Greetings from Russell's Remnant:

One of Russell’s disciples was reading a translation of Isherwood and Prabhavananda’s Bhagavad Gita - The Song of God. He came across a passage in the second chapter - The Yoga of Knowledge. He was so moved by it that he copied the passage and took it to the next group meeting. He read it to Dr. Whitesell who liked it so much he took the written passage, read it to the class, put it into his wallet, carried it with him from then on and read it at many of his lectures. He felt that this one passage from the Gita was extremely important. We wish to share it with the readers of the newsletter.

"Thinking about sense-objects

Will attach you to sense-objects;

Grow attached, and you become addicted;

Thwart your addiction, it turns to anger;

Be angry, and you confuse your mind;

Confuse your mind, you forget the lesson of experience;

Forget experience, you lose discrimination;

Lose discrimination and you miss life's only purpose."

Bhagavad Gita

It is stated in the introduction to Alice Bailey’s Light Of The Soul that there are three books which should be in the hands of every student: the Bhagavad Gita, the New Testament, and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, for in these three is contained a complete picture of the soul and its unfoldment. The Gita gives us a description of the soul. The New Testament depicts for us the life of a Son of God, the soul in its true nature walking on earth. In the Yoga Sutras there are embodied for us the laws of becoming, and the rules that make a man "perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect." Through dispassion and the balancing of the pairs of opposites man has freed himself from moods, feelings, longings, desires, and emotional reactions which characterize the life of the average man.

Dr. Russell Whitesell also pointed out that the Old Testament is a third rate scripture except for Psalms and a few verses from a prophet or two. He was also heard to say to one of his closest disciples that he (Russell) knew every prophet in the old testament. This would help explain why he was referred to as "the whiz kid" in the Hierarchy where prophecy was concerned.

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A Psalm of Life The Teacher might add:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream - Most souls do not know they have a human charge under them,

For the soul is dead that slumbers, until the human starts serving humanity rather than self.

And things are not what they seem. The real world is upside down and backwards to this world.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal! Reincarnation.

Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Belief in one life only is a cul-de-sac.

Was not spoken of the soul. The Soul knows better.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way; Follow the middle path.

But to act, that each tomorrow

Find us farther than today,. Each journey is taken one step at a time.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Overcome your animal nature.

Be a hero in the strife! Become a Hero on the Path.

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Live a day at a time.

Let the dead Past bury its dead! Let those stuck in the material world, "Go Die."

Act - act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o'erhead! God immanent and God transcendent.

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us Exoteric works can only grow arithmetically.

Footprints on the sands of time; Esoteric works grow geometrically.

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again. By their fruits ye shall know them.

Let us, then, be up and doing, Persistence is ever needed.

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing, As well as patience.

Learn to labor and to wait. God’s will will be done, not ours.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - 1839