SEVENTH TALK 123

a few lives to do what for them will take all the thou-
sands and thousands of lives that lie between now and
the end of the Seventh Round. It is not only that, it
is also that we are trying to do the work under much
more difficult conditions, and with matter not so
fully prepared. By the end of the Seventh Round the
very matter with which you are working will be very
much vivified, all the spirillas of the atoms will be in
full working order, instead of only about half of
them, and the surrounding influences will then be
favourable. Now you have to battle against the
vast weight of selfishness in the world. You have to
fight against all sorts of sordid influences such as
made this great War. All the people who make the
trouble and the difficulty now, will have been dropped
out in the middle of the Fifth Round, they will be
weeded out and the whole world will be possessed by
the people who understand and who are moving along
the Path we are endeavouring to undertake. See
what a difference that will be : you will have, while
living in the outer world, all the advantages that now
might accrue from living in a monastery with men
directing their minds towards higher things.

In very many ways we are undertaking a very for-
midable task indeed; we are undertaking to compress
into one or two lives what would otherwise have taken
us hundreds of lives. That is hard work. It is very
truly arduous, this preparation, and if you try to
hurry it, if you try to make really rapid progress,