WHY, AND WHAT IS MAN?

We find in the physical universe that automatic laws govern everything; for instance, the tree cannot say "I will not," because of the law that holds it in place; it grows without any volition of its own. So it is with all nature; but when we come to man we find a different manifestation of the Spirit, a being who can say "I choose." In all creation, man alone is an individual; man alone is free; and yet man alone wants, is sick, suffers, and is unhappy. "Man marks the earth with ruin"; why? because he has not found his true nature. The very thing that should free him, and eventually will do so, now limits him. God could not make an individual without making him able to think, and he cannot think without bringing upon himself the results of his thought, good or bad. This does not mean using two powers, but using the One from two standpoints. Nothing in itself is either good or bad; all things exist in mind as a potentiality; mind is eternally acting upon thought, continually producing its own images from mind, and casting them out into manifestation. Man must be the outcome of the desire of the Spirit to make something which expresses the same life that It feels. Man is made to be a companion of the Infinite; but to arrive at this exalted plane of being, he must have his freedom, and be let alone to discover his own nature; to return love to his Creator only when he chooses to do so. At the doorway, then, of man's mind this wonderful God has to wait. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock"; the opening must be on the part of the individual.