in this
form of life for a period,--that which comes from the earth and which,
in a greater or less time, returns to the earth,--this we have mistaken
for the real self. Either we have lost sight of or we have failed to
recognize the true identity. The result is that we are at life from the
wrong side, from the side of the external, while all true life is from
within out.

We have taken our lives out of a conscious harmony with the higher laws
of our being, with the result that we are going against the great
current of the Divine Order of things. Is it any wonder, then, that we
find the strugglings, the inharmonies, the sufferings, the fears, the
forebodings, the fallings by the wayside, the "strange, inscrutable
dispensations of Providence" that we behold on every side? The moment we
bring our lives into harmony with the higher laws of our being, and, as
a result, into harmony with the current of the Divine Order of things,
we shall find that all these will have taken wings; for the cause will
have been removed. And as we look down the long vista of such a life, we
shall find that each thing fits into all others with a wonderful, a
sublime, a perfect, a divine harmony.

This, it will seem to some,--and to many, no doubt,--is claiming a great
deal. No more, however, than the Master Teacher warranted us in claiming
when he said, and repeated it so often, Seek ye first the kingdom of
heaven, and all these other things shall be added unto you; and he left
us not in the dark as to exactly what he meant by the kingdom of heaven,
for again he said: Say not, Lo here, nor lo there. Know ye not that the
kingdom of heaven is within you? _Within you._ The interior spiritual
kingdom, the kingdom of the higher self, which is the kingdom of God;
the kingdom of harmony,--harmony with the higher laws of your being.

The Master said what he said not for the sake merely of using a phrase
of rhetoric, nor even to hear himself talk; for this he never did. But
that great incarnation of spiritual insight and power knew of the great
spiritual laws and forces under which we live, and also that supreme
fact of the universe, that _man is a spiritual being, born to have
dominion_, and that, by recognizing the true self and by bringing it
into complete and perfect harmony