Although the possibility of this discovery and awareness of Overself and establishment in it has always been with every man at every moment, the probability has not. For he has to develop the equipment for maturing from animal through man's gathered experience to this full establishment in full union with his highest being. The savage may get the glimpse, and does, but this is only a beginning, not an end. The teaching favoured by Indian metaphysicians that we came from God and shall return to God is an oversimplification which generally leads to misunderstanding. Then all this long pilgrimage with all its sufferings becomes a senseless waste of time and an idiotic expenditure of energy--if not on our part then on God's. It is like banging one's head against a wall in order to enjoy the relief which follows when the action ends. Through lack of a cosmogony the proponents of this teaching are compelled to explain away the purpose of all this vast universe as non-purpose, using the term maya, one of whose two meanings is "mystery." The Infinite Being, whose Consciousness and Power is behind the universe of history, can itself have no history, for it is beyond time, evolution, change, development, can have no purpose which is gainful to itself, cannot be made the object of human thought correctly because it utterly transcends the limitations of such thought. But all this is not to say that the World-Mind's activity is meaningless, Idea-less, and fruitless. The very contrary is the case.
-- Notebooks Category 26: World-Idea > Chapter 4 : True Idea of Man > # 258
