There is a tendency which manifests itself and grows in a person who is advancing spiritually, and that tendency is overlooking. At times this tendency might appear as negligence, but in reality negligence is not necessarily overlooking. Negligence is most often not looking. Overlooking may be called in other words rising beyond these things: one has to rise in order to overlook; the one who stands beneath life could not overlook, even if he wanted to. Overlooking is a manner of graciousness; it is looking and at the same time not looking. It is seeing and not taking notice of what is seen. It is being hurt or harmed or disturbed by something and yet not minding it. It is an attribute of nobleness of nature. It is the sign of souls who are tuned to a higher key.

One may ask: 'Is it practical?' I may not be able to say that it is always practical, but I mean it all the same. For in the end the one who overlooks will also realize the practicality of it. Maybe he will realize it in the long run after he has met with a great many disadvantages of it. Nevertheless, all is well which ends well.

Very often overlooking costs less than taking notice of something that could well be overlooked. In life there are things which matter and there are things which do not matter. As one advances through life one finds there are many things that do not matter. One could just as well overlook them. The one who, on a journey which takes all his life to accomplish, will take notice of everything that comes his way will waste his time. While climbing the mountain of life, the purpose of which is to reach the top, if a person troubles about everything that comes along, he will perhaps never be able to reach the top. He will always be troubling about things at the bottom. No soul, realizing that life on this earth is only four days long, will trouble about little things. He will trouble about things which really matter. In his strife with little things a person loses the opportunity of accomplishing great things in life. The one who troubles about small things is small, the soul who thinks of great things is great.

Overlooking is the first lesson of forgiveness. This tendency springs from love and sympathy. For of whom one hates one notices every little fault, but of whom one loves one naturally overlooks the faults and very often one tries to turn the faults into merits. Life has endless things which suggest beauty and numberless things which suggest ugliness. There is no end to the merits and no end to the faults, and according to one's evolution is one's outlook on life.

The higher a man has risen, the wider the horizon before his sight. It is the tendency to sympathize which brings the desire to overlook, and it is the analytical tendency which weighs and measures and takes good notice of everything. 'Judge ye not,' said Christ, 'lest ye be judged.' The more one thinks of this lesson, the deeper it goes into one's heart, and what one learns from it is to try and overlook all that does not fit in with one's own ideas as to how things ought to be in life, until one comes to a stage of realization where the whole of life becomes one sublime vision of the immanence of God.