When the old year draws to an end, it is comparable in a certain aspect to a man who approaches the moment of death. This man has to confront, to face the most essential final mystery in one way or another. And if he passes the mystery, this trial, this test in a satisfactory manner, great beneficial influences are released for the advantage of his circle, his group, his nation, for the world at large, and also is released the highest grace of all, an Absolving power, a power of renewal, of laying new foundations.

But it is with man as with the year. He is as yet unable to approach the mystery in a completely sacrificial attitude. He cannot accomplish this completely because he is fallible, because he has his weaknesses and his imperfections. So when he passes on to the next, the astral plane, there is a remainder that he has to leave on the physical plane, though on a very high subplane of the physical plane (I think the two highest etheric subplanes). These remnants are called in the East the "skandas" of the man, that aggregate or bundle of propensities, of tendencies which cannot be digested or sublimated and so must be left behind as an indissoluble precipitation. . But if a man enters this great mystery, after his lifetime here on earth, in a well prepared manner, he is able because of the high influence reigning at the moment of his death, to leaven, as it were, this lump that remains on the physical plane. Instead of a piece of lead it then becomes silver or even gold.We then have the old metaphor used in Indian philosophy of the golden or silver man that stays behind, having the size of a thumb. When the man comes back for a new incarnation he finds this fermenting part in a living condition, giving him a beautiful start for the new incarnation , vivifying his new body and his soul in a very beautiful way.

We may not be able to fully fulfill our task because of our imperfections and because of our wrong desires, we may not be able to discharge our duties in full to come to a complete acquittal, to fully settle the accounts, but at least we may make a special effort to enter our new life as a free agent of the Divine Will, to enter it as much as possible as a creative force.

To that end, first of all, we have to assume the attitude of giving generously and with an unknown hand. Once we have developed Uniqueness in its fullest measure, we will be giving without knowing that we give: we must give and we must not know about it. Then we will be "dying" in the act of charity, in a way dissolving completely. There is no time for knowing that we give: it is the pure Act of Charity.

Our"self"isness is of course, the great obstacle. The self is a form. If we think of the self as pure, without any complexities, without any prejudices, we see it as a beautiful form; within this form, this limitation of the deep, deep wisdom, lies the perfect condition of all evolution. It is the ground form, the paradigm of "self", therefore the "self" is a beautiful thing, not at all what we commonly think it to be. It has no centre. This is very important The "I" has nothing to do with the "self". The "I" can be a centre, a necessary centre for a while. It is not fundamental, it is created and only of a derived importance for rather a short time in our evolution.

As we have it, the "I" is a very complicated structure, but in most cases to be compared with a rusty nail, a complicated aggregate that is very difficult to dissolve at the moment of our death and therefore a hindrance for our work in the astral and the mental planes. Here I refer to what I said earlier about skandas. We must transcend, as it were, before the end of a period of evolution, even this "self", this form, this ultimate form. When we think of our "selves" we mostly conceive them as a continuation of the shell, that stifles us, emprisons us, and makes inactive our real "selves". So you see that this self is a very different thing. But even that self, that ultimate form, we must try to transcend and sublimate to the Deep itself, to Space itself, to the Deep of the deepest Wisdom, to primordial substance , as divine as we can possibly conceive.

Thereto is necessary an attitude of giving, fully and perfectly, of opening ourselves to the Absolving Power, the greatest power that exists, the greatest renewing power. By the attitude of giving " pur et simple" we become virginal and as fundamental as we can be. The absolute is not a foundation because it is beyond any conception of foundation, but the Deep is a foundation wherein we have - so far as it goes of course - two great powers at our disposition: the Absolving Power and the great power for purification, that of the Deep, that of Akasha, to make the expiration of our life a splendid entrance into the next.