HIGHER REASON AND JUDGMENT: Page 107

come to your help, as I hope to show you later on. 2. Then you must renounce your love for the flesh. It is a hard task. But I can see no other way out. I shall tell you the 'how' of it. It rests with you to accept or refuse. 3. Learn to be patient under suffering. Your Karma must work itself out. But you can neutralise its force in proportion to your earnestness in following my advice to the letter. Now for the remedial aspect of philosophy. The aim of philosophy is to put an end to pain. Your fear has, back of it, a shrinking from pain. Is pain then so unwelcome? Edward Carpenter in his beautiful poem "Man and Satan" says "Every pain that I suffered in one body became a power which I wielded in the next." The functions of pain are fivefold. The nature of the Atman-the individualised self incarnation-is all-blissfulness. Time is an excrescence. It is Not-self. The law of evolution is Manifestation. There are two paths. The one is Pravritti. It signifies "revolving towards." The other is "Nivritti: revolving away." The vast mass of humanity are treading the former. The powers of the soul must be turned outwards, focused upon the external world, in order that it may acquire a knowledge of it. The soul is embosemed in rapture. It is ever inward-turned. In order that it may wake up from its latent condition and find expression physically, it must be impinged upon by pain. If there be a continued influx of streams of bliss, no power would manifest.