38 SKETCHES OF GREAT TRUTHS

unreal, the lasting from the fleeting, and hope to
gather the fruit, we find that that fruit cannot be
reached because of the wild sowings of the past,
and because a jungle of waste stuff besets our
path, a jungle which we have ourselves sown. It
is a terrible task to set to work to dig ourselves
out of the jungle of the weeds. But it has to be
done, and in the doing of it we suffer terribly.
We suffer weariness, we suffer heartache
after heartache at the magnitude of the
task, and we suffer from scratches and blows
and all sorts of difficulties and obstacles and
impediments.

Illnesses, disorganised bodies, uncontrolled
bodies, are all part of the jungle that we have
sown. To put it figuratively, we have 'possibly
come to the time when we have caught a
glimpse of the fruit that is attainable, and we
find that we have bound ourselves round with
bond after bond, and we have to get out of the
mesh before we can reach the fruit. In every-
day life what does this mean ? It means that in
the past we have misused our body by excesses
of all sorts, by over-taxing all the different
organs until one or other declines to work for
us, and in the next life we take a body where
we find the defect, and we find ourselves work-
ing with the disadvantage of ill health.