Text of the meditation
A person cannot immortalise the flesh. All nature in its myriad forms of life is changeable, impermanent and unenduring. Only the informing Principle of nature endures. Nature is many, and is marked by separation. The informing Principle is one, and is marked by unity.
By overcoming the senses and the selfishness within, which is the overcoming of nature, a person emerges from the chrysalis of the personal and illusory, and wings themselves into the glorious light of the impersonal, the region of Truth, out of which all perishable forms come.
Let people, therefore, practise self-denial; let them conquer their animal inclinations; let them refuse to be enslaved by luxury and pleasure; let them practise virtue, and grow daily into higher and ever higher virtue, until at last they grow into the Divine.
Only by realising the God state of consciousness does a person enter into immortality.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.
