than the moving pictures. People go to the theatre to be entertained. If the play is strong, they come away transformed. They surrender their hearts and minds to the author, producer, director, stars, and they follow the example which they see portrayed before their eyes more than they themselves realize.

Both the press and the radio influence thought, but both lack the power of visible example, which is the greatest stimulant to action and which the moving pictures offer better now than any other medium.

We find ourselves today in the midst of a world-wide depression which affects everyone, rich and poor alike, and from which all are groping blindly for deliverance The film companies, the picture theatres and the stars have also suffered from it. If they could help to end the depression, I am sure, they would be glad to. How could the moving pictures help in this respect?

First, it must be understood that the depression is not an accident, nor is it purely the result of over-production and inflation. Those, although the immediate causes, are merely the instruments which were used to bring the depression about. The depression itself was caused by those entrusted with the evolution of humanity. Man has to be stripped of his material possessions in order that he may realize through actual experience that his true base is spiritual, and not material. Then he will be ready to receive the Truth which I have come to bring.

This Truth consists in the knowledge that man, instead of being a limited, separate individual, completely bound by the illusion of time and space and substance, is eternal in his nature and infinite in his resources. The world-illusion is a dream of his imagining ― a play enacted in the theatre of his consciousness ― a comedy of which he is at once author, producer, director, star. But his absorption in the role which he has chosen to enact has made him forgetful of his true self, and he stumbles now as creature through the part he has created.

He must be awakened to his true nature. He must see that all material expression depends upon and flows from spiritual being. Then he will be steadfast and serene under all circumstances. There will be no further need then for the depression, and it will disappear.

Now how can the moving pictures help man to attain to this realization? The character of the pictures exhibited need not be changed. Love, romance, adventure are fundamental things. They should be portrayed as thrillingly, as entertaining, as inspiringly as possible. The wider the appeal, the better.

What needs to be changed is the emphasis, or stress. For example, courage is a great virtue, but it may, if misapplied become a vice. So it is with love, the mainspring of our lives, which may lead to the heights of Realization or to the depths of despair. No better example can be given of the two polarities of love and their effects than that of Mary Magdalene, before, and after meeting Jesus.

Between these two extreme are many kinds of love all of which are good, but some of which are better than others. I use the terms "good" and "better" simply to designate the degrees of liberation which they lead to, or confer. Even the love which expressed through physical desire is good to the extent that it frees one from the thralldom of personal likes and dislikes and makes one want to serve the beloved above all other things.

Every human relationship is based on love in one form or another, and endure or dissolves as that love is eternal or temporal in character. Marriage, for example is happy or unhappy, exalting or degrading, lasting or fleeting, according to the love which inspires and sustains it. Marriages based on sex attraction alone cannot endure; they lead inevitably to divorce or worse. Marriages, on the other hand which are based on a mutual desire to serve and inspire, grow continually in richness and in beauty, and are a benediction to all who know of them.