Religion is not a plant that has grown from one seed; it is like a lake
that has been fed by countless springs. It is a great pool of living
water, mingled from many sources and tainted with much impurity. It is
synthetic in its nature; it becomes simpler from original complexities;
the sediment subsides.

A life perfectly adjusted to its surroundings is a life without
mentality; no judgment is called for, no inhibition, no disturbance
of the instinctive flow of perfect reactions. Such a life is bliss, or
nirvana. It is unconsciousness below dreaming. Consciousness is discord
evoking the will to adjust; it is inseparable from need. At every need
consciousness breaks into being. Imperfect adjustments, needs, are the
rents and tatters in the smooth dark veil of being through which the
light of consciousness shines--the light of consciousness and will of
which God is the sun.

So that every need of human life, every disappointment and
dissatisfaction and call for help and effort, is a means whereby men may
and do come to the realisation of God.

There is no cardinal need, there is no sort of experience in human life
from which there does not come or has not come a contribution to men's
religious ideas. At every challenge men have to put forth effort, feel
doubt of adequacy, be thwarted, perceive the chill shadow of their
mortality. At every challenge comes the possibility of help from
without, the idea of eluding frustration, the aspiration towards
immortality. It is possible to classify the appeals men make for God
under the headings of their chief system of effort, their efforts to
understand, their fear and their struggles for safety and happiness, the