ricity
or Gravitation--Monad or Man--It is SPIRIT--LIFE--BEING--REALITY--the
ONE THAT IS. Omnipotent, Omnipresent; Omniscient; Eternal; Infinite;
Absolute; these are Man's greatest words, and yet they but feebly
portray a shadow thrown by the One Itself.

The Absolute is not a far-away Being directing our affairs at long
range--not an absentee Deity--but an Immanent Life in and about us
all--manifesting in us and creating us into individual centers of
consciousness, in pursuance with some great law of being.

And, more than this, the Absolute instead of being an indifferent and
unmoved spectator to its own creation, is a thriving, longing, active,
suffering, rejoicing, feeling Spirit, partaking of the feelings of its
manifestations, rather than callously witnessing them. It lives in
us--with us--through us. Back of all the pain in the world may be found
a great feeling and suffering love. The pain of the world is not
punishment or evidence of divine wrath, but the incidents of the
working out of some cosmic plan, in which the Absolute is the Actor,
through the forms of Its manifestations.

The message of the Absolute to some of the Illumined has been, "All is
being done in the best and only possible way--I am doing the best I
can--all is well--and in the end will so appear."

The Absolute is no personal Deity--yet in itself it contains all that
goes to make up all personality and all human relations. Father,
Mother, Child, Friend, is in It. All forms of human love and craving
for sympathy, understanding and companionship may find refuge in loving
the Absolute.

The Absolute is constantly in evidence in our lives, and yet we have
been seeking it here and there in the outer world, asking it to show
itself and prove Its existence. Well may it say to us: "Hast thou been
so long time with me, and hast thou not known me?" This is the great
tragedy of Life, that the Spirit comes to us--Its own--and we know It
not. We fail to hear Its words: "Oh, ye who mourn, I suffer with you
and through you. Yea, it is I who grieve in you. Your pain is mine--to
the last pang. I suffer all pain through you--and yet I rejoice beyond
you, for I know that through you, and with you, I shall conquer."

And this is a faint idea of what we believe the Absolute to be. In the
following lessons we shall see it in operation in all forms of life,
and in ourselves. We shall get close to the workings of Its mighty
Will--close to Its Heart of Love.