Page:Democratic Ideals (Olympia Brown).djvu/98



The Radiant Center

the journey of the "Fire of Love" from the Radiant Center along the upward path. First, the purgation—the struggle between the flesh and the spirit; second, illumination; third, contemplation of God through Love. Then after a year of this condition he experienced three other phases:—heat (the mind being kindled in Love); this lasted nine months when he heard the spiritual music, the invisible melody of heaven. The final stage of sweetness was the fruition of all that had gone before. He found the Radiant Center, the cosmic consciousness.

The holiest verse in the Vedas which every Brahman must repeat in his daily devotions expresses the radiance of the divine center:—"Let us adore the supremacy of that Divine Sun, the Godhead who illuminates all, from whom all proceed, to whom all must return; whom we invoke to direct us aright in our progress toward His Holy Seat." Another Aryan poet said, "Seeking for freedom I go for refuge to that God who is the light of his own thoughts."

If we would find the law of our own being we must go back to our Source. We cannot find the divine and the human unless we have first found the Divine. Partial and prejudiced as has been the view of God that man had by expressing Him in terms of human personality, it has yet been that which has led man along through all the ages into a con 97