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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE. the fire of knowledge can aspire to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. The first birth is the birth of man in the world, but the second birth, spoken of by Jesus, is the God-birth, or the birth of man into Godhood. The Bhagavad Gita declares : “Verily there is no purifier like wisdom in this world. As the burning fire reduces fuel to ashes, so doth the fire of wisdom reduce all actions to ashes" (Disc. IV. 37-38).
With the seed of ignorance burnt up by the fire of wisdom, the neophyte is born in faith, the only gateway to the Realm of Light and Life to which he was hitherto 'dead.' This entering into Life, or the birth of the soul in faith, i.e., the second birth, is the basic principle of the doctrine of being born again which was propounded by Jesus and which Nicodemus failed to understand, at least, in the first instance. It will not surprise modern theology a little to be told that its error of regarding God as a maker is ultimately traceable to the notion of the second birth, which, as seen above, is grounded on the doctrine of baptism, i.e., initiation into the secret science of the soul. If modern theologians would but reflect on the matter, they would not be slow to realise that the fatherhood of the clergy, which prevails in almost all the ancient religions of the world, can have reference, not to the physical body but to the initiation of the soul into the mysteries of the spiritual side of Life, poetically described as the birth of man in spirit, or, simply, as the second birth. It is with reference to this second birth that the idea of the fatherhood of the clergy is associated; for the guru (spiritual preceptor) who
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