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Chapter 9. Thought and Action
As the fruit to the tree and the water to the spring, so is action to thought. It does
not come into manifestation suddenly and without a cause. It is the result of a long and silent
growth; the end of a hidden process which has long been gathering force. The fruit of
the tree and the water gushing from the rock are both the effect of a combination of natural
processes in air and earth which have long worked together in secret to produce the phenomenon;
and the beautiful acts of enlightenment and the dark deeds of sin are both the ripened
effects of trains of thought which have long been harboured in the mind.
The sudden falling, when greatly tempted, into some grievous sin by one who was believed,
and who probably believed himself, to stand firm, is seen neither to be a sudden nor a
causeless thing when the hidden process of thought which led up to it are revealed. The
falling was merely the end, the outworking, the finished result of what commenced in the
mind probably years before. The man had allowed a wrong thought to enter his mind; and a second
and a third time he had welcomed it, and allowed it to nestle in his heart. Gradually he became
accustomed to it, and cherished, and fondled, and tended it; and so it grew, until at last
it attained such strength and force that it attracted to itself the opportunity which
enabled it to burst forth and ripen into act. As falls the stately building whose foundations
have been gradually undermined by the action of water, so at last falls the strong man
who allows corrupt thoughts to creep into his mind and secretly undermine his character.
When it is seen that all sin and temptation are the natural outcome of the thoughts of
the individual, the way to overcome sin and temptation becomes plain, and its achievement
a near possibility, and, sooner or later, a certain reality; for if a man will admit,
cherish, and brood upon thoughts that are pure and good, those thoughts, just as surely
as the impure, will grow and gather force, and will at last attract to themselves the
opportunities which will enable them to ripen into act.
“There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed,” and every thought that is
harboured in the mind must, by virtue of the impelling force which is inherent in the universe,
at last blossom into act good or bad according to its nature. The divine Teacher and the
sensualist are both the product of their own thoughts, and have become what they are as
the result of the seeds of thought which they have implanted, are allowed to fall, into
the garden of the heart, and have afterwards watered, tended, and cultivated.
Let no man think he can, overcome sin and temptation by wrestling with opportunity;
he can only overcome them by purifying his thoughts; and if he will, day by day, in the
silence of his soul, and in the performance of his duties, strenuously overcome all erroneous
inclination, and put in its place thoughts that are true and that will endure the light,
opportunity to do evil will give place to opportunity for accomplishing good, for a
man can only attract that to him which is in harmony with his nature, and no temptation
can gravitate to a man unless there is that in his heart which is capable of responding
to it.
Guard well your thoughts, reader, for what you really are in your secret thoughts today,
be it good or evil, you will, sooner or later, become in actual deed. He who unwearingly
guards the portals of his mind against the intrusion of sinful thoughts, and occupies
himself with loving thoughts, with pure, strong, and beautiful thoughts, will, when the season
of their ripening comes, bring forth the fruits of gentle and holy deeds, and no temptation
that can come against him shall find him unarmed or unprepared.
Chapter 10. Your Mental Attitude
As a being of thought, your dominant mental attitude will determine your condition in
life. It will also be the gauge of your knowledge and the measures of your attainment. The so-called
limitations of your nature are the boundary lines of your thoughts; they are self-erected
fences, and can be drawn to a narrower circle, extended to a wider, or be allowed to remain.
You are the thinker of your thoughts and as such you are the maker of yourself and condition.
Thought is causal and creative, and appears in your character and life in the form of
results. There are no accidents in your life. Both its harmonies and antagonisms are the
responsive echoes of your thoughts. A man thinks, and his life appears.
If your dominant mental attitude is peaceable and lovable, bliss and blessedness will follow
you; if it be resistant and hateful, trouble and distress will cloud your pathway. Out
of ill-will will come grief and disaster; out of good-will, healing and reparation.
You imagine your circumstances as being separate from yourself, but they are intimately related
to your thought world. Nothing appears without an adequate cause. Everything that happens
is just. Nothing is fated, everything is formed.
As you think, you travel; as you love, you attract. You are today where your thoughts
have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. You cannot escape
the result of your thoughts, but you can endure and learn, can accept and be glad.
You will always come to the place where your love (your most abiding and intense thought)
can receive its measure of gratification. If your love be base, you will come to a base
place; if it be beautiful, you will come to a beautiful place. You can alter your thoughts,
and so alter your condition. Strive to perceive the vastness and grandeur of your responsibility.
You are powerful, not powerless. You are as powerful to obey as you are to disobey; as
strong to be pure as to be impure; as ready for wisdom as for ignorance. You can learn
what you will, can remain as ignorant as you choose. If you love knowledge you will obtain
it; if you love wisdom you will secure it; if you love purity you will realise it. All
things await your acceptance, and you choose by the thoughts which you entertain.
A man remains ignorant because he loves ignorance, and chooses ignorant thoughts; a man becomes
wise because he loves wisdom and chooses wise thoughts. No man is hindered by another; he
is only hindered by himself. No man suffers because of another; he suffers only because
of himself. By the noble Gateway of Pure Thought you can enter the highest Heaven; by the ignoble
doorway of impure thought you can descend into the lowest hell.
Your mental attitude towards others will faithfully react upon yourself, and will manifest itself
in every relation of your life. Every impure and selfish thought that you send out comes
back to you in your circumstances in some form of suffering; every pure and unselfish
thought returns to you in some form of blessedness. Your circumstances are effects of which the
cause is inward and invisible. As the father-mother of your thoughts you are the maker of your
state and condition. When you know yourself, you will perceive, that every event in your
life is weighed in the faultless balance of equity. When you understand the law within
your mind you will cease to regard yourself as the impotent and blind tool of circumstances,
and will become the strong and seeing master.
Chapter 11. Sowing and Reaping
Go into the fields and country lanes in the spring-time, and you will see farmers and
gardeners busy sowing seeds in the newly prepared soil. If you were to ask any one of those
gardeners or farmers what kind of produce he expected from the seed he was sowing, he
would doubtless regard you as foolish, and would tell you that he does not “expect”
at all, that it is a matter of common knowledge that his produce will be of the kind which
he is sowing, and that he is sowing wheat, or barley, or turnips, as the case may be,
in order to reproduce that particular kind.
Every fact and process in Nature contains a moral lesson for the wise man. There is
no law in the world of Nature around us which is not to be found operating with the same
mathematical certainty in the mind of man and in human life. All the parables of Jesus
are illustrative of this truth, and are drawn from the simple facts of Nature. There is
a process of seed-sowing in the mind and life a spiritual sowing which leads to a harvest
according to the kind of seed sown. Thoughts, words, and acts are seeds sown, and, by the
inviolable law of things, they produce after their kind.
The man who thinks hateful thoughts brings hatred upon himself. The man who thinks loving
thoughts is loved. The man whose thoughts, words and acts are sincere, is surrounded
by sincere friends; the insincere man is surrounded by insincere friends. The man who sows wrong
thoughts and deeds, and prays that God will bless him, is in the position of a farmer
who, having sown tares, asks God to bring forth for him a harvest of wheat.
“That which ye sow, ye reap; see yonder fields
The sesamum was sesamum, the corn Was corn; the silence and the darkness knew;
So is a man’s fate born.” “He cometh reaper of the things he sowed.”
He who would be blest, let him scatter blessings. He who would be happy, let him consider the
happiness of others.
Then there is another side to this seed sowing. The farmer must scatter all his seed upon
the land, and then leave it to the elements. Were he to covetously hoard his seed, he would
lose both it and his produce, for his seed would perish. It perishes when he sows it,
but in perishing it brings forth a great abundance. So in life, we get by giving; we grow rich
by scattering. The man who says he is in possession of knowledge which he cannot give out because
the world is incapable of receiving it, either does not possess such knowledge, or, if he
does, will soon be deprived of it - if he is not already so deprived. To hoard is to
lose; to exclusively retain is to be dispossessed.
Even the man who would increase his material wealth must be willing to part with (invest)
what little capital he has, and then wait for the increase. So long as he retains his
hold on his precious money, he will not only remain poor, but will be growing poorer everyday.
He will, after all, lose the thing he loves, and will lose it without increase. But if
he wisely lets it go; if, like the farmer, he scatters his seeds of gold, then he can
faithfully wait for, and reasonably expect, the increase.
Men are asking God to give them peace and purity, and righteousness and blessedness,
but are not obtaining these things; and why not? Because they are not practising them,
not sowing them. I once heard a preacher pray very earnestly for forgiveness, and shortly
afterwards, in the course of his sermon, he called upon his congregation to “show no
mercy to the enemies of the church.” Such self-delusion is pitiful, and men have yet
to learn that the way to obtain peace and blessedness is to scatter peaceful and blessed
thoughts, words, and deeds.
Men believe that they can sow the seeds of strife, impurity, and unbrotherliness, and
then gather in a rich harvest of peace, purity and concord by merely asking for it. What
more pathetic sight than to see an irritable and quarrelsome man praying for peace. Men
reap that which they sow, and any man can reap all blessedness now and at once, if he
will put aside selfishness, and sow broadcast the seeds of kindness, gentleness, and love.
If a man is troubled, perplexed, sorrowful, or unhappy, let him ask:
“What mental seeds have I been sowing?”
“What seeds am I sowing?”
“What have I done for others?”
“What is my attitude towards others?”
“What seeds of trouble and sorrow and unhappiness have I sown that I should thus reap these
bitter weeds?”
Let him seek within and find, and having found, let him abandon all the seeds of self, and
sow, henceforth, only the seeds of Truth.
Let him learn of the farmer the simple truths of wisdom.
Chapter 12. The Reign of Law
The little party gods have had their day. The arbitrary gods, creatures of human caprice
and ignorance, are falling into disrepute. Men have quarrelled over and defended them
until they have grown weary of the strife, and now, everywhere, they are relinquishing
and breaking up these helpless idols of their long worship.
The god of revenge, hatred and jealousy, who gloats over the downfall of his enemies; the
partial god who gratifies all our narrow and selfish desires; the god who saves only the
creatures of his particular special creed; the god of exclusiveness and favouritism;
such were the gods (miscalled by us God) of our soul’s infancy, gods base and foolish
as ourselves, the fabrications of our selfish self. And we relinquished our petty gods with
bitter tears and misgivings, and broke our idols with bleeding hands. But in so doing
we did not lose sight of God; nay we drew nearer to the great, silent Heart of Love.
Destroying the idols of self, we began to comprehend somewhat of the Power which cannot
be destroyed, and entered into a wider knowledge of the God of Love, of Peace, of Joy; the
God in whom revenge and partiality cannot exist; the God of Light, from whose presence
the darkness of fear and doubt and selfishness cannot choose but flee.
We have reached one of those epochs in the world’s progress which witnesses the passing
of the false gods; the gods of human selfishness and human illusion. The new-old revelation
of one universal impersonal Truth has again dawned upon the world, and its searching light
has carried consternation to the perishable gods who take shelter under the shadow of
self.
Men have lost faith in a god who can be cajoled, who rules arbitrarily and capriciously, subverting
the whole order of things to gratify the wishes of his worshippers, and are turning, with
a new light in their eyes and a new joy in their hearts, to the God of Law.
And to Him they turn, not for personal happiness and gratification, but for knowledge, for
understanding, for wisdom, for liberation from the bondage of self. And thus turning,
they do not seek in vain, nor are they sent away empty and discomfited. They find within
themselves the reign of Law, that every thought, every impulse, every act and word brings about
a result in exact accordance with its own nature; that thoughts of love bring about
beautiful and blissful conditions, that hateful thoughts bring about distorted and painful
conditions, that thoughts and acts good and evil are weighed in the faultless balance
of the Supreme Law, and receive their equal measure of blessedness on the one hand, and
misery on the other. And thus finding they enter a new Path, the Path of Obedience to
the Law. Entering that Path they no longer accuse, no longer doubt, no longer fret and
despond, for they know that God is right, the universal laws are right, the cosmos is
right, and that they themselves are wrong, if wrong there is, and that their salvation
depends upon themselves, upon their own efforts, upon their personal acceptance of that which
is good and deliberate rejection of that which is evil. No longer merely hearers, they become
doers of the Word, and they acquire knowledge, they receive understanding, they grow in wisdom,
and they enter into the glorious life of liberation from the bondage of self.
“The Law of the Lord is perfect, enlightening the eyes.” Imperfection lies in man’s
ignorance, in man’s blind folly. Perfection, which is knowledge of the Perfect Law, is
ready for all who earnestly seek it; it belongs to the order of things; it is yours and mine
now if we will only put self-seeking on one side, and adopt the life of self-obliteration.
The knowledge of Truth, with its unspeakable joy, its calmness and quiet strength, is not
for those who persist in clinging to their “rights,” defending their “interests,”
and fighting for their “opinions”; whose works are imbued with the personal “I,”
and who build upon the shifting sands of selfishness and egotism. It is for those who renounce
these causes of strife, these sources of pain and sorrow; and they are, indeed, Children
of Truth, disciples of the Master, worshippers of the most High.
The Children of Truth are in the world today; they are thinking, acting, writing, speaking;
yea, even prophets are amongst us, and their influence is pervading the whole earth. An
undercurrent of holy joy is gathering force in the world, so that men and women are moved
with new aspirations and hopes, and even those who neither see nor hear, feel within themselves
strange yearnings after a better and fuller life.
The Law reigns, and it reigns in men’s hearts and lives; and they have come to understand
the reign of Law who have sought out the Tabernacle of the true God by the fair pathway of unselfishness.
God does not alter for man, for this would mean that the perfect must become imperfect;
man must alter for God, and this implies that the imperfect must become perfect. The Law
cannot be broken for man, otherwise confusion would ensue; man must obey the Law; this is
in accordance with harmony, order, justice.
There is no more painful bondage than to be at the mercy of one’s inclinations; no greater
liberty than utmost obedience to the Law of Being. And the Law is that the heart shall
be purified, the mind regenerated, and the whole being brought in subjection to Love
till self is dead and Love is all in all, for the reign of Law is the reign of Love.
And Love waits for all , rejecting none. Love may be claimed and entered into now, for it
is the heritage of all.
Ah, beautiful Truth! To know that now man may accept his divine heritage, and enter
the Kingdom of Heaven!
Oh, pitiful error! To know that man rejects it because of love of self!
Obedience to the Law means the destruction of sin and self, and the realisation of unclouded
joy and undying peace.
Clinging to one’s selfish inclinations means the drawing about one’s soul clouds of pain
and sorrow which darken the light of Truth; the shutting out of oneself from all real
blessedness; for “whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap.”
Verily the Law reigneth, and reigneth for ever, and Justice and Love are its eternal
ministers.
Chapter 13. The Supreme Justice
The material universe is maintained and preserved by the equilibrium of its forces.
The moral universe is sustained and protected by the perfect balance of its equivalents.
As in the physical world Nature abhors a vacuum, so in the spiritual world disharmony is annulled.
Underlying the disturbances and destructions of Nature, and behind the mutability of its
forms, there abides the eternal and perfect mathematical symmetry; and at the heart of
life, behind all its pain, uncertainty, and unrest, there abide the eternal harmony, the
unbroken peace, and inviolable Justice.
Is there, then, no injustice in the universe? There is injustice, and there is not. It depends
upon the kind of life and the state of consciousness from which a man looks out upon the world
and judges. The man who lives in his passions sees injustice everywhere; the man who has
overcome his passions, sees the operations of Justice in every department of human life.
Injustice is the confused, feverish dream of passion, real enough to those who are dreaming
it; Justice is the permanent reality in life, gloriously visible to those who have wakened
out of the painful nightmare of self.
The Divine Order cannot be perceived until passion and self are transcended; the Faultless
Justice cannot be apprehended until all sense of injury and wrong is consumed in the pure
flames of all-embracing Love.
The man who thinks, “I have been slighted, I have been injured, I have been insulted,
I have been treated unjustly,” cannot know what Justice is; blinded by self, he cannot
perceive the pure Principles of Truth, and brooding upon his wrongs, he lives in continual
misery.
In the region of passion there is a ceaseless conflict of forces causing suffering to all
who are involved in them. There is action and reaction, deed and consequence, cause
and effect; and within and above all is the Divine Justice regulating the play of forces
with the utmost mathematical accuracy, balancing cause and effect with the finest precision.
But this Justice is not perceived - cannot be perceived - by those who are engaged in
the conflict; before this can be done, the fierce warfare of passion must be left behind.
The world of passion is the abode of schisms, quarrellings, wars, law-suits, accusations,
condemnations, impurities, weaknesses, follies, hatreds, revenges, and resentments. How can
a man perceive Justice or understand Truth who is even partly involved in the fierce
play of its blinding elements? As well expect a man caught in the flames of a burning building
to sit down and reason out the cause of the fire.
In this realm of passion, men see injustice in the actions of others because, seeing only
immediate appearances, they regard every act as standing by itself, undetached from cause
and consequence. Having no knowledge of cause and effect in the moral sphere, men do not
see the exacting and balancing process which is momentarily proceeding, nor do they ever
regard their own actions as unjust, but only the actions of others. A boy beats a defenceless
animal, then a man beats the defenceless boy for his cruelty, then a stronger man attacks
the man for his cruelty to the boy. Each believes the other to be unjust and cruel, and himself
to be just and humane; and doubtless most of all would the boy justify his conduct toward
the animal as altogether necessary. Thus does ignorance keep alive hatred and strife; thus
do men blindly inflict suffering upon themselves, living in passion and resentment, and not
finding the true way in life. Hatred is met with hatred, passion with passion, strife
with strife. The man who kills is himself killed; the thief who lives by depriving others
is himself deprived; the beast that preys on others is hunted and killed; the accuser
is accused, the condemner is condemned, the denouncer is persecuted.
“By this the slayer’s knife doth stab himself,
The unjust judge has lost his own defender, The false tongue dooms its lie, the creeping
thief And spoiler rob to render.
Such is the Law.”
Passion, also has its active and passive sides. Fool and fraud, oppressor and slave, aggressor
and retaliator, the charlatan and the superstitious, complement each other, and come together by
the operation of the Law of Justice. Men unconsciously cooperate in the mutual production of affliction;
“the blind lead the blind, and both fall together into the ditch.” Pain, grief, sorrow,
and misery are the fruits of which passion is the flower.
Where the passion-bound soul sees only injustice, the good man, he who has conquered passion,
sees cause and effect, sees the Supreme Justice. It is impossible for such a man to regard
himself as treated unjustly, because he has ceased to see injustice. He knows that no
one can injure or cheat him, having ceased to injure or cheat himself. However passionately
or ignorantly men may act towards him, it cannot possibly cause him any pain, for he
knows that whatever comes to him (it may be abuse and persecution) can only come as the
effect of what he himself has formerly sent out. He therefore regards all things as good,
rejoices in all things, loves his enemies and blesses them that curse him, regarding
them as the blind but beneficent instruments by which he is enabled to pay his moral debts
to the Great Law.
The good man, having put away all resentment, retaliation, self-seeking, and egotism, has
arrived at a state of equilibrium,and has thereby become identified with the Eternal
and Universal Equilibrium. Having lifted himself above the blind forces of passion, he understands
those forces, contemplates them with a calm penetrating insight, like the solitary dweller
upon a mountain who looks down upon the conflict of the storms beneath his feet. For him, injustice
has ceased, and he sees ignorance and suffering on the one hand and enlightenment and bliss
on the other. He sees that not only do the fool and the slave need his sympathy, but
that the fraud and the oppressor are equally in need of it, and so his compassion is extended
towards all.
The Supreme Justice and the Supreme Love are one. Cause and effect cannot be avoided; consequences
cannot be escaped.
While a man is given to hatred, resentment, anger and condemnation, he is subject to injustice
as the dreamer to his dream, and cannot do otherwise than see injustice; but he who has
overcome those fiery and binding elements, knows that unerring Justice presides over
all, that in reality there is no such thing as injustice in the whole of the universe.
Chapter 14. The Use of Reason
We have heard it said that reason is a blind guide, and that it draws men away from Truth
rather than leads them to it. If this were true, it were better to remain, or to become,
unreasonable, and to persuade others so to do. We have found, however, that the diligent
cultivation of the divine faculty of reason brings about calmness and mental poise, and
enables one to meet cheerfully the problems and difficulties of life.
It is true there is a higher light than reason; even that of the Spirit of Truth itself, but
without the aid of reason, Truth cannot be apprehended. They who refuse to trim the lamp
of reason will never, whilst they so refuse, perceive the light of Truth, for the light
of reason is a reflection of that Light.
Reason is a purely abstract quality, and comes midway between the animal and divine consciousness
in man, and leads, if rightly employed, from the darkness of one to the Light of the other.
It is true that reason may be enlisted in the service of the lower, self-seeking nature,
but this is only a result of its partial and imperfect exercise. A fuller development of
reason leads away from the selfish nature, and ultimately allies the soul with the highest,
the divine.
That spiritual Percival who, searching for the Holy Grail of the Perfect Life, is again
and again
“left alone, And wearying in a land of sand and thorns,”
is not so stranded because he has followed reason, but because he is still clinging to,
and is reluctant to leave, some remnants of his lower nature. He who will use the light
of reason as a torch to search for Truth will not be left at last in comfortless darkness.
“Come, now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow.”
Many men and women pass through untold sufferings, and at last die in their sins, because they
refuse to reason; because they cling to those dark delusions which even a faint glimmer
of the light of reason would dispel; and all must use their reason freely, fully, and faithfully,
who would exchange the scarlet robe of sin and suffering for the white garment of blamelessness
and peace.
It is because we have proved and know these truths that we exhort men to
“tread the middle road, whose course Bright reason traces, and soft quiet
smooths,”
for reason leads away from passion and selfishness into the quiet ways of sweet persuasion and
gentle forgiveness, and he will never be led astray, nor will he follow blind guides, who
faithfully adheres to the Apostolic injunction, “Prove all things, and hold fast that which
is good.” They, therefore, who despise the light of reason, despise the Light of Truth.
Large numbers of people are possessed of the strange delusion that reason is somehow intimately
connected with the denial of the existence of God. This is probably due to the fact that
those who try to prove that there is no God usually profess to take their stand upon reason,
while those who try to prove the reverse generally profess to take their stand on faith. Such
argumentative combatants, however, are frequently governed more by prejudice than either reason
or faith, their object being not to find Truth, but to defend and confirm a preconceived opinion.
Reason is concerned, not with ephemeral opinions, but with the established truth of things,
and he who is possessed of the faculty of reason in its purity and excellence can never
be enslaved by prejudice, and will put from him all preconceived opinions as worthless.
He will neither attempt to prove nor disprove, but after balancing extremes and bringing
together all apparent contradictions, he will carefully and dispassionately weigh and consider
them, and so arrive at Truth.
Reason is, in reality, associated with all that is pure and gentle, moderate and just.
It is said of a violent man that he is “unreasonable,” of a kind and considerate man that he is “reasonable,”
and of an insane man that he has “lost his reason.” Thus it is seen that the word is
used, even to a great extent unconsciously, though none the less truly, in a very comprehensive
sense, and though reason is not actually love and thoughtfulness and gentleness and sanity,
it leads to and is intimately connected with these divine qualities, and cannot, except
for purposes of analysis, be dissociated from them.
Reason represents all that is high and noble in man. It distinguishes him from the brute
which blindly follows its animal inclinations, and just in the degree that man disobeys the
voice of reason and follows his inclinations does he become brutish. As Milton says:
“Reason in man obscured, or not obeyed, Immediately inordinate desires
And upstart passions catch the government From reason, and to servitude reduce
Man till then free.”
The following definition of “reason” from Nuttall’s Dictionary will give some idea
of the comprehensiveness of the word:
The cause, ground, principle, or motive of anything said or done; efficient cause; final
cause; the faculty of intelligence in man; especially the faculty by which we arrive
at necessary truth.
It will thus be seen that “reason” is a term, the breadth of which is almost sufficient
to embrace even Truth itself, and Archbishop Trench tells us in his celebrated work ‘On
the Study of Words’ that the terms Reason and Word “are indeed so essentially one
and the same that the Greek language has one word for them both,” so that the Word of
God is the Reason of God; and one of the renderings of Lao-tze’s “Tao” is Reason, so that
in the Chinese translation of our New Testament, St. John’s Gospel runs; “In the beginning
was the Tao.”
To the undeveloped and uncharitable mind all words have narrow applications, but as a man
enlarges his sympathies and broadens his intelligence, words become filled with rich meanings and
assume comprehensive proportions. Let us therefore cease from foolish quarrellings about words,
and, like reasonable beings, search for principles and practise those things which make for unity
and peace. End of Chapters 13 and 14
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