life.

One of the commentaries says that he who has attained is able to
transfer to the minds of his disciples what he knows concerning divine
union, and the means of gaining it. This is one of the powers of purity.

39. Where there is firm conquest of covetousness, he who has
conquered it awakes to the how and why of life.

So it is said that, before we can understand the laws of Karma, we
must free ourselves from Karma. The conquest of covetousness brings
this rich fruit, because the root of covetousness is the desire of the
individual soul, the will toward manifested life. And where the desire
of the individual soul is overcome by the superb, still life of the
universal Soul welling up in the heart within, the great secret is
discerned, the secret that the individual soul is not an isolated reality,
but the ray, the manifest instrument of the Life, which turns it this way
and that until the great work is accomplished, the age-long lesson
learned. Thus is the how and why of life disclosed by ceasing from
covetousness. The Commentator says that this includes a knowledge
of one's former births.

40. Through purity a withdrawal from one's own bodily life, a ceasing
from infatuation with the bodily life of others.

As the spiritual light grows in the heart within, as the taste for pure
Life grows stronger, the consciousness opens toward the great, secret
places within, where all life is one, where all lives are one. Thereafter,
this outer, manifested, fugitive life, whether of ourselves or of others,
loses something of its charm and glamour, and we seek rather the
deep infinitudes. Instead of the outer form and surroundings of our
lives, we long for their inner and everlasting essence. We desire not so
much outer converse and closeness to our friends, but rather that quiet
communion with them in the inner chamber of the soul, where spirit
speaks to spirit, and spirit answers; where alienation and separation
never enter; where sickness and sorrow and death cannot come.

41. To the pure of heart come also a quiet spirit, one-pointed thought,
the victory over sensuality, and fitness to behold the Soul.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, who is the
supreme Soul; the ultimate Self of all beings. In the deepest sense,
purity means fitness for this vision, and also a heart cleansed from all
disquiet, from all wandering and unbridled thought, from the torment
of sensuous imaginings; and when the spiri