Peace of the Gnostic Being In all spiritual living the inner life is the thing of first importance; the spiritual man lives always within, and in a world of the Ignorance that refuses to change he has to be in a certain sense separate from it and to guard his inner life against the intrusion and influence of the darker forces of the Ignorance: he is out of the world even when he is within it; if he acts upon it, it is from the fortress of his inner spiritual being where in the inmost sanctuary he is one with the Supreme Existence or the soul and God are alone together. The gnostic life will be an inner life in which the antinomy of the inner and the outer, the self and the world will have been cured and exceeded. The gnostic being will have indeed an inmost existence in which he is alone with God, one with the Eternal, self-plunged into the depths of the Infinite, in communion with its heights and its luminous abysses of secrecy; nothing will be able to disturb or to invade these depths or bring him down from the summits, neither the world's contents nor his action nor all that is around him. This is the transcendence-aspect of the spiritual life and it is necessary for the freedom of the Spirit; for otherwise the identity in Nature with the world would be a binding limitation and not a free identity. But at the same time God-love and the delight of God will be the heart's expression of that inner communion and oneness, and that delight and love will expand itself to embrace all existence. The peace of God within will be extended in the gnostic experience of the universe into a universal calm of equality not merely passive but dynamic, a calm of freedom in oneness dominating all that meets it, tranquillising all that enters into it, imposing its law of peace on the supramental being's relations with the world in which he is living. Into all his acts the inner oneness, the inner communion will attend him and enter into his relations with others, who will not be to him others but selves of himself in the one existence, his own universal existence. It is this poise and freedom in the Spirit that will enable him to take all life into himself while still remaining the spiritual self and to embrace even the world of the Ignorance without himself entering into the Ignorance. The Life Divine For Peace and Progress   A dark concealed hostility is lodged In the human depths, in the hidden heart of Time That claims the right to change and mar God's work. A secret enmity ambushes the world's march; It leaves a mark on thought and speech and act: It stamps stain and defect on all things done; Till it is slain peace is forbidden on earth. There is no visible foe, but the unseen Is round us, forces intangible besiege, Touches from alien realms, thoughts not our own Overtake us and compel the erring heart; Our lives are caught in an ambiguous net. An adversary Force was born of old : Invader of the life of mortal man, It hides from him the straight immortal path. A power came in to veil the eternal Light, A power opposed to the eternal will Diverts the messages of the infallible Word, Contorts the contours of the cosmic plan : A whisper lures to evil the human heart, It seals up wisdom's eyes, the soul's regard, It is the origin of our suffering here, It binds earth to calamity and pain. This all must conquer who would bring down God's peace. This hidden foe lodged in the human breast Man must overcome or miss his higher fate. This is the inner war without escape. Savitri