A “Better” World
We have in ourselves at certain moments an intuition that something else is possible—an indestructible inner freedom, a harmonious unity, and participation in the life of a “better” world. Certain myths, certain forms of art, the traditions and religions are influences which seem to come from “somewhere else” touch us sometimes in the midst of our ordinary life and revive this in
tuition. Indeed, these influences bring us an impression of inner opening, an opportunity to awaken, and if we are attentive to it, we can recognize that something in ourselves responds—a religious feeling or an inner “spiritual” sense, which we feel uplifts us. In this way, there can be developed in certain people a special, almost magnetic sensitivity and attraction to everything that can lead in this direction. More and more clearly the question arises: would it not be possible to give my life a quality other than that which I ordinarily see in it—that very quality that I glimpse only in moments of “awakening”? They speak of an inner life possible for man, and of a transformation culminating in a “realization” which is called by different names according to the different paths. They speak of higher bodies with a life, faculties and development of their own; they speak of the self—real or unreal—of its evolution, of going beyond it. Everything could be found in books if we were able to understand them. But all this accumulated information, these experiences and the conclusions drawn from them, belong to other people. For us, all this is theoretical. We may perhaps believe it insofar as it does not conflict with our experience or with ideas we have already acquired; but, in fact, the conclusions of others can really convince us only to the extent that we discover them again for ourselves. Books can help guide our experience, but we can never be sure except of that which we have verified and lived through ourselves. To this question of a possible evolution, the only answer we can believe reaches us through experience personally lived through.
