llenge and Looks to Personal
Immortality for Victory_

We are, therefore, according to the theosophist, emanations from the
Divine; deeply enveiled and much enshrouded within us is a timeless and
changeless self descended from the mysterious All which lies back of all
things and under high compulsion to seek again, in some vast turning of
the wheel of Being, that from which we sprang. Theosophy becomes more
understandable in its practical reaction upon life, for this many veiled
self is deeply involved in forces and states to which it is not really
akin, and since it suffers greatly in being so involved the end of
existence is, in discipline and ascent, to be set free from the pain and
weariness of conscious existence, and to be absorbed in the changeless
peace of that ultimate reality out of which we have issued and back
again to which we are destined to go. We cannot be insensible to the
vast scope of such a speculation as this for in one form or another
there are, in all religion and in the deeper yearnings of life, elements
akin to it.

The order of which we are a part bears hard upon the soul. No one who
meditates deeply upon the strangeness of human destiny can fail to
recognize the arresting estate of sensitive personality enmeshed in laws
and forces which drive on with so little apparent consideration for
those who are caught in the turning of their wheels, or ridden down in
their drive. Western faith has generally seen in this situation a
challenge to personality to assert its own supremacy over the impersonal
and subject its encompassing order to the high purposes of the soul. If
we are wounded in the fight we take our wounds as good soldiers; if the
forces which face us are challengingly strong we fall back upon our
deeper resources and in the end assert our own vaster powers.

We accept the conditions of the struggle as a part of the discipline of
life and in our braver moments win from the fight itself those elements
of personal steadfastness which, matured in character, give moral
meaning to the endeavour, and though we anticipate an ultimate release
and blessed compensation for the present travail of our souls, we find
that release and those compensations in a personal immortality which
attends the termination of the individual life in the present order, and
continues that life conscious, free and triumphant in an immortal order,
and even there we ask neither to be released from effort nor denied
progr