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* The above particulars of this holy man have been obtained on
unexceptionable testimony.—­Ed. T.B.P.
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PHILOSOPHICAL

True and False Personality

The title prefixed to the following observations may well have suggested a more metaphysical treatment of the subject than can be attempted on the present occasion.  The doctrine of the trinity, or trichotomy of man, which distinguishes soul from spirit, comes to us with such weighty, venerable, and even sacred authority, that we may well be content, for the moment, with confirmations that should be intelligible to all, forbearing the abstruser questions which have divided minds of the highest philosophical capacity.  We will not now inquire whether the difference is one of states or of entities; whether the phenomenal or mind consciousness is merely the external condition of one indivisible Ego, or has its origin and nature in an altogether different principle; the Spirit, or immortal part of us, being of Divine birth, while the senses and understanding, with the consciousness—­Ahankara—­thereto appertaining, are from an Anima Mundi, or what in the Sankhya philosophy is called Prakriti.  My utmost expectations will have been exceeded if it should happen that any considerations here offered should throw even a faint suggestive light upon the bearings of this great problem.  It may be that the mere irreconcilability of all that is characteristic of the temporal Ego with the conditions of the superior life—­if that can be made apparent—­will incline you to regard the latter rather as the Redeemer, that has indeed to be born within us for our salvation and our immortality, than as the inmost, central, and inseparable principle of our phenomenal life.  It may be that by the light of such reflections the sense of identity will present no insuperable difficulty to the conception of its contingency, or to the recognition that the mere consciousness which fails to attach itself to a higher principle is no guarantee of an eternal individuality.

It is only by a survey of individuality, regarded as the source of all our affections, thoughts, and actions, that we can realize its intrinsic worthlessness; and only when we have brought ourselves to a real and felt acknowledgment of that fact, can we accept with full understanding those “hard sayings” of sacred authority which bid us “die to ourselves,” and which proclaim the necessity of a veritable new birth.  This mystic death and birth is the key-note of all profound religious teaching; and that which distinguishes the ordinary religious mind from spiritual insight is just the tendency to interpret these expressions as merely figurative, or, indeed, to overlook them altogether.