an reach it only by steadily going on from
where we are now.

These considerations should make us more confident and more comfortable.
We are employing a force which is much greater than we believe ourselves
to be, yet it is not separate from us and needing to be persuaded or
compelled, or inveigled into doing what we want; it is the substratum of
our own being which is continually passing up into manifestation on the
visible plane and becoming that personal self to which we often limit
our attention without considering whence it proceeds. But in truth the
outer self is the surface growth of that individuality which lies
concealed far down in the deeps below, and which is none other than the
Spirit-of-Life which underlies all forms of manifestation.

Endeavour to realise what this Spirit must be in itself--that is to say,
apart from any of the conditions that arise from the various relations
which necessarily establish themselves between its various forms of
individualisation. In its homogeneous self what else can it be but pure
life--Essence-of-Life, if you like so to call it? Then realise that as
Essence-of-Life it exists in the innermost of _every one_ of its forms
of manifestation in as perfect simplicity as any we can attribute to it
in our most abstract conceptions. In this light we see it to be the
eternally self-generating power which, to express itself, flows into
form.

This universal Essence-of-Life is a continual becoming (into form), and
since we are a part of Nature we do not need to go further than
ourselves to find the life-giving energy at work with all its powers.
Hence all we have to do is to allow it to rise to the surface. We do not
have to _make_ it rise any more than the engineer who sinks the
bore-pipe for an artesian well has to make the water rise in it; the
water does that by its own energy, springing as a fountain a hundred
feet into the air. Just so we shall find a fountain of Essence-of-Life
ready to spring up in ourselves, inexhaustible and continually
increasing in its flow, as One taught long ago to a woman at a wayside
well.

This up-springing of Life-Essence is not another's--it is our own. It
does not require deep studies, hard labours, weary journeyings to attain
it; it is not the monopoly of this teacher or that writer, whose
lectures we must attend or whose books we must read to get it. It is the
innermost of _ourselves_, and a little common-sense thought as to how
anything co