her children or desires them to lessen
in multitude. Her friendly arms open wide to
the vast throng who desire birth and to dwell
in forms; and while they continue to desire
it, she continues to smile a welcome. Why,
then, should she shut her doors on any? When
one life in her heart has not worn out a hundredth
part of the soul's longing for sensation
such as it finds there, what reason can there
be for its departure to any other place? Surely
the seeds of desire spring up where the sower
has sown them. This seems but reasonable; and
on this apparently self-evident fact the Indian
mind has based its theory of re-incarnation, of
birth and re-birth in matter, which has become
so familiar a part of Eastern thought as no
longer to need demonstration. The Indian
knows it as the Western knows that the day
he is living through is but one of many days
which make up the span of a man's life. This
certainty which is possessed by the Eastern with
regard to natural laws that control the great
sweep of the soul's existence is simply acquired
by habits of thought. The mind of many is
fixed on subjects which in the West are considered
unthinkable. Thus it is that the East
has produced the great flowers of the spiritual
growth of humanity. On the mental steps of a
million men Buddha passed through the Gates
of Gold; and because a great crowd pressed
about the threshold he was able to leave behind
him words which prove that those Gates
will open.

CHAPTER III

THE INITIAL EFFORT

I

It is very easily seen that there is no one
point in a man's life or experience where he
is nearer the soul of things than at any other.
That soul, the sublime essence, which fills the
air with a burnished glow, is there, behind the
Gates it colors with itself. But that there is no
one pathway to it is immediately perceived
from the fact that this soul must from its very
nature be universal. The Gates of Gold do
not admit to any special place; what they do
is to open for egress from a special place.
Man passes through them when he casts off
his limitation. He may burst the shell that
holds him in darkness, tear the veil that hides
him from the eternal, at any point where it is
easiest for him to do so, and most often this
point will be where he least expects to find it.
Men go in search of escape with the help of
their minds, and lay down arbitrary and limited
laws as to how to attain the, to them, unattainable.
Many, indeed, h