only possible order to flow on to its legitimate fulfilment. A Divine
Order, truly, but nowhere shall we find anything that is not Divine; and
it is to the realisation of this Divine and Living Order that it is the
purpose of the Bible to lead us. But we shall never realise it around us
until we first realise it within us. We can see God outside only by the
light of God inside; and this light increases in proportion as we
become conscious of the Divine nature of the innermost I am which is the
centre of our own individuality.

Therefore, it is that Jesus tells us that the I am is "the door." It is
that central point of our individual Being which opens into the whole
illimitable Life of the Infinite. If we would understand the old-world
precept, "know thyself," we must concentrate our thought more and more
closely upon our own interior Life until we touch its central radiating
point, and there we shall find that the door into the Infinite is indeed
opened to us, and that we can pass from the innermost of our own Being
into the innermost of All-Being. This is why Jesus spoke of "the door"
as that through which we should pass in and out and find pasture.
Pasture, the feeding of every faculty with its proper food, is to be
found both on the within and the without. The livingness of Life
consists in both concentration and externalisation: it is not the dead
equilibrium of inertia, but the living equilibrium of a vital and
rhythmic pulsation. Involution and evolution must forever alternate, and
the door of communication between them is the I am which is the living
power in both. Thus it is that the Great Affirmation is the Secret of
Life, and that to say I am with a true understanding of all that it
implies is to place ourselves in touch with all the powers of the
Infinite.

This is the Universal and Eternal Affirmation to which no predicate is
attached; and all particular affirmations will be found to be only
special differentiations of this all-embracing one. I will this or that
particular thing because I know that I can bring it into
externalisation, and I know that I can because I know that I am, and so
we always come back to the great central Affirmation of All-Being.
Search the Scriptures and you will find that from first to last they
teach only this: that every human soul is an individualisation of that
Universal Being, or All-Spirit, which we call God, and that Spirit can
never be shorn of its powers, but like Fire,