rishment from the earth, air, and water, and
transmitting that nourishment to its every part, including our little
friend the leaflet. It knows that the sap will rise in the Spring to
renew the manifestations of life, and it knows that although its leafy
form may wither and die, still the essence of its life--its real
Life--does not die but remains ever active and strong awaiting its
chance for future expression and re-embodiment. Of course this figure
of the leaf and the tree fails us if we attempt to carry it very far,
but it will give us at least a partial idea of the relationship between
the life of the person, and the One Life.

Some of the Oriental teachers have illustrated this idea to their
students by various familiar examples and figures of speech. Some bid
the student hold up his hand, and then point out to him that each
finger is apparently separate and distinct if one does not look down to
where it joins the hand. Each finger, if it had consciousness, might
well argue that it was a separate individual, having no relationship
with any other finger. It might prove this to its own satisfaction, and
to that of its listeners, by showing that it could move itself without
stirring the other fingers. And so long as its consciousness was
confined to its upper two joints it would remain under the illusion of
separateness. But when its consciousness at last permeated the depths
of its being, it would find that it emerged from the same hand from
which also sprung the other fingers, and that its real life and power
was vested in the hand rather than in itself, and that although
apparently separate and independent, it was really but a part of the
hand. And when its consciousness, through the consciousness of the
hand, broadened and widened, it would perceive its relationship with,
and interdependence with, the whole body, and would also recognize the
power of the brain, and its mighty Will.

Another favorite illustration of the Eastern teachers is the stream of
water flowing over a rocky bed. They point to the stream before it
comes to a rocky place, and show the _chela_ (student) that it is One.
Then they will move a little way down the stream and show him how the
rocks and stones divide the stream into countless little streams, each
of which might imagine itself a separate and distinct stream, until
later on it again joins the main united stream, and finds that it was
but a form of expression of the One.

Another il