Page:Personality (Lectures delivered in America).djvu/116

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PERSONALITY

man is to free his personality of self into the personality of soul, to turn his inward forces into the forward movement towards the infinite, from the contraction of self in desire into the expansion of soul in love.

This personality, which is the conscious principle of oneness, the centre of relationships, is the reality,—therefore the ultimate object of attainment. I must emphasize this fact, that this world is a real world only in its relation to a central personality. When that centre is taken away, then it falls to pieces, becomes a heap of abstractions, matter and force, logical symbols, and even those,—the thinnest semblances of reality,—would vanish into absolute nothingness, if the logical person in the centre, to whom they are related in some harmony of reason, were nowhere.

But these centres are innumerable. Each creature has its own little world related to its own personality. Therefore, the question naturally comes to our mind,—is the reality many, irreconcilably different each from the other?

If we have to give an answer in the affirmative, our whole nature rebels. For we know that in us the principle of oneness is the basis of