490 ROSICRUCIANCOSMO-CONCEPTION
Knowledge never before dreamed of will flood the soul with
a glorious light. Yet something that is uninteresting and does
not of itself suggest anything marvelous, is better for
practice. Try to find out all about—say, a match, or a
common table.
When the image of the table has been clearly formed in
the mind, think what kind of wood it is and whence it came.
Go back to the time when, as a tiny seed, the tree from
which the wood was cut first fell into the forest soil. Watch
it grow from year to year, covered by the snows of winter
and warmed by the summer Sun, steadily growing upward—
its roots meanwhile constantly spreading under the ground.
First it is a tender sapling, swaying in the breeze; then, as a
young tree, it gradually stretches higher and higher toward
the air and the sunshine. As the years pass, its girth becomes
greater and greater, until at last one day the logger comes,
with his ax e and sa w glea ming as they reflect t he rays of the
winter Sun. Our tree is felled and shorn of its branches,
leaving but the trunk; that is cut into logs, which are hauled
over the frozen roads to the river bank, there to await the
springtime when the melting snow swells the streams. A
great raft of the logs is made, the pieces of our tree being
among them. We know every little peculiarity about them
and would recognize them instantly among thousands, so
clearly have we marked them in our mind. We follow the
raft down the stream, noting the passing landscape and
becoming familiar with the men who have the care of the
raft and who sleep upon little huts built upon their floating
charge. At last we see it arrive at a sawmill and disbanded.
One by one the logs are grasped by prongs on an endless
chain and hauled out of the water. Here comes one of our
logs, the widest part of which will be made into the top of