conscious initiate employs, _because he has lost sight of the_ cosmic
light, or because he finds it expedient to use that phraseology in
delivering the message of cosmic consciousness.

If we will substitute the term "_initiation_," for the term "_revelation_,"
we will have a clearer idea of the truth.

Perhaps some of our readers will feel that the terms mean the same, but for
the most part, those who have employed the word "revelation," have used it
as implying that the plan of the cosmos was unfinished, and that the
Creator, having found some person suitable to convey the latest decision
to mankind, natural laws had been suspended and the revelation made.

It is to correct this view, that we emphasize the distinction between the
two words.

The cosmos is complete. "As it was in the beginning, it is now and ever
shall be, worlds without end."

A circle is without beginning or end. We, in our individual consciousness
may traverse this circle, but our failure to realize its completeness does
not change the fact that it is finished.

We can not add to the universal consciousness; nor take away therefrom.

But we can extend our own area of consciousness from the narrow limits of
the personal self, into the heights and depths of the atman and who shall
set limitations to the power of the atman, the higher Self, when it has
attained at-one-ment with Om?

It is not the purpose of this book to trace the spiritual ascent of man
further than to point out the wide gulf between the degrees of
consciousness manifested in the lower animals and that of human
consciousness; again tracing in the human, the ever-widening area of his
cognition of the personal self, and its needs, to the awakening of the soul
and its needs; which needs include the welfare of all living things as an
absolute necessity to individual happiness.

Altruism, therefore, is not a virtue. It is a means of
self-preservation--without this degree of initiation into the boundless
area of universal, or cosmic consciousness, we may not escape the karmic
law.

The revelations, therefore, upon which are founded the numerous religious
systems, are comparable with the many and various degrees of initiation
into THAT WHICH IS.

They represent the degree which the initiate has taken in the lodge.

It may be argued that this fact of individual initiation into the
ever-present truth of Being, as into a lodge, offers no proof that this
earth is to ultimately becom