The present edition of LIGHT ON THE PATH
is a verbatim reprint of the 1888 edition
(George Redway, London) in which later edition
the NOTES by the Author first appear. The
COMMENTS, which are not in the 1888 edition,
are here taken directly from _Lucifer_, Volume I,
1887-8, where they were first published.
Also in this volume we reprint verbatim the
original edition (1887) of THROUGH THE
GATES OF GOLD by the same Author, together
with a commentary by William Q. Judge taken
from his magazine, _The Path_, March, 1887.
*Light on the Path*
_A Treatise_
WRITTEN FOR THE PERSONAL USE OF THOSE WHO
ARE IGNORANT OF THE EASTERN WISDOM, AND
WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN ITS INFLUENCE
_Written down by_ M.C.
_with Notes by the Author_
*LIGHT ON THE PATH*
LIGHT ON THE PATH
I
These rules are written for all disciples:
Attend you to them.
Before the eyes can see, they must be incapable
of tears. Before the ear can hear, it
must have lost its sensitiveness. Before the
voice can speak in the presence of the Masters
it must have lost the power to wound. Before
the soul can stand in the presence of the Masters
its feet must be washed in the blood of
the heart.
1. Kill out ambition.
2. Kill out desire of life.
3. Kill out desire of comfort.
4. Work as those work who are ambitious.
Respect life as those do who desire it. Be
happy as those are who live for happiness.
Seek in the heart the source of evil and
expunge it. It lives fruitfully in the heart of
the devoted disciple as well as in the heart of
the man of desire. Only the strong can kill it
out. The weak must wait for its growth, its
fruition, its death. And it is a plant that lives
and increases throughout the ages. It flowers
when the man has accumulated unto himself
innumerable existences. He who will enter
upon the path of power must tear this thing
out of his heart. And then the heart will bleed,
and the whole life of the man seem to be utterly
dissolved. This ordeal must be endured:
it may come at the first step of the perilous
ladder which leads to the path of life: it may
not come until the last. But, O disciple, remember
that it has to be endured, and fasten
the energies of your soul upon the task. Live
neither in the present nor the future, but in
the eternal. This giant weed cannot flower
there: this blot upon existence is wiped out by
the very atmosphere of eternal thought.
5. Kill out all sense of separateness.
6. Kill out desire for sensation.
7. Kill out the hunger for growth.
8. Yet stand alone and isolated, because
nothing that is imbodied, nothing that is conscious
of separation, nothing that is out of the
eternal, can aid you. Learn from sensation and
observe it, because only so can you commence
the science of self-knowledge, and plant your
foot on the first step of the ladder. Grow as
the flower grows, unconsciously, but eagerly
anxious to open its soul to the air. So must you
press forward to open your soul to the eternal.
But it must be the eternal that draws forth your
strength and beauty, not desire of growth. For
in the one case you develop in the luxuriance of
purity, in the other you harden by the forcible
passion for personal stature.
9. Desire only that which is within you.
10. Desire only that which is beyond you.
11. Desire only that which is unattainable.
12. For within you is the light of the world--the
only light that can be shed upon the
Path. If you are unable to perceive it within
you, it is useless to look for it elsewhere. It is
beyond you; because when you reach it you
have lost yourself. It is unattainable, because it
for ever recedes. You will enter the light, but
you will never touch the flame.
13. Desire power ardently.
14. Desire peace fervently.
15. Desire possessions above all.
16. But those possessions must belong to
the pure soul only, and be possessed therefore
by all pure souls equally, and thus be the
especial property of the whole only when
united. Hunger for such possessions as can be
held by the pure soul; that you may accumulate
wealth for that united spirit of life, which is
your only true self. The peace you shall desire
is that sacred peace which nothing can disturb,
and in which the soul grows as does the holy
flower upon the still lagoons. And that power
which the disciple shall covet is that which
shall make him appear as nothing in the eyes
of men.
17. Seek out the way.
18. Seek the way by retreating within.
19. Seek the way by advancing boldly without.
20. Seek it not by any one road. To each
temperament there is one road which seems the
most desirable. But the way is not found by devotion
alone, by religious contemplation alone,
by ardent progress, by self-sacrificing labor, by
studious observation of life. None alone can
take the disciple more than one step onward.
All steps are necessary to make up the ladder.
The vices of men become steps in the ladder,
one by one, as they are surmounted. The virtues
of man are steps indeed, necessary--not
by any means to be dispensed with. Yet,
though they create a fair atmosphere and a
happy future, they are useless if they stand
alone. The whole nature of man must be used
wisely by the one who desires to enter the way.
Each man is to himself absolutely the way, the
truth, and the life. But he is only so when he
grasps his whole individuality firmly, and, by
the force of his awakened spiritual will, recognises
this individuality as not himself, but that
thing which he has with pain created for his
own use, and by means of which he purposes,
as his growth slowly develops his intelligence,
to reach to the life beyond individuality. When
he knows that for this his wonderful complex
separated life exists, then, indeed, and then
only, he is upon the way. Seek it by plunging
into the mysterious and glorious depths of your
own inmost being. Seek it by testing, all experience,
by utilizing the senses in order to
understand the growth and meaning of individuality,
and the beauty and obscurity of those
other divine fragments which are struggling
side by side with you, and form the race to
which you belong. Seek it by study of the laws
of being, the laws of nature, the laws of the
supernatural: and seek it by making the profound
obeisance of the soul to the dim star that
burns within. Steadily, as you watch and worship,
its light will grow stronger. Then you
may know you have found the beginning of
the way. And when you have found the end its
light will suddenly become the infinite light.
21. Look for the flower to bloom in the
silence that follows the storm not till then.
It shall grow, it will shoot up, it will make
branches and leaves and form buds, while the
storm continues, while the battle lasts. But
not till the whole personality of the man is dissolved
and melted--not until it is held by the
divine fragment which has created it, as a mere
subject for grave experiment and experience--not
until the whole nature has yielded and
become subject unto its higher self, can the
bloom open. Then will come a calm such as
comes in a tropical country after the heavy rain,
when Nature works so swiftly that one may see
her action. Such a calm will come to the harassed
spirit. And in the deep silence the mysterious
event will occur which will prove that
the way has been found. Call it by what name
you will, it is a voice that speaks where there
is none to speak--it is a messenger that comes,
a messenger without form or substance; or it is
the flower of the soul that has opened. It cannot
be described by any metaphor. But it can
be felt after, looked for, and desired, even
amid the raging of the storm. The silence may
last a moment of time or it may last a thousand
years. But it will end. Yet you will carry its
strength with you. Again and again the battle
must be fought and won. It is only for an interval
that Nature can be still.
These written above are the first of the
rules which are written on the walls of the
Hall of Learning. Those that ask shall have.
Those that desire to read shall read. Those who
desire to learn shall learn.
PEACE BE WITH YOU.
II
Out of the silence that is peace a resonant
voice shall arise. And this voice will say, It is
not well; thou hast reaped, now thou must sow.
And knowing this voice to be the silence itself
thou wilt obey.
Thou who art now a disciple, able to stand,
able to hear, able to see, able to speak, who
hast conquered desire and attained to self-knowledge,
who hast seen thy soul in its bloom
and recognised it, and heard the voice of the
silence, go thou to the Hall of Learning and
read what is written there for thee.
1. Stand aside in the coming battle, and
though thou fightest be not thou the warrior.
2. Look for the warrior and let him fight in
thee.
3. Take his orders for battle and obey
them.
4. Obey him not as though he were a general,
but as though he were thyself, and his
spoken words were the utterance of thy secret
desires; for he is thyself, yet infinitely wiser
and stronger than thyself. Look for him, else
in the fever and hurry of the fight thou mayest
pass him; and he will not know thee unless
thou knowest him. If thy cry meet his listening
ear, then will he fight in thee and fill the
dull void within. And if this is so, then canst
thou go through the fight cool and unwearied,
standing aside and letting him battle for thee.
Then it will be impossible for thee to strike
one blow amiss. But if thou look not for him,
if thou pass him by, then there is no safeguard
for thee. Thy brain will reel, thy heart grow
uncertain, and in the dust of the battlefield thy
sight and senses will fail, and thou wilt not
know thy friends from thy enemies.
He is thyself, yet thou art but finite and
liable to error. He is eternal and is sure. He
is eternal truth. When once he has entered
thee and become thy warrior, he will never utterly
desert thee, and at the day of the great
peace he will become one with thee.
5. Listen to the song of life.
6. Store in your memory the melody you
hear.
7. Learn from it the lesson of harmony.
8. You can stand upright now, firm as a
rock amid the turmoil, obeying the warrior
who is thyself and thy king. Unconcerned in
the battle save to do his bidding, having no
longer any care as to the result of the battle, for
one thing only is important, that the warrior
shall win, and you know he is incapable of defeat--standing
thus, cool and awakened, use
the hearing you have acquired by pain and by
the destruction of pain. Only fragments of
the great song come to your ears while yet you
are but man. But if you listen to it, remember
it faithfully, so that none which has reached
you is lost, and endeavor to learn from it the
meaning of the mystery which surrounds you.
In time you will need no teacher. For as the
individual has voice, so has that in which the
individual exists. Life itself has speech and is
never silent. And its utterance is not, as you
that are deaf may suppose, a cry: it is a song.
Learn from it that you are part of the harmony;
learn from it to obey the laws of the
harmony.
9. Regard earnestly all the life that surrounds
you.
10. Learn to look intelligently into the
hearts of men.
11. Regard most earnestly your own heart.
12. For through your own heart comes the
one light which can illuminate life and make it
clear to your eyes.
Study the hearts of men, that you may know
what is that world in which you live and of
which you will to be a part. Regard the constantly
changing and moving life which surrounds
you, for it is formed by the hearts of
men; and as you learn to understand their
constitution and meaning, you will by degrees
be able to read the larger word of life.
13. Speech comes only with knowledge. Attain
to knowledge and you will attain to
speech.
14. Having obtained the use of the inner
senses, having conquered the desires of the
outer senses, having conquered the desires of
the individual soul, and having obtained knowledge,
prepare now, O disciple, to enter upon
the way in reality. The path is found: make
yourself ready to tread it.
15. Inquire of the earth, the air, and the
water, of the secrets they hold for you. The
development of your inner senses will enable
you to do this.
16. Inquire of the holy ones of the earth
of the secrets they hold for you. The conquering
of the desires of the outer senses will
give you the right to do this.
17. Inquire of the inmost, the one, of its
final secret which it holds for you through
the ages.
The great and difficult victory, the conquering
of the desires of the individual soul, is a
work of ages; therefore expect not to obtain
its reward until ages of experience have been
accumulated. When the time of learning this
seventeenth rule is reached, man is on the
threshold of becoming more than man.
18. The knowledge which is now yours is
only yours because your soul has become one
with all pure souls and with the inmost. It is
a trust vested in you by the Most High. Betray
it, misuse your knowledge, or neglect it, and
it is possible even now for you to fall from
the high estate you have attained. Great ones
fall back, even from the threshold, unable to
sustain the weight of their responsibility, unable
to pass on. Therefore look forward always
with awe and trembling to this moment, and
be prepared for the battle.
19. It is written that for him who is on the
threshold of divinity no law can be framed, no
guide can exist. Yet to enlighten the disciple,
the final struggle may be thus expressed:
Hold fast to that which has neither substance
nor existence.
20. Listen only to the voice which is soundless.
21. Look only on that which is invisible
alike to the inner and the outer sense.
PEACE BE WITH YOU.
NOTES
_Note on Rule 1._--Ambition is the first
curse: the great tempter of the man who is
rising above his fellows. It is the simplest
form of looking for reward. Men of intelligence
and power are led away from their
higher possibilities by it continually. Yet it is
a necessary teacher. Its results turn to dust
and ashes in the mouth; like death and
estrangement it shows the man at last that to
work for self is to work for disappointment.
But though this first rule seems so simple and
easy, do not quickly pass it by. For these
vices of the ordinary man pass through a subtle
transformation and reappear with changed
aspect in the heart of the disciple. It is easy
to say, I will not be ambitious: it is not so
easy to say, when the Master reads my heart
he will find it clean utterly. The pure artist
who works for the love of his work is sometimes
more firmly planted on the right road
than the occultist, who fancies he has removed
his interest from self, but who has in reality
only enlarged the limits of experience and
desire, and transferred his interest to the things
which concern his larger span of life. The
same principle applies to the other two seemingly
simple rules. Linger over them and do
not let yourself be easily deceived by your own
heart. For now, at the threshold, a mistake
can be corrected. But carry it on with you
and it will grow and come to fruition, or else
you must suffer bitterly in its destruction.
_Note on Rule 5_.--Do not fancy you can
stand aside from the bad man or the foolish
man. They are yourself, though in a less
degree than your friend or your master. But
if you allow the idea of separateness from any
evil thing or person to grow up within you,
by so doing you create Karma, which will
bind you to that thing or person till your soul
recognises that it cannot be isolated. Remember
that the sin and shame of the world are
your sin and shame; for you are a part of it;
your Karma is inextricably interwoven with
the great Karma. And before you can attain
knowledge you must have passed through all
places, foul and clean alike. Therefore, remember
that the soiled garment you shrink
from touching may have been yours yesterday,
may be yours tomorrow. And if you turn
with horror from it, when it is flung upon
your shoulders, it will cling the more closely
to you. The self-righteous man makes for
himself a bed of mire. Abstain because it is
right to abstain--not that yourself shall be
kept clean.
_Note on Rule 17._--These four words
seem, perhaps, too slight to stand alone. The
disciple may say, Should I study these thoughts
at all did I not seek out the way? Yet do
not pass on hastily. Pause and consider awhile.
Is it the way you desire, or is it that there
is a dim perspective in your visions of great
heights to be scaled by yourself, of a great
future for you to compass? Be warned. The
way is to be sought for its own sake, not with
regard to your feet that shall tread it.
There is a correspondence between this rule
and the 17th of the 2nd series. When after
ages of struggle and many victories the final
battle is won, the final secret demanded, then
you are prepared for a further path. When
the final secret of this great lesson is told, in
it is opened the mystery of the new way--a
path which leads out of all human experience,
and which is utterly beyond human perception
or imagination. At each of these points
it is needful to pause long and consider well.
At each of these points it is necessary to be
sure that the way is chosen for its own sake.
The way and the truth come first, then follows
the life.
_Note on Rule 20_.--Seek it by testing all
experience, and remember that when I say this
I do not say, Yield to the seductions of sense
in order to know it. Before you have become
an occultist you may do this; but not afterwards.
When you have chosen and entered
the path you cannot yield to these seductions
without shame. Yet you can experience them
without horror: can weigh, observe and test
them, and wait with the patience of confidence
for the hour when they shall affect you no
longer. But do not condemn the man that
yields; stretch out your hand to him as a
brother pilgrim whose feet have become heavy
with mire. Remember, O disciple, that great
though the gulf may be between the good man
and the sinner, it is greater between the good
man and the man who has attained knowledge;
it is immeasurable between the good man and
the one on the threshold of divinity. Therefore
be wary lest too soon you fancy yourself
a thing apart from the mass. When you have
found the beginning of the way the star of
your soul will show its light; and by that light
you will perceive how great is the darkness
in which it burns. Mind, heart, brain, all are
obscure and dark until the first great battle
has been won. Be not appalled and terrified
by this sight; keep your eyes fixed on the small
light and it will grow. But let the darkness
within help you to understand the helplessness
of those who have seen no light, whose souls
are in profound gloom. Blame them not, shrink
not from them, but try to lift a little of the
heavy Karma of the world; give your aid to
the few strong hands that hold back the
powers of darkness from obtaining complete
victory. Then do you enter into a partnership
of joy, which brings indeed terrible toil and
profound sadness, but also a great and ever-increasing
delight.
_Note on Rule 21._--The opening of the
bloom is the glorious moment when perception
awakes: with it comes confidence, knowledge,
certainty. The pause of the soul is the moment
of wonder, and the next moment of satisfaction,
that is the silence.
Know, O disciple, that those who have
passed through the silence, and felt its peace
and retained its strength, they long that you
shall pass through it also. Therefore, in the
Hall of Learning, when he is capable of entering
there, the disciple will always find his
master.
Those that ask shall have. But though the
ordinary man asks perpetually, his voice is not
heard. For he asks with his mind only; and
the voice of the mind is only heard on that
plane on which the mind acts. Therefore, not
until the first twenty-one rules are past do I
say those that ask shall have.
To read, in the occult sense, is to read with
the eyes of the spirit. To ask is to feel the
hunger within--the yearning of spiritual
aspiration. To be able to read means having
obtained the power in a small degree of gratifying
that hunger. When the disciple is ready
to learn, then he is accepted, acknowledged,
recognised. It must be so, for he has lit his
lamp, and it cannot be hidden. But to learn
is impossible until the first great battle has
been won. The mind may recognise truth, but
the spirit cannot receive it. Once having passed
through the storm and attained the peace, it is
then always possible to learn, even though the
disciple waver, hesitate, and turn aside. The
voice of the silence remains within him, and
though he leave the path utterly, yet one day
it will resound and rend him asunder and
separate his passions from his divine possibilities.
Then with pain and desperate cries
from the deserted lower self he will return.
Therefore I say, Peace be with you. My
peace I give unto you can only be said by the
Master to the beloved disciples who are as
himself. There are even some amongst those
who are ignorant of the Eastern wisdom to
whom this can be said, and to whom it can
daily be said with more completeness.
Regard the three truths. They are equal.
PART II
_Note on Sect. II_--To be able to stand is
to have confidence; to be able to hear is to
have opened the doors of the soul; to be able
to see is to have attained perception; to be
able to speak is to have attained the power
of helping others; to have conquered desire
is to have learned how to use and control the
self; to have attained to self-knowledge is to
have retreated to the inner fortress from
whence the personal man can be viewed with
impartiality; to have seen thy soul in its bloom
is to have obtained a momentary glimpse in
thyself of the transfiguration which shall eventually
make thee more than man; to recognise
is to achieve the great task of gazing upon the
blazing light without dropping the eyes and
not falling back in terror, as though before
some ghastly phantom. This happens to some,
and so when the victory is all but won it is lost;
to hear the voice of the silence is to understand
that from within comes the only true
guidance; to go to the Hall of Learning is to
enter the state in which learning becomes possible.
Then will many words be written there
for thee, and written in fiery letters for thee
easily to read. For when the disciple is ready
the Master is ready also.
_Note on Rule 5_.--Look for it and listen to
it first in your own heart. At first you may
say it is not there; when I search I find only
discord. Look deeper. If again you are disappointed,
pause and look deeper again. There
is a natural melody, an obscure fount in every
human heart. It may be hidden over and utterly
concealed and silenced--but it is there.
At the very base of your nature you will find
faith, hope, and love. He that chooses evil
refuses to look within himself, shuts his ears to
the melody of his heart, as he blinds his eyes
to the light of his soul. He does this because
he finds it easier to live in desires. But underneath
all life is the strong current that cannot
be checked; the great waters are there in reality.
Find them, and you will perceive that none,
not the most wretched of creatures, but is a
part of it, however he blind himself to the
fact and build up for himself a phantasmal
outer form of horror. In that sense it is that I
say to you--All those beings among whom
you struggle on are fragments of the Divine.
And so deceptive is the illusion in which you
live, that it is hard to guess where you will first
detect the sweet voice in the hearts of others.
But know that it is certainly within yourself.
Look for it there, and once having heard it, you
will more readily recognise it around you.
_Note on Rule 10._--From an absolutely impersonal
point of view, otherwise your sight is
colored. Therefore impersonality must first be
understood.
Intelligence is impartial: no man is your
enemy: no man is your friend. All alike are
your teachers. Your enemy becomes a mystery
that must be solved, even though it take ages:
for man must be understood. Your friend becomes
a part of yourself, an extension of yourself,
a riddle hard to read. Only one thing is
more difficult to know--your own heart. Not
until the bonds of personality are loosed, can
that profound mystery of self begin to be seen.
Not till you stand aside from it will it in any
way reveal itself to your understanding. Then,
and not till then, can you grasp and guide it.
Then, and not till then, can you use all its
powers, and devote them to a worthy service.
_Note on Rule 13._--It is impossible to help
others till you have obtained some certainty
of your own. When you have learned the first
21 rules and have entered the Hall of Learning
with your powers developed and sense unchained,
then you will find there is a fount
within you from which speech will arise.
After the 13th rule I can add no words to
what is already written.
My peace I give unto you. [Greek: D]
These notes are written only for those to
whom I give my peace; those who can read
what I have written with the inner as well as
the outer sense.
COMMENTS
I
"BEFORE THE EYES CAN SEE THEY MUST BE
INCAPABLE OF TEARS."
It should be very clearly remembered by
all readers of this volume that it is a book
which may appear to have some little philosophy
in it, but very little sense, to those who
believe it to be written in ordinary English.
To the many, who read in this manner it will
be--not caviare so much as olives strong of
their salt. Be warned and read but a little in
this way.
There is another way of reading, which is,
indeed, the only one of any use with many
authors. It is reading, not between the lines
but within the words. In fact, it is deciphering
a profound cipher. All alchemical works
are written in the cipher of which I speak;
it has been used by the great philosophers and
poets of all time. It is used systematically by
the adepts in life and knowledge, who, seemingly
giving out their deepest wisdom, hide in
the very words which frame it its actual mystery.
They cannot do more. There is a law of
nature which insists that a man shall read these
mysteries for himself. By no other method can
he obtain them. A man who desires to live
must eat his food himself: this is the simple law
of nature--which applies also to the higher
life. A man who would live and act in it cannot
be fed like a babe with a spoon; he must
eat for himself.
I propose to put into new and sometimes
plainer language parts of "Light on the Path";
but whether this effort of mine will really be
any interpretation I cannot say. To a deaf
and dumb man, a truth is made no more intelligible
if, in order to make it so, some misguided
linguist translates the words in which
it is couched into every living or dead language,
and shouts these different phrases in his ear.
But for those who are not deaf and dumb one
language is generally easier than the rest; and
it is to such as these I address myself.
The very first aphorisms of "Light on the
Path," included under Number I, have, I know
well, remained sealed as to their inner meaning
to many who have otherwise followed the purpose
of the book.
There are four proven and certain truths
with regard to the entrance to occultism. The
Gates of Gold bar that threshold; yet there are
some who pass those gates and discover the
sublime and illimitable beyond. In the far
spaces of Time all will pass those gates. But
I am one who wish that Time, the great deluder,
were not so over-masterful. To those
who know and love him I have no word to
say; but to the others--and there are not so
very few as some may fancy--to whom the
passage of Time is as the stroke of a sledge-hammer,
and the sense of Space like the bars
of an iron cage, I will translate and re-translate
until they understand fully.
The four truths written on the first page
of "Light on the Path," refer to the trial initiation
of the would-be occultist. Until he has
passed it, he cannot even reach to the latch of
the gate which admits to knowledge. Knowledge
is man's greatest inheritance; why, then,
should he not attempt to reach it by every
possible road? The laboratory is not the only
ground for experiment; _science_, we must remember,
is derived from _sciens_, present participle
of _scire_, "to know,"--its origin is similar
to that of the word "discern," to "ken."
Science does not therefore deal only with
matter, no, not even its subtlest and obscurest
forms. Such an idea is born merely of the idle
spirit of the age. Science is a word which
covers all forms of knowledge. It is exceedingly
interesting to hear what chemists discover,
and to see them finding their way through the
densities of matter to its finer forms; but there
are other kinds of knowledge than this, and it
is not every one who restricts his (strictly scientific)
desire for knowledge to experiments
which are capable of being tested by the physical
senses.
Everyone who is not a dullard, or a man
stupefied by some predominant vice, has
guessed or even perhaps discovered with some
certainty, that there are subtle senses lying
within the physical senses. There is nothing at
all extraordinary in this; if we took the trouble
to call Nature into the witness box we should
find that everything which is perceptible to the
ordinary sight, has something even more important
than itself hidden within it; the microscope
has opened a world to us, but within
those encasements which the microscope reveals,
lies a mystery which no machinery can
probe.
The whole world is animated and lit, down
to its most material shapes, by a world within
it. This inner world is called Astral by some
people, and it is as good a word as any other,
though it merely means starry; but the stars, as
Locke pointed out, are luminous bodies which
give light of themselves. This quality is characteristic
of the life which lies within matter;
for those who see it, need no lamp to see it by.
The word star, moreover, is derived from the
Anglo-Saxon "stir-an," to steer, to stir, to move,
and undeniably it is the inner life which is
master of the outer, just as a man's brain
guides the movements of his lips. So that although
Astral is no very excellent word in
itself, I am content to use it for my present
purpose.
The whole of "Light on the Path" is written
in an astral cipher and can therefore only be
deciphered by one who reads astrally. And
its teaching is chiefly directed towards the cultivation
and development of the astral life.
Until the first step has been taken in this development,
the swift knowledge, which is called
intuition with certainty, is impossible to man.
And this positive and certain intuition is the
only form of knowledge which enables a man
to work rapidly or reach his true and high
estate, within the limit of his conscious effort.
To obtain knowledge by experiment is too
tedious a method for those who aspire to accomplish
real work; he who gets it by certain
intuition, lays hands on its various forms with
supreme rapidity, by fierce effort of will; as a
determined workman grasps his tools, indifferent
to their weight or any other difficulty
which may stand in his way. He does not stay
for each to be tested--he uses such as he sees
are fittest.
All the rules contained in "Light on the
Path," are written for all disciples, but only
for disciples---those who "take knowledge."
To none else but the student in this school are
its laws of any use or interest.
To all who are interested seriously in Occultism,
I say first--take knowledge. To him
who hath shall be given. It is useless to wait for
it. The womb of Time will close before you,
and in later days you will remain unborn, without
power. I therefore say to those who have
any hunger or thirst for knowledge, attend to
these rules.
They are none of my handicraft or invention.
They are merely the phrasing of laws in
super-nature, the putting into words truths as
absolute in their own sphere, as those laws
which govern the conduct of the earth and its
atmosphere.
The senses spoken of in these four statements
are the astral, or inner senses.
No man desires to see that light which
illumines the spaceless soul until pain and sorrow
and despair have driven him away from
the life of ordinary humanity. First he wears
out pleasure; then he wears out pain--till, at
last, his eyes become incapable of tears.
This is a truism, although I know perfectly
well that it will meet with a vehement denial
from many who are in sympathy with thoughts
which spring from the inner life. _To see_ with
the astral sense of sight is a form of activity
which it is difficult for us to understand immediately.
The scientist knows very well what a
miracle is achieved by each child that is born
into the world, when it first conquers its eyesight
and compels it to obey its brain. An equal
miracle is performed with each sense certainly,
but this ordering of sight is perhaps the most
stupendous effort. Yet the child does it almost
unconsciously, by force of the powerful heredity
of habit. No one now is aware that he
has ever done it at all; just as we cannot recollect
the individual movements which enabled
us to walk up a hill a year ago. This arises
from the fact that we move and live and have
our being in matter. Our knowledge of it has
become intuitive.
With our astral life it is very much otherwise.
For long ages past, man has paid very
little attention to it--so little, that he has
practically lost the use of his senses. It is true,
that in every civilization the star arises, and
man confesses, with more or less of folly and
confusion, that he knows himself to be. But
most often he denies it, and in being a materialist
becomes that strange thing, a being
which cannot see its own light, a thing of life
which will not live, an astral animal which has
eyes, and ears, and speech, and power, yet
will use none of these gifts. This is the case,
and the habit of ignorance has become so confirmed,
that now none will see with the inner
vision till agony has made the physical eyes not
only unseeing, but without tears--the moisture
of life. To be incapable of tears is to have
faced and conquered the simple human nature,
and to have attained an equilibrium which cannot
be shaken by personal emotions. It does
not imply any hardness of heart, or any indifference.
It does not imply the exhaustion of
sorrow, when the suffering soul seems powerless
to suffer acutely any longer; it does not
mean the deadness of old age, when emotion is
becoming dull because the strings which vibrate
to it are wearing out. None of these conditions
are fit for a disciple, and if any one of
them exist in him it must be overcome before
the path can be entered upon. Hardness of
heart belongs to the selfish man, the egotist, to
whom the gate is forever closed. Indifference
belongs to the fool and the false philosopher;
those whose lukewarmness makes them mere
puppets, not strong enough to face the realities
of existence. When pain or sorrow has worn
out the keenness of suffering, the result is a
lethargy not unlike that which accompanies old
age, as it is usually experienced by men and
women. Such a condition makes the entrance
to the path impossible, because the first step is
one of difficulty and needs a strong man, full
of psychic and physical vigor, to attempt it.
It is a truth, that, as Edgar Allan Poe said,
the eyes are the windows for the soul, the windows
of that haunted palace in which it dwells.
This is the very nearest interpretation into ordinary
language of the meaning of the text. If
grief, dismay, disappointment or pleasure, can
shake the soul so that it loses its fixed hold on
the calm spirit which inspires it, and the moisture
of life breaks forth, drowning knowledge
in sensation, then all is blurred, the windows
are darkened, the light is useless. This is as
literal a fact as that if a man, at the edge of a
precipice, loses his nerve through some sudden
emotion he will certainly fall. The poise of the
body, the balance, must be preserved, not only
in dangerous places, but even on the level
ground, and with all the assistance Nature
gives us by the law of gravitation. So it is with
the soul, it is the link between the outer body
and the starry spirit beyond; the divine spark
dwells in the still place where no convulsion of
Nature can shake the air; this is so always. But
the soul may lose its hold on that, its knowledge
of it, even though these two are part
of one whole; and it is by emotion, by
sensation, that this hold is loosed. To suffer
either pleasure or pain, causes a vivid vibration
which is, to the consciousness of man,
life. Now this sensibility does not lessen when
the disciple enters upon his training; it
increases. It is the first test of his strength;
he must suffer, must enjoy or endure, more
keenly than other men, while yet he has taken
on him a duty which does not exist for other
men, that of not allowing his suffering to shake
him from his fixed purpose. He has, in fact,
at the first step to take himself steadily in
hand and put the bit into his own mouth;
no one else can do it for him.
The first four aphorisms of "Light on the
Path," refer entirely to astral development.
This development must be accomplished to a
certain extent--that is to say it must be fully
entered upon--before the remainder of the
book is really intelligible except to the intellect;
in fact, before it can be read as a practical,
not a metaphysical treatise.
In one of the great mystic Brotherhoods,
there are four ceremonies, that take place early
in the year, which practically illustrate and
elucidate these aphorisms. They are ceremonies
in which only novices take part, for they
are simply services of the threshold. But it
will show how serious a thing it is to become
a disciple, when it is understood that these
are all ceremonies of sacrifice. The first one
is this of which I have been speaking. The
keenest enjoyment, the bitterest pain, the
anguish of loss and despair, are brought to
bear on the trembling soul, which has not yet
found light in the darkness, which is helpless
as a blind man is, and until these shocks can
be endured without loss of equilibrium the
astral senses must remain sealed. This is the
merciful law. The "medium," or "spiritualist,"
who rushes into the psychic world without
preparation, is a law-breaker, a breaker of
the laws of super-nature. Those who break
Nature's laws lose their physical health; those
who break the laws of the inner life, lose their
psychic health. "Mediums" become mad, suicides,
miserable creatures devoid of moral
sense; and often end as unbelievers, doubters
even of that which their own eyes have seen.
The disciple is compelled to become his own
master before he adventures on this perilous
path, and attempts to face those beings who
live and work in the astral world, and whom
we call masters, because of their great knowledge
and their ability to control not only
themselves but the forces around them.
The condition of the soul when it lives for
the life of sensation as distinguished from that
of knowledge, is vibratory or oscillating, as
distinguished from fixed. That is the nearest
literal representation of the fact; but it is only
literal to the intellect, not to the intuition.
For this part of man's consciousness a different
vocabulary is needed. The idea of "fixed"
might perhaps be transposed into that of "at
home." In sensation no permanent home can
be found, because change is the law of this
vibratory existence. That fact is the first one
which must be learned by the disciple. It is
useless to pause and weep for a scene in a
kaleidoscope which has passed.
It is a very well-known fact, one with which
Bulwer Lytton dealt with great power, that
an intolerable sadness is the very first experience
of the neophyte in Occultism. A sense of
blankness falls upon him which makes the
world a waste, and life a vain exertion. This
follows his first serious contemplation of the
abstract. In gazing, or even in attempting to
gaze, on the ineffable mystery of his own higher
nature, he himself causes the initial trial to
fall on him. The oscillation between pleasure
and pain ceases for--perhaps an instant of
time; but that is enough to have cut him loose
from his fast moorings in the world of sensation.
He has experienced, however briefly, the
greater life; and he goes on with ordinary
existence weighted by a sense of unreality, of
blank, of horrid negation. This was the nightmare
which visited Bulwer Lytton's neophyte
in "Zanoni"; and even Zanoni himself, who
had learned great truths, and been entrusted
with great powers, had not actually passed the
threshold where fear and hope, despair and
joy seem at one moment absolute realities, at
the next mere forms of fancy.
This initial trial is often brought on us by
life itself. For life is after all, the great
teacher. We return to study it, after we have
acquired power over it, just as the master in
chemistry learns more in the laboratory than
his pupil does. There are persons so near the
door of knowledge that life itself prepares
them for it, and no individual hand has to
invoke the hideous guardian of the entrance.
These must naturally be keen and powerful
organizations, capable of the most vivid pleasure;
then pain comes and fills its great duty.
The most intense forms of suffering fall on
such a nature, till at last it arouses from its
stupor of consciousness, and by the force of its
internal vitality steps over the threshold into a
place of peace. Then the vibration of life loses
its power of tyranny. The sensitive nature
must suffer still; but the soul has freed itself
and stands aloof, guiding the life towards its
greatness. Those who are the subjects of Time,
and go slowly through all his spaces, live on
through a long drawn series of sensations, and
suffer a constant mingling of pleasure and of
pain. They do not dare to take the snake of
self in a steady grasp and conquer it, so becoming
divine; but prefer to go on fretting through
divers experiences, suffering blows from the
opposing forces.
When one of these subjects of Time decides
to enter on the path of Occultism, it is this
which is his first task. If life has not taught
it to him, if he is not strong enough to teach
himself and if he has power enough to demand
the help of a master, then this fearful trial,
depicted in Zanoni, is put upon him. The
oscillation in which he lives, is for an instant
stilled; and he has to survive the shock of
facing what seems to him at first sight as the
abyss of nothingness. Not till he has learned
to dwell in this abyss, and has found its peace,
is it possible for his eyes to have become
incapable of tears.
II
"BEFORE THE EAR CAN HEAR, IT MUST
HAVE LOST ITS SENSITIVENESS."
The first four rules of "Light on the Path"
are, undoubtedly, curious though the statement
may seem, the most important in the whole
book, save one only. Why they are so important
is that they contain the vital law, the very
creative essence of the astral man. And it is
only in the astral (or self-illuminated) consciousness
that the rules which follow them
have any living meaning. Once attain to the
use of the astral senses and it becomes a matter
of course that one commences to use them;
and the later rules are but guidance in their
use. When I speak like this I mean, naturally,
that the first four rules are the ones which are
of importance and interest to those who read
them in print upon a page. When they are
engraved on a man's heart and on his life, unmistakably
then the rules become not merely
interesting, or extraordinary, metaphysical
statements, but actual facts in life which have
to be grasped and experienced.
The four rules stand written in the great
chamber of every actual lodge of a living
Brotherhood. Whether the man is about to
sell his soul to the devil, like Faust; whether
he is to be worsted in the battle, like Hamlet;
or whether he is to pass on within the precincts;
in any case these words are for him.
The man can choose between virtue and vice,
but not until he is a man; a babe or a wild
animal cannot so choose. Thus with the disciple,
he must first become a disciple before
he can even see the paths to choose between.
This effort of creating himself as a disciple,
the re-birth, he must do for himself without
any teacher. Until the four rules are learned
no teacher can be of any use to him; and that
is why "the Masters" are referred to in the
way they are. No real masters, whether adepts
in power, in love, or in blackness, can affect a
man till these four rules are passed.
Tears, as I have said, may be called the
moisture of life. The soul must have laid aside
the emotions of humanity, must have secured
a balance which cannot be shaken by misfortune,
before its eyes can open upon the
super-human world.
The voice of the Masters is always in the
world; but only those hear it whose ears are
no longer receptive of the sounds which affect
the personal life. Laughter no longer lightens
the heart, anger may no longer enrage it, tender
words bring it no balm. For that within,
to which the ears are as an outer gateway, is
an unshaken place of peace in itself which no
person can disturb.
As the eyes are the windows of the soul, so
are the ears its gateways or doors. Through
them comes knowledge of the confusion of the
world. The great ones who have conquered
life, who have become more than disciples,
stand at peace and undisturbed amid the
vibration and kaleidoscopic movement of
humanity. They hold within themselves a certain
knowledge, as well as a perfect peace; and
thus they are not roused or excited by the
partial and erroneous fragments of information
which are brought to their ears by the changing
voices of those around them. When I speak
of knowledge, I mean intuitive knowledge.
This certain information can never be obtained
by hard work, or by experiment; for these
methods are only applicable to matter, and
matter is in itself a perfectly uncertain substance,
continually affected by change. The
most absolute and universal laws of natural
and physical life, as understood by the scientist,
will pass away when the life of this universe
has passed away, and only its soul is left in
the silence. What then will be the value of
the knowledge of its laws acquired by industry
and observation? I pray that no reader or
critic will imagine that by what I have said I
intend to depreciate or disparage acquired
knowledge, or the work of scientists. On the
contrary, I hold that scientific men are the
pioneers of modern thought. The days of literature
and of art, when poets and sculptors saw
the divine light, and put it into their own
great language--these days lie buried in the
long past with the ante-Phidian sculptors and
the pre-Homeric poets. The mysteries no longer
rule the world of thought and beauty; human
life is the governing power, not that which
lies beyond it. But the scientific workers are
progressing, not so much by their own will as
by sheer force of circumstances, towards the
far line which divides things interpretable from
things uninterpretable. Every fresh discovery
drives them a step onward. Therefore do I
very highly esteem the knowledge obtained by
work and experiment.
But intuitive knowledge is an entirely different
thing. It is not acquired in any way, but
is, so to speak, a faculty of the soul; not the
animal soul, that which becomes a ghost after
death, when lust or liking or the memory of
ill deeds holds it to the neighborhood of
human beings, but the divine soul which
animates all the external forms of the individualized
being.
This is, of course, a faculty which indwells
in that soul, which is inherent. The would-be
disciple has to arouse himself to the consciousness
of it by a fierce and resolute and
indomitable effort of will. I use the word
indomitable for a special reason. Only he who
is untameable, who cannot be dominated, who
knows he has to play the lord over men, over
facts, over all things save his own divinity
can arouse this faculty. "With faith all things,
are possible." The skeptical laugh at faith and
pride themselves on its absence from their own
minds. The truth is that faith is a great
engine, an enormous power, which in fact can
accomplish all things. For it is the convenant
or engagement between man's divine part and
his lesser self.
The use of this engine is quite necessary
in order to obtain intuitive knowledge; for
unless a man believes such knowledge exists
within himself how can he claim and use it?
Without it he is more helpless than any
drift-wood or wreckage on the great tides of
the ocean. They are cast hither and thither
indeed; so may a man be by the chances of
fortune. But such adventures are purely
external and of very small account. A slave
may be dragged through the streets in chains,
and yet retain the quiet soul of a philosopher,
as was well seen in the person of Epictetus. A
man may have every worldly prize in his possession,
and stand absolute master of his
personal fate, to all appearance, and yet he
knows no peace, no certainty, because he is
shaken within himself by every tide of thought
that he touches on. And these changing tides
do not merely sweep the man bodily hither
and thither like drift-wood on the water; that
would be nothing. They enter into the gate-ways
of his soul, and wash over that soul and
make it blind and blank and void of all permanent
intelligence so that passing impressions
affect it.
To make my meaning plainer I will use an
illustration. Take an author at his writing, a
painter at his canvas, a composer listening to
the melodies that dawn upon his glad imagination;
let any one of these workers pass his daily
hours by a wide window looking on a busy
street. The power of the animating life blinds
sight and hearing alike, and the great traffic of
the city goes by like nothing but a passing
pageant. But a man whose mind is empty,
whose day is objectless, sitting at that same
window, notes the passers-by and remembers
the faces that chance to please or interest him.
So it is with the mind in its relation to eternal
truth. If it no longer transmits its fluctuations,
its partial knowledge, its unreliable information
to the soul, then in the inner place of
peace already found when the first rule has
been learned--in that inner place there leaps
into flame the light of actual knowledge. Then
the ears begin to hear. Very dimly, very
faintly at first. And, indeed, so faint and
tender are these first indications of the commencement
of true actual life, that they are
sometimes pushed aside as mere fancies, mere
imaginings.
But before these are capable of becoming
more than mere imaginings, the abyss of
nothingness has to be faced in another form.
The utter silence which can only come by closing
the ears to all transitory sounds comes as
a more appalling horror than even the formless
emptiness of space. Our only mental conception
of blank space is, I think, when reduced
to its barest element of thought, that of black
darkness. This is a great physical terror to
most persons, and when regarded as an eternal
and unchangeable fact, must mean to the mind
the idea of annihilation rather than anything
else. But it is the obliteration of one sense
only; and the sound of a voice may come and
bring comfort even in the profoundest darkness.
The disciple, having found his way into
this blackness, which is the fearful abyss, must
then so shut the gates of his soul that no
comforter can enter there nor any enemy. And
it is in making this second effort that the fact
of pain and pleasure being but one sensation
becomes recognisable by those who have before
been unable to perceive it. For when the solitude
of silence is reached the soul hungers so
fiercely and passionately for some sensation on
which to rest, that a painful one would be as
keenly welcomed as a pleasant one. When
this consciousness is reached the courageous
man by seizing and retaining it, may destroy
the "sensitiveness" at once. When the ear no
longer discriminates between that which is
pleasant or that which is painful, it will no
longer be affected by the voices of others. And
then it is safe and possible to open the doors
of the soul.
"Sight" is the first effort, and the easiest,
because it is accomplished partly by an intellectual
effort. The intellect can conquer the
heart, as is well known in ordinary life. Therefore,
this preliminary step still lies within the
dominion of matter. But the second step allows
of no such assistance, nor of any material aid
whatever. Of course, I mean by material aid
the action of the brain, or emotions, or human
soul. In compelling the ears to listen only to
the eternal silence, the being we call man
becomes something which is no longer man. A
very superficial survey of the thousand and
one influences which are brought to bear on
us by others will show that this must be so.
A disciple will fulfil all the duties of his manhood;
but he will fulfil them according to
his own sense of right, and not according to
that of any person or body of persons. This
is a very evident result of following the creed
of knowledge instead of any of the blind
creeds.
To obtain the pure silence necessary for the
disciple, the heart and emotions, the brain and
its intellectualisms, have to be put aside. Both
are but mechanisms, which will perish with the
span of man's life. It is the essence beyond,
that which is the motive power, and makes man
live, that is now compelled to rouse itself and
act. Now is the greatest hour of danger. In
the first trial men go mad with fear; of this
first trial Bulwer Lytton wrote. No novelist
has followed to the second trial, though some
of the poets have. Its subtlety and great
danger lies in the fact that in the measure of a
man's strength is the measure of his chance of
passing beyond it or coping with it at all. If
he has power enough to awaken that unaccustomed
part of himself, the supreme essence,
then has he power to lift the gates of gold,
then is he the true alchemist, in possession of
the elixir of life.
It is at this point of experience that the
occultist becomes separated from all other men
and enters on to a life which is his own; on to
the path of individual accomplishment instead
of mere obedience to the genii which rule our
earth. This raising of himself into an individual
power does in reality identify him with
the nobler forces of life and make him one
with them. For they stand beyond the powers
of this earth and the laws of this universe. Here
lies man's only hope of success in the great
effort; to leap right away from his present
standpoint to his next and at once become an
intrinsic part of the divine power as he has
been an intrinsic part of the intellectual power,
of the great nature to which he belongs. He
stands always in advance of himself, if such
a contradiction can be understood. It is the
men who adhere to this position, who believe
in their innate power of progress, and that
of the whole race, who are the elder brothers,
the pioneers. Each man has to accomplish the
great leap for himself and without aid; yet it is
something of a staff to lean on to know that
others have gone on that road. It is possible
that they have been lost in the abyss; no
matter, they have had the courage to enter it.
Why I say that it is possible they have been
lost in the abyss is because of this fact, that one
who has passed through is unrecognisable until
the other and altogether new condition is attained
by both. It is unnecessary to enter upon
the subject of what that condition is at present.
I only say this, that in the early state in
which man is entering upon the silence he loses
knowledge of his friends, of his lovers, of all
who have been near and dear to him; and also
loses sight of his teachers and of those who
have preceded him on his way. I explain this
because scarce one passes through without
bitter complaint. Could but the mind grasp
beforehand that the silence must be complete,
surely this complaint need not arise as a hindrance
on the path. Your teacher, or your
predecessor may hold your hand in his, and
give you the utmost sympathy the human heart
is capable of. But when the silence and the
darkness comes, you lose all knowledge of him;
you are alone and he cannot help you, not
because his power is gone, but because you
have invoked your great enemy.
By your great enemy, I mean yourself. If
you have the power to face your own soul in
the darkness and silence, you will have conquered
the physical or animal self which dwells
in sensation only.
This statement, I feel, will appear involved;
but in reality it is quite simple. Man, when
he has reached his fruition, and civilization is
at its height, stands between two fires. Could
he but claim his great inheritance, the encumbrance
of the mere animal life would fall away
from him without difficulty. But he does not
do this, and so the races of men flower and
then droop and die and decay off the face of
the earth, however splendid the bloom may
have been. And it is left to the individual to
make this great effort; to refuse to be terrified
by his greater nature, to refuse to be drawn
back by his lesser or more material self. Every
individual who accomplishes this is a redeemer
of the race. He may not blazon forth his deeds,
he may dwell in secret and silence; but it is
a fact that he forms a link between man and
his divine part; between the known and the
unknown; between the stir of the marketplace
and the stillness of the snow-capped Himalayas.
He has not to go about among men in
order to form this link; in the astral he _is_ that
link, and this fact makes him a being of
another order from the rest of mankind. Even
so early on the road towards knowledge, when
he has but taken the second step, he finds his
footing more certain, and becomes conscious
that he is a recognised part of a whole.
This is one of the contradictions in life
which occur so constantly that they afford fuel
to the fiction writer. The occultist finds them
become much more marked as he endeavors to
live the life he has chosen. As he retreats within
himself and becomes self-dependent, he finds
himself more definitely becoming part of a
great tide of definite thought and feeling.
When he has learned the first lesson, conquered
the hunger of the heart, and refused
to live on the love of others, he finds himself
more capable of inspiring love. As he flings
life away it comes to him in a new form and
with a new meaning. The world has always
been a place with many contradictions in it,
to the man; when he becomes a disciple he
finds life is describable as a series of paradoxes.
This is a fact in nature, and the reason for it is
intelligible enough. Man's soul "dwells like
a star apart," even that of the vilest among
us; while his consciousness is under the law of
vibratory and sensuous life. This alone is
enough to cause those complications of character
which are the material for the novelist;
every man is a mystery, to friend and enemy
alike, and to himself. His motives are often
undiscoverable, and he cannot probe to them or
know why he does this or that. The disciple's
effort is that of awakening consciousness in
this starry part of himself, where his power
and divinity lie sleeping. As this consciousness
becomes awakened, the contradictions in the
man himself become more marked than ever;
and so do the paradoxes which he lives
through. For, of course man creates his own
life; and "adventures are to the adventurous"
is one of those wise proverbs which are drawn
from actual fact, and cover the whole area of
human experience.
Pressure on the divine part of man re-acts
upon the animal part. As the silent soul
awakes it makes the ordinary life of the man
more purposeful, more vital, more real, and
responsible. To keep to the two instances
already mentioned, the occultist who has withdrawn
into his own citadel has found his
strength; immediately he becomes aware of
the demands of duty upon him. He does not
obtain his strength by his own right, but because
he is a part of the whole; and as soon as
he is safe from the vibration of life and can
stand unshaken, the outer world cries out to
him to come and labor in it. So with the heart.
When it no longer wishes to take, it is called
upon to give abundantly.
"Light on the Path" has been called a book
of paradoxes, and very justly; what else could
it be, when it deals with the actual personal
experience of the disciple?
To have acquired the astral senses of sight
and hearing; or in other words to have attained
perception and opened the doors of the soul,
are gigantic tasks and may take the sacrifice
of many successive incarnations. And yet, when
the will has reached its strength, the whole
miracle may be worked in a second of time.
Then is the disciple the servant of Time no
longer.
These two first steps are negative; that is
to say they imply retreat from a present condition
of things rather than advance towards
another. The two next are active, implying the
advance into another state of being.
III
"BEFORE THE VOICE CAN SPEAK IN THE
PRESENCE OF THE MASTERS."
Speech is the power of communication; the
moment of entrance into active life is marked
by its attainment.
And now, before I go any further, let me
explain a little the way in which the rules
written down in "Light on the Path" are arranged.
The first seven of those which are
numbered are sub-divisions of the two first
unnumbered rules, those with which I have
dealt in the two preceding papers. The numbered
rules were simply an effort of mine to
make the unnumbered ones more intelligible.
"Eight" to "fifteen" of these numbered rules
belong to this unnumbered rule which is now
my text.
As I have said, these rules are written for
all disciples, but for none else; they are not
of interest to any other persons. Therefore
I trust no one else will trouble to read these
papers any further. The first two rules, which
include the whole of that part of the effort
which necessitates the use of the surgeon's
knife, I will enlarge upon further if I am asked
to do so. But the disciple is expected to deal
with a snake, his lower self, unaided; to suppress
his human passions and emotions by the
force of his own will. He can only demand
assistance of a master when this is accomplished,
or at all events, partially so. Otherwise
the gates and windows of his soul are blurred,
and blinded, and darkened, and no knowledge
can come to him. I am not, in these papers,
purposing to tell a man how to deal with his
own soul; I am simply giving, to the disciple,
knowledge. That I am not writing even now,
so that all who run may read, is owing to the
fact that super-nature prevents this by its own
immutable laws.
The four rules which I have written down
for those in the West who wish to study them,
are as I have said, written in the ante-chamber
of every living Brotherhood; I may add more,
in the ante-chamber of every living or dead
Brotherhood, or Order yet to be formed. When
I speak of a Brotherhood or an Order, I do not
mean an arbitrary constitution made by scholiasts
and intellectualists; I mean an actual
fact in super-nature, a stage of development
towards the absolute God or Good. During
this development the disciple encounters harmony,
pure knowledge, pure truth, in different
degrees, and, as he enters these degrees, he
finds himself becoming part of what might be
roughly described as a layer of human consciousness.
He encounters his equals, men of
his own selfless character, and with them his
association becomes permanent and indissoluble,
because founded on a vital likeness of
nature. To them he becomes pledged by such
vows as need no utterance or framework in
ordinary words. This is one aspect of what I
mean by a Brotherhood.
If the first rules are conquered, the disciple
finds himself standing at the threshold. Then
if his will is sufficiently resolute his power of
speech comes; a two-fold power. For, as he
advances now, he finds himself entering into
a state of blossoming, where every bud that
opens throws out its several rays or petals. If
he is to exercise his new gift, he must use it
in its two-fold character. He finds in himself
the power to speak in the presence of the
masters; in other words, he has the right to
demand contact with the divinest element of
that state of consciousness into which he has
entered. But he finds himself compelled, by
the nature of his position, to act in two ways
at the same time. He cannot send his voice up
to the heights where sit the gods till he has
penetrated to the deep places where their light
shines not at all. He has come within the grip
of an iron law. If he demands to become a
neophyte, he at once becomes a servant. Yet
his service is sublime, if only from the character
of those who share it. For the masters
are also servants; they serve and claim their
reward afterwards. Part of their service is to
let their knowledge touch him; his first act of
service is to give some of that knowledge to
those who are not yet fit to stand where he
stands. This is no arbitrary decision, made by
any master or teacher or any such person, however
divine. It is a law of that life which the
disciple has entered upon.
Therefore was it written in the inner doorway
of the lodges of the old Egyptian Brotherhood,
"the laborer is worthy of his hire." "Ask
and ye shall have," sounds like something too
easy and simple to be credible. But the disciple
cannot "ask" in the mystic sense in which the
word is used in this scripture until he has
attained the power of helping others.
Why is this? Has the statement too dogmatic
a sound?
Is it too dogmatic to say that a man must
have foothold before he can spring? The position
is the same. If help is given, if work is
done, then there is an actual claim--not what
we call personal claim of payment, but the
claim of co-nature. The divine give, they
demand that you also shall give before you
can be of their kin.
This law is discovered as soon as the disciple
endeavors to speak. For speech is a gift
which comes only to the disciple of power and
knowledge. The spiritualist enters the psychic-astral
world, but he does not find there any
certain speech, unless he at once claims it and
continues to do so. If he is interested in "phenomena,"
or the mere circumstance and accident
of astral life, then he enters no direct ray
of thought or purpose, he merely exists and
amuses himself in the astral life as he has
existed and amused himself in the physical life.
Certainly there are one or two simple lessons
which the psychic-astral can teach him, just
as there are simple lessons which material and
intellectual life teach him. And these lessons
have to be learned; the man who proposes to
enter upon the life of the disciple without having
learned the early and simple lessons must
always suffer from his ignorance. They are
vital, and have to be studied in a vital manner;
experienced through and through, over and
over again, so that each part of the nature has
been penetrated by them.
To return. In claiming the power of speech,
as it is called, the Neophyte cries out to the
Great One who stands foremost in the ray of
knowledge on which he has entered, to give
him guidance. When he does this, his voice is
hurled back by the power he has approached,
and echoes down to the deep recesses of human
ignorance. In some confused and blurred manner
the news that there is knowledge and a
beneficent power which teaches is carried to
as many men as will listen to it. No disciple
can cross the threshold without communicating
this news, and placing it on record in some
fashion or other.
He stands horror-struck at the imperfect
and unprepared manner in which he has done
this; and then comes the desire to do it well,
and with the desire thus to help others comes
the power. For it is a pure desire, this which
comes upon him; he can gain no credit, no
glory, no personal reward by fulfilling it. And
therefore he obtains the power to fulfil it.
The history of the whole past, so far as we
can trace it, shows very plainly that there is
neither credit, glory, nor reward to be gained
by this first task which is given to the Neophyte.
Mystics have always been sneered at,
and seers disbelieved; those who have had the
added power of intellect have left for posterity
their written record, which to most men appears
unmeaning and visionary, even when the
authors have the advantage of speaking from a
far-off past. The disciple who undertakes the
task, secretly hoping for fame or success, to
appear as a teacher and apostle before the
world, fails even before his task is attempted,
and his hidden hypocrisy poisons his own soul,
and the souls of those he touches. He is
secretly worshiping himself, and this idolatrous
practice must bring its own reward.
The disciple who has the power of entrance,
and is strong enough to pass each barrier, will,
when the divine message comes to his spirit,
forget himself utterly in the new consciousness
which falls on him. If this lofty contact can
really rouse him, he becomes as one of the
divine in his desire to give rather than to take,
in his wish to help rather than be helped, in
his resolution to feed the hungry rather than
take manna from Heaven himself. His nature
is transformed, and the selfishness which
prompts men's actions in ordinary life suddenly
deserts him.
IV
"BEFORE THE VOICE CAN SPEAK IN THE
PRESENCE OF THE MASTERS, IT MUST HAVE
LOST THE POWER TO WOUND."
Those who give merely passing and superficial
attention to the subject of occultism--and
their name is Legion--constantly inquire
why, if adepts in life exist, they do not appear
in the world and show their power. That the
chief body of these wise ones should be understood
to dwell beyond the fastnesses of the
Himalayas, appears to be a sufficient proof that
they are only figures of straw. Otherwise why
place them so far off?
Unfortunately, Nature has done this and
not personal choice or arrangement. There are
certain spots on the earth where the advance
of "civilization" is unfelt, and the nineteenth
century fever is kept at bay. In these favored
places there is always time, always opportunity,
for the realities of life; they are not crowded
out by the doings of an inchoate, money-loving,
pleasure seeking society. While there are
adepts upon the earth, the earth must preserve
to them places of seclusion. This is a fact in
nature which is only an external expression of
a profound fact in super-nature.
The demand of the neophyte remains unheard
until the voice in which it is uttered has
lost the power to wound. This is because the
divine-astral life[A] is a place in which order
reigns, just as it does in natural life. There
is, of course, always the center and the circumference
as there is in nature. Close to the
central heart of life, on any plane, there is
knowledge, there order reigns completely; and
chaos makes dim and confused the outer margin
of the circle. In fact, life in every form
bears a more or less strong resemblance to a
philosophic school. There are always the devotees
to knowledge who forget their own lives
in their pursuit of it; there are always the
flippant crowd who come and go--of such,
Epictetus said that it was [as] easy to teach
them philosophy as to eat custard with a fork.
The same state exists in the super-astral life;
and the adept has an even deeper and more
profound seclusion there in which to dwell.
This place of retreat is so safe, so sheltered,
that no sound which has discord in it can reach
his ears. Why should this be, will be asked at
once, if he is a being of such great powers as
those say who believe in his existence? The
answer seems very apparent. He serves humanity
and identifies himself with the whole world;
he is ready to make vicarious sacrifice for it at
any moment--_by living not by dying for it_.
Why should he not die for it? Because he is
part of the great whole, and one of the most
valuable parts of it. Because he lives under
laws of order which he does not desire to
break. His life is not his own, but that of the
forces which work behind him. He is the
flower of humanity, the bloom which contains
the divine seed. He is, in his own person, a
treasure of the universal nature, which is
guarded and made safe in order that the fruition
shall be perfected. It is only at definite
periods of the world's history that he is allowed
to go among the herd of men as their redeemer.
But for those who have the power to separate
themselves from this herd he is always at hand.
And for those who are strong enough to conquer
the vices of the personal human nature, as
set forth in these four rules, he is consciously
at hand, easily recognised, ready to answer.
[Footnote A: Of course every occultist knows by reading
Eliphas Lévi and other authors that the "astral"
plane is a plane of unequalized forces, and that a
state of confusion necessarily prevails. But this does
not apply to the "divine astral" plane, which is a
plane where wisdom, and therefore order, prevails.]
But this conquering of self implies a destruction
of qualities which most men regard
as not only indestructible but desirable. The
"power to wound" includes much that men
value, not only in themselves, but in others.
The instinct of self-defense and of self-preservation
is part of it; the idea that one has any
right or rights, either as a citizen, or man, or
individual, the pleasant consciousness of self-respect
and of virtue. These are hard sayings
to many; yet they are true. For these words
that I am writing now, and those which I have
written on this subject, are not in any sense
my own. They are drawn from the traditions
of the lodge of the great Brotherhood, which
was once the secret splendor of Egypt. The
rules written in its ante-chamber were the same
as those now written in the ante-chamber of
existing schools. Through all time the wise
men have lived apart from the mass. And
even when some temporary purpose or object
induces one of them to come into the midst of
human life, his seclusion and safety is preserved
as completely as ever. It is part of his
inheritance, part of his position, he has an
actual title to it, and can no more put it aside
than the Duke of Westminster can say he does
not choose to be the Duke of Westminster. In
the various great cities of the world an adept
lives for a while from time to time, or perhaps
only passes through; but all are occasionally
aided by the actual power and presence of one
of these men. Here in London, as in Paris and
St. Petersburgh, there are men high in development.
But they are only known as mystics by
those who have the power to recognise; the
power given by the conquering of self. Otherwise
how could they exist, even for an hour,
in such a mental and psychic atmosphere as is
created by the confusion and disorder of a city?
Unless protected and made safe their own
growth would be interfered with, their work
injured. And the neophyte may meet an adept
in the flesh, may live in the same house with
him, and yet be unable to recognise him, and
unable to make his own voice heard by him. For
no nearness in space, no closeness of relations,
no daily intimacy, can do away with the inexorable
laws which give the adept his seclusion.
No voice penetrates to his inner hearing till it
has become a divine voice, a voice which gives
no utterance to the cries of self. Any lesser
appeal would be as useless, as much a waste of
energy and power, as for mere children who
are learning their alphabet to be taught it by
a professor of philology. Until a man has
become, in heart and spirit, a disciple, he has no
existence for those who are teachers of disciples.
And he becomes this by one method only--the
surrender of his personal humanity.
For the voice to have lost the power to
wound, a man must have reached that point
where he sees himself only as one of the vast
multitudes that live; one of the sands washed
hither and thither by the sea of vibratory existence.
It is said that every grain of sand in the
ocean bed does, in its turn, get washed up on to
the shore and lie for a moment in the sunshine.
So with human beings, they are driven hither
and thither by a great force, and each, in his
turn, finds the sunrays on him. When a man
is able to regard his own life as part of a whole
like this he will no longer struggle in order
to obtain anything for himself. This is the surrender
of personal rights. The ordinary man
expects, not to take equal fortunes with the
rest of the world, but in some points, about
which he cares, to fare better than the others.
The disciple does not expect this. Therefore,
though he be, like Epictetus, a chained slave,
he has no word to say about it. He knows that
the wheel of life turns ceaselessly. Burne Jones
has shown it in his marvellous picture--the
wheel turns, and on it are bound the rich and
the poor, the great and the small--each has
his moment of good fortune when the wheel
brings him uppermost--the King rises and
falls, the poet is _fêted_ and forgotten, the slave
is happy and afterwards discarded. Each in his
turn is crushed as the wheel turns on. The disciple
knows that this is so, and though it is his
duty to make the utmost of the life that is his,
he neither complains of it nor is elated by it,
nor does he complain against the better fortune
of others. All alike, as he well knows, are but
learning a lesson; and he smiles at the socialist
and the reformer who endeavor by sheer force
to re-arrange circumstances which arise out of
the forces of human nature itself. This is but
kicking against the pricks; a waste of life
and energy.
In realizing this a man surrenders his
imagined individual rights, of whatever sort.
That takes away one keen sting which is
common to all ordinary men.
When the disciple has fully recognised that
the very thought of individual rights is only
the outcome of the venomous quality in himself,
that it is the hiss of the snake of self
which poisons with its sting his own life and
the lives of those about him, then he is ready
to take part in a yearly ceremony which is open
to all neophytes who are prepared for it. All
weapons of defense and offense are given up;
all weapons of mind and heart, and brain, and
spirit. Never again can another man be regarded
as a person who can be criticized or
condemned; never again can the neophyte
raise his voice in self-defense or excuse. From
that ceremony he returns into the world as
helpless, as unprotected, as a new-born child.
That, indeed, is what he is. He has begun to
be born again on to the higher plane of life,
that breezy and well-lit plateau from whence
the eyes see intelligently and regard the world
with a new insight.
I have said, a little way back, that after
parting with the sense of individual rights, the
disciple must part also with the sense of self-respect
and of virtue. This may sound a terrible
doctrine, yet all occultists know well that it
is not a doctrine, but a fact. He who thinks
himself holier than another, he who has any
pride in his own exemption from vice or folly,
he who believes himself wise, or in any way
superior to his fellow men, is incapable of
discipleship. A man must become as a little
child before he can enter into the kingdom of
heaven.
Virtue and wisdom are sublime things; but
if they create pride and a consciousness of
separateness from the rest of humanity in the
mind of a man, then they are only the snakes
of self re-appearing in a finer form. At any
moment he may put on his grosser shape and
sting as fiercely as when he inspired the actions
of a murderer who kills for gain or hatred,
or a politician who sacrifices the mass for his
own or his party's interests.
In fact, to have lost the power to wound,
implies that the snake is not only scotched,
but killed. When it is merely stupefied or
lulled to sleep it awakes again and the disciple
uses his knowledge and his power for his own
ends, and is a pupil of the many masters of
the black art, for the road to destruction is very
broad and easy, and the way can be found
blindfold. That it is the way to destruction
is evident, for when a man begins to live for
self he narrows his horizon steadily till at last
the fierce driving inwards leaves him but the
space of [a] pin's-head to dwell in. We have
all seen this phenomenon occur in ordinary life.
A man who becomes selfish isolates himself,
grows less interesting and less agreeable to
others. The sight is an awful one, and people
shrink from a very selfish person at last, as
from a beast of prey. How much more awful is
it when it occurs on the more advanced plane
of life, with the added powers of knowledge,
and through the greater sweep of successive
incarnations!
Therefore I say, pause and think well upon
the threshold. For if the demand of the neophyte
is made without the complete purification,
it will not penetrate the seclusion of the
divine adept, but will evoke the terrible forces
which attend upon the black side of our human
nature.
V
"BEFORE THE SOUL CAN STAND IN THE
PRESENCE OF THE MASTERS, ITS FEET MUST
BE WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF THE HEART."
The word soul, as used here, means the
divine soul, or "starry spirit."
"To be able to stand is to have confidence";
and to have confidence means that the disciple
is sure of himself, that he has surrendered his
emotions, his very self, even his humanity;
that he is incapable of fear and unconscious of
pain; that his whole consciousness is centered
in the divine life, which is expressed symbolically
by the term "the Masters"; that he has
neither eyes, nor ears, nor speech, nor power,
save in and for the divine ray on which his
highest sense has touched. Then he is fearless,
free from suffering, free from anxiety or dismay;
his soul stands without shrinking or
desire of postponement, in the full blaze of the
divine light which penetrates through and
through his being. Then he has come into his
inheritance and can claim his kinship with the
teachers of men; he is upright, he has raised
his head, he breathes the same air that they do.
But before it is in any way possible for him
to do this, the feet of the soul must be washed
in the blood of the heart.
The sacrifice, or surrender of the heart of
man, and its emotions, is the first of the rules;
it involves the "attaining of an equilibrium
which cannot be shaken by personal emotion."
This is done by the stoic philosopher; he, too,
stands aside and looks equably upon his own
sufferings, as well as on those of others.
In the same way that "tears" in the language
of occultists expresses the soul of
emotion, not its material appearance, so blood
expresses, not that blood which is an essential
of physical life, but the vital creative principle
in man's nature, which drives him into human
life in order to experience pain and pleasure,
joy and sorrow. When he has let the blood
flow from the heart he stands before the Masters
as a pure spirit which no longer
to incarnate for the sake of emotion and
experience. Through great cycles of time successive
incarnations in gross matter may yet
be his lot; but he no longer desires them, the
crude wish to live has departed from him.
When he takes upon him man's form in the
flesh he does it in the pursuit of a divine object,
to accomplish the work of "the Masters," and
for no other end. He looks neither for pleasure
nor pain, asks for no heaven, and fears
no hell; yet he has entered upon a great
inheritance which is not so much a compensation
for these things surrendered, as a state
which simply blots out the memory of them.
He lives now not in the world, but with it: his
horizon has extended itself to the width of
the whole universe.
KARMA
Consider with me that the individual existence
is a rope which stretches from the
infinite to the infinite and has no end and no
commencement, neither is it capable of being
broken. This rope is formed of innumerable
fine threads, which, lying closely together,
form its thickness. These threads are colorless,
are perfect in their qualities of straightness,
strength, and levelness. This rope, passing as
it does through all places, suffers strange
accidents. Very often a thread is caught and
becomes attached, or perhaps is only violently
pulled away from its even way. Then for a
great time it is disordered, and it disorders the
whole. Sometimes one is stained with dirt or
with color, and not only does the stain run on
further than the spot of contact, but it discolors
other of the threads. And remember that the
threads are living--are like electric wires,
more, are like quivering nerves. How far, then,
must the stain, the drag awry, be communicated!
But eventually the long strands, the
living threads which in their unbroken
continuity form the individual, pass out of the
shadow into the shine. Then the threads are no
longer colorless, but golden; once more they lie
together, level. Once more harmony is established
between them; and from that harmony
within the greater harmony is perceived.
This illustration presents but a small
portion--a single side of the truth: it is less
than a fragment. Yet, dwell on it; by its aid
you may be led to perceive more. What it is
necessary first to understand is, not that the
future is arbitrarily formed by any separate
acts of the present, but that the whole of the
future is in unbroken continuity with the
present as the present is with the past. On one
plane, from one point of view, the illustration
of the rope is correct.
It is said that a little attention to occultism
produces great Karmic results. That is because
it is impossible to give any attention to
occultism without making a definite choice between
what are familiarly called good and evil.
The first step in occultism brings the student to
the tree of knowledge. He must pluck and eat;
he must choose. No longer is he capable of the
indecision of ignorance. He. goes, on, either on
the good or on the evil path. And to step
definitely and knowingly even but one step on
either path produces great Karmic results. The
mass of men walk waveringly, uncertain as to
the goal they aim at; their standard of life is
indefinite; consequently their Karma operates
in a confused manner. But when once the
threshold of knowledge is reached, the confusion
begins to lessen, and consequently the
Karmic results increase enormously, because
all are acting in the same direction on all the
different planes: for the occultist cannot be
half-hearted, nor can he return when he has
passed the threshold. These things are as
impossible as that the man should become the
child again. The individuality has approached
the state of responsibility by reason of growth;
it cannot recede from it.
He who would escape from the bondage of
Karma must raise his individuality out of the
shadow into the shine; must so elevate his
existence that these threads do not come in
contact with soiling substances, do not become
so attached as to be pulled awry. He simply
lifts himself out of the region in which Karma
operates. He does not leave the existence which
he is experiencing because of that. The ground
may be rough and dirty, or full of rich flowers
whose pollen stains, and of sweet substances
that cling and become attachments--but
overhead there is always the free sky. He who
desires to be Karmaless must look to the air
for a home; and after that to the ether. He
who desires to form good Karma will meet
with many confusions, and in the effort to sow
rich seed for his own harvesting may plant a
thousand weeds, and among them the giant.
Desire to sow no seed for your own harvesting;
desire only to sow that seed the fruit of which
shall feed the world. You are part of the
world; in giving it food you feed yourself. Yet
in even this thought there lurks a great danger
which starts forward and faces the disciple,
who has for long thought himself working for
good, while in his inmost soul he has perceived
only evil; that is, he has thought himself to
be intending great benefit to the world while
all the time he has unconsciously embraced the
thought of Karma, and the great benefit he
works for is for himself. A man may refuse to
allow himself to think of reward. But in that
very refusal is seen the fact that reward is
desired. And it is useless for the disciple to
strive to learn by means of checking himself.
The soul must be unfettered, the desires free.
But until they are fixed only on that state
wherein there is neither reward nor punishment,
good nor evil, it is in vain that he endeavors.
He may seem to make great progress, but some
day he will come face to face with his own
soul, and will recognise that when he came to
the tree of knowledge he chose the bitter fruit
and not the sweet; and then the veil will fall
utterly, and he will give up his freedom and
become a slave of desire. Therefore be warned,
you who are but turning toward the life of
occultism. Learn now that there is no cure for
desire, no cure for the love of reward, no cure
for misery of longing, save in the fixing of the
sight and hearing upon that which is invisible
and soundless. Begin even now to practise it,
and so a thousand serpents will be kept from
your path. Live in the eternal.
The operations of the actual laws of Karma
are not to be studied until the disciple has
reached the point at which they no longer affect
himself. The initiate has a right to demand
the secrets of nature and to know the rules
which govern human life. He obtains this right
by having escaped from the limits of nature
and by having freed himself from the rules
which govern human life. He has become a
recognised portion of the divine element, and
is no longer affected by that which is temporary.
He then obtains a knowledge of the laws
which govern temporary conditions. Therefore
you who desire to understand the laws of
Karma, attempt first to free yourself from
these laws; and this can only be done by
fixing your attention on that which is unaffected
by those laws.
*THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD*
*Through the
Gates of Gold*
*A FRAGMENT OF THOUGHT*
PROLOGUE
Every man has a philosophy of life of his
own, except the true philosopher. The most
ignorant boor has some conception of his object
in living, and definite ideas as to the easiest
and wisest way of attaining that object. The
man of the world is often, unconsciously to
himself, a philosopher of the first rank. He
deals with his life on principles of the clearest
character, and refuses to let his position be
shattered by chance disaster. The man of
thought and imagination has less certainty,
and finds himself continually unable to formulate
his ideas on that subject most profoundly
interesting to human nature,--human life
itself. The true philosopher is the one who
would lay no claim to the name whatever, who
has discovered that the mystery of life is
unapproachable by ordinary thought, just as
the true scientist confesses his complete
ignorance of the principles which lie behind
science.
Whether there is any mode of thought or
any effort of the mind which will enable a
man to grasp the great principles that evidently
exist as causes in human life, is a
question no ordinary thinker can determine.
Yet the dim consciousness that there is cause
behind the effects we see, that there is order
ruling the chaos and sublime harmony pervading
the discords, haunts the eager souls of the
earth, and makes them long for vision of the
unseen and knowledge of the unknowable.
Why long and look for that which is beyond
all hope until the inner eyes are opened? Why
not piece together the fragments that we have,
at hand, and see whether from them some
shape cannot be given to the vast puzzle?
CHAPTER I
THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE
I
We are all acquainted with that stern thing
called misery, which pursues man, and strangely
enough, as it seems at first, pursues him with
no vague or uncertain method, but with a positive
and unbroken pertinacity. Its presence is
not absolutely continuous, else man must cease
to live; but its pertinacity is without any break.
There is always the shadowy form of despair
standing behind man ready to touch him with
its terrible finger if for too long he finds
himself content. What has given this ghastly
shape the right to haunt us from the hour we
are born until the hour we die? What has
given it the right to stand always at our door,
keeping that door ajar with its impalpable yet
plainly horrible hand, ready to enter at the
moment it sees fit? The greatest philosopher
that ever lived succumbs before it at last; and
he only is a philosopher, in any sane sense, who
recognises the fact that it is irresistible, and
knows that like all other men he must suffer
soon or late. It is part of the heritage of men,
this pain and distress; and he who determines
that nothing shall make him suffer, does but
cloak himself in a profound and chilly selfishness.
This cloak may protect him from pain, it
will also separate him from pleasure. If peace
is to be found on earth, or any joy in life, it
cannot be by closing up the gates of feeling,
which admit us to the loftiest and most vivid
part of our existence. Sensation, as we obtain
it through the physical body, affords us all that
induces us to live in that shape. It is inconceivable
that any man would care to take the
trouble of breathing, unless the act brought
with it a sense of satisfaction. So it is with
every deed of every instant of our life. We
live because it is pleasant even to have the
sensation of pain. It is sensation we desire,
else we would with one accord taste of the deep
waters of oblivion, and the human race would
become extinct. If this is the case in the
physical life, it is evidently the case with the
life of the emotions,--the imagination, the
sensibilities, all those fine and delicate formations
which, with the marvellous recording
mechanism of the brain, make up the inner
or subtile man. Sensation is that which makes
their pleasure; an infinite series of sensations
is life to them. Destroy the sensation which
makes them wish to persevere in the experiment
of living, and there is nothing left.
Therefore the man who attempts to obliterate
the sense of pain, and who proposes to maintain
an equal state whether he is pleased or
hurt, strikes at the very root of life, and
destroys the object of his own existence. And
that must apply, so far as our present reasoning
or intuitive powers can show us, to every
state, even to that of the Oriental's longed-for
Nirvana. This condition can only be one of
infinitely subtiler and more exquisite sensation,
if it is a state at all, and not annihilation; and
according to the experience of life from which
we are at present able to judge, increased
subtility of sensation means increased vividness,--as,
for instance, a man of sensibility
and imagination feels more in consequence of
the unfaithfulness or faithfulness of a friend
than can a man of even the grossest physical
nature feel through the medium of the senses.
Thus it is clear that the philosopher who
refuses to feel, leaves himself no place to
retreat to, not even the distant and unattainable
Nirvanic goal. He can only deny himself
his heritage of life, which is in other words
the right of sensation. If he chooses to sacrifice
that which makes him man, he must be
content with mere idleness of consciousness,--a
condition compared to which the oyster's
is a life of excitement.
But no man is able to accomplish such a
feat. The fact of his continued existence proves
plainly that he still desires sensation, and
desires it in such positive and active form that
the desire must be gratified in physical life. It
would seem more practical not to deceive one's
self by the sham of stoicism, not to attempt
renunciation of that with which nothing would
induce one to part. Would it not be a bolder
policy, a more promising mode of solving the
great enigma of existence, to grasp it, to take
hold firmly and to demand of it the mystery
of itself? If men will but pause and consider
what lessons they have learned from pleasure
and pain, much might be guessed of that
strange thing which causes these effects. But
men are prone to turn away hastily from self-study,
or from any close analysis of human
nature. Yet there must be a science of life as
intelligible as any of the methods of the
schools. The science is unknown, it is true,
and its existence is merely guessed, merely
hinted at, by one or two of our more advanced
thinkers. The development of a science is only
the discovery of what is already in existence;
and chemistry is as magical and incredible now
to the ploughboy as the science of life is to
the man of ordinary perceptions. Yet there
may be, and there must be, a seer who perceives
the growth of the new knowledge as the
earliest dabblers in the experiments of the laboratory
saw the system of knowledge now
attained evolving itself out of nature for man's
use and benefit.
II
Doubtless many more would experiment in
suicide, as many now do, in order to escape
from the burden of life, if they could be convinced
that in that manner oblivion might be
found. But he who hesitates before drinking
the poison from the fear of only inviting
change of mode of existence, and perhaps a
more active form of misery, is a man of more
knowledge than the rash souls who fling themselves
wildly on the unknown, trusting to its
kindliness. The waters of oblivion are something
very different from the waters of death,
and the human race cannot become extinct by
means of death while the law of birth still
operates. Man returns to physical life as the
drunkard returns to the flagon of wine,--he
knows not why, except that he desires the sensation
produced by life as the drunkard desires
the sensation produced by wine. The true
waters of oblivion lie far behind our consciousness,
and can only be reached by ceasing
to exist in that consciousness,--by ceasing to
exert the will which makes us full of senses
and sensibilities.
Why does not the creature man return into
that great womb of silence whence he came,
and remain in peace, as the unborn child is at
peace before the impetus of life has reached
it? He does not do so because he hungers for
pleasure and pain, joy and grief, anger and
love. The unfortunate man will maintain that
he has no desire for life; and yet he proves
his words false by living. None can compel
him to live; the galley-slave may be chained to
his oar, but his life cannot be chained to his
body. The superb mechanism of the human
body is as useless as an engine whose fires are
not lit, if the will to live ceases,--that will
which we maintain resolutely and without
pause, and which enables us to perform the
tasks which otherwise would fill us with dismay,
as, for instance, the momently drawing
in and giving out of the breath. Such herculean
efforts as this we carry on without complaint,
and indeed with pleasure, in order that
we may exist in the midst of innumerable
sensations.
And more; we are content, for the most
part, to go on without object or aim, without
any idea of a goal or understanding of which
way we are going. When the man first becomes
aware of this aimlessness, and is dimly conscious
that he is working with great and
constant efforts, and without any idea towards
what end those efforts are directed, then
descends on him the misery of nineteenth-century
thought. He is lost and bewildered,
and without hope. He becomes sceptical, disillusioned,
weary, and asks the apparently
unanswerable question whether it is indeed
worth while to draw his breath for such
unknown and seemingly unknowable results.
But are these results unknowable? At least, to
ask a lesser question, is it impossible to make a
guess as to the direction in which our goal lies?
III
This question, born of sadness and weariness,
which seems to us essentially part of the
spirit of the nineteenth century, is in fact a
question which must have been asked all
through the ages. Could we go back throughout
history intelligently, no doubt we should
find that it came always with the hour when
the flower of civilization had blown to its
full, and when its petals were but slackly held
together. The natural part of man has
reached then its utmost height; he has rolled
the stone up the Hill of Difficulty only to watch
it roll back again when the summit is reached,--as
in Egypt, in Rome, in Greece. Why this
useless labor? Is it not enough to produce a
weariness and sickness unutterable, to be forever
accomplishing a task only to see it undone
again? Yet that is what man has done throughout
history, so far as our limited knowledge
reaches. There is one summit to which, by
immense and united efforts, he attains, where
there is a great and brilliant efflorescence of all
the intellectual, mental, and material part of
his nature. The climax of sensuous perfection
is reached, and then his hold weakens, his
power grows less, and he falls back, through
despondency and satiety, to barbarism. Why
does he not stay on this hill-top he has
reached, and look away to the mountains
beyond, and resolve to scale those greater
heights? Because he is ignorant, and seeing
a great glittering in the distance, drops his
eyes bewildered and dazzled, and goes back
for rest to the shadowy side of his familiar
hill. Yet there is now and then one brave
enough to gaze fixedly on this glittering, and
to decipher something of the shape within it.
Poets and philosophers, thinkers and teachers,--all
those who are the "elder brothers of the
race,"--have beheld this sight from time to
time, and some among them have recognised
in the bewildering glitter the outlines of the
Gates of Gold.
Those Gates admit us to the sanctuary of
man's own nature, to the place whence his
life-power comes, and where he is priest of the
shrine of life. That it is possible to enter here,
to pass through those Gates, some one or two
have shown us. Plato, Shakespeare, and a few
other strong ones have gone through and
spoken to us in veiled language on the near
side of the Gates. When the strong man has
crossed the threshold he speaks no more to
those at the other side. And even the words
he utters when he is outside are so full of
mystery, so veiled and profound, that only
those who follow in his steps can see the light
within them.
IV
What men desire is to ascertain how to
exchange pain for pleasure; that is, to find out
in what way consciousness may be regulated
in order that the sensation which is most
agreeable is the one that is experienced.
Whether this can be discovered by dint of
human thought is at least a question worth
considering.
If the mind of man is turned upon any
given subject with a sufficient concentration,
he obtains illumination with regard to it sooner
or later. The particular individual in whom
the final illumination appears is called a genius,
an inventor, one inspired; but he is only the
crown of a great mental work created by
unknown men about him, and receding back
from him through long vistas of distance.
Without them he would not have had his material
to deal with. Even the poet requires
innumerable poetasters to feed upon. He is the
essence of the poetic power of his time, and
of the times before him. It is impossible to
separate an individual of any species from
his kin.
If, therefore, instead of accepting the
unknown as unknowable, men were _with one
accord_ to turn their thoughts towards it, those
Golden Gates would not remain so inexorably
shut. It does but need a strong hand to push
them open. The courage to enter them is the
courage to search the recesses of one's own
nature without fear and without shame. In
the fine part, the essence, the flavor of the
man, is found the key which unlocks those
great Gates. And when they open, what is it
that is found?
Voices here and there in the long silence
of the ages speak to answer that question.
Those who have passed through have left
words behind them as legacies to others of
their kin. In these words we can find definite
indications of what is to be looked for beyond
the Gates. But only those who desire to go
that way read the meaning hidden within the
words. Scholars, or rather scholiasts, read the
sacred books of different nations, the poetry
and the philosophy left by enlightened minds,
and find in it all the merest materiality.
Imagination glorifying legends of nature, or
exaggerating the psychic possibilities of man,
explains to them all that they find in the Bibles
of humanity.
What is to be found within the words of
those books is to be found in each one of us;
and it is impossible to find in literature or
through any channel of thought that which
does not exist in the man who studies. This
is of course an evident fact known to all real
students. But it has to be especially remembered
in reference to this profound and obscure
subject, as men so readily believe that nothing
can exist for others where they themselves find
emptiness.
One thing is soon perceived by the man
who reads: those who have gone before have
not found that the Gates of Gold lead to
oblivion. On the contrary, sensation becomes
real for the first time when that threshold is
crossed. But it is of a new order, an order
unknown to us now, and by us impossible to
appreciate without at least some clew as to its
character. This clew can be obtained undoubtedly
by any student who cares to go through
all the literature accessible to us. That mystic
books and manuscripts exist, but remain inaccessible
simply because there is no man ready
to read the first page of any one of them,
becomes the conviction of all who have studied
the subject sufficiently. For there must be the
continuous line all through: we see it go from
dense ignorance up to intelligence and wisdom;
it is only natural that it should go on to
intuitive knowledge and to inspiration. Some
scant fragments we have of these great gifts
of man; where, then, is the whole of which
they must be a part? Hidden behind the thin
yet seemingly impassable veil which hides it
from us as it hid all science, all art, all powers
of man till he had the courage to tear away
the screen. That courage comes only of conviction.
When once man believes that the thing
exists which he desires, he will obtain it at any
cost. The difficulty in this case lies in man's
incredulity. It requires a great tide of thought
and attention to set in towards the unknown
region of man's nature in order that its gates
may be unlocked and its glorious vistas
explored.
That it is worth while to do this whatever
the hazard may be, all must allow who have
asked the sad question of the nineteenth century,--Is
life worth living? Surely it is sufficient
to spur man to new effort,--the
suspicion that beyond civilization, beyond
mental culture, beyond art and mechanical
perfection, there is a new, another gateway,
admitting to the realities of life.
V
When it seems as if the end was reached,
the goal attained, and that man has no more
to do,--just then, when he appears to have
no choice but between eating and drinking and
living in his comfort as the beasts do in theirs,
and scepticism which is death,--then it is that
in fact, if he will but look, the Golden Gates
are before him. With the culture of the age
within him and assimilated perfectly, so that
he is himself an incarnation of it, then he is fit
to attempt the great step which is absolutely
possible, yet is attempted by so few even of
those who are fitted for it. It is so seldom
attempted, partly because of the profound difficulties
which surround it, but much more
because man does not realize that this is actually
the direction in which pleasure and
satisfaction are to be obtained.
There are certain pleasures which appeal
to each individual; every man knows that in
one layer or another of sensation he finds his
chief delight. Naturally he turns to this systematically
through life, just as the sunflower
turns to the sun and the water-lily leans on the
water. But he struggles throughout with an
awful fact which oppresses him to the soul,--that
no sooner has he obtained his pleasure
than he loses it again and has once more to
go in search of it. More than that; he never
actually reaches it, for it eludes him at the
final moment. This is because he endeavors to
seize that which is untouchable and satisfy
his soul's hunger for sensation by contact with
external objects. How can that which is
external satisfy or even please the inner man,--the
thing which reigns within and has no
eyes for matter, no hands for touch of objects,
no senses with which to apprehend that which
is outside its magic walls? Those charmed
barriers which surround it are limitless, for
it is everywhere; it is to be discovered in all
living things, and no part of the universe can
be conceived of without it, if that universe is
regarded as a coherent whole. And unless that
point is granted at the outset it is useless to
consider the subject of life at all. Life is indeed
meaningless unless it is universal and coherent,
and unless we maintain our existence by
reason of the fact that we are part of that
which is, not by reason of our own being.
This is one of the most important factors
in the development of man, the recognition--profound
and complete recognition--of the
law of universal unity and coherence. The
separation which exists between individuals,
between worlds, between the different poles of
the universe and of life, the mental and
physical fantasy called space, is a nightmare
of the human imagination. That nightmares
exist, and exist only to torment, every child
knows; and what we need is the power of
discrimination between the phantasmagoria of
the brain, which concern ourselves only, and
the phantasmagoria of daily life, in which
others also are concerned. This rule applies
also to the larger case. It concerns no one
but ourselves that we live in a nightmare of
unreal horror, and fancy ourselves alone in
the universe and capable of independent
action, so long as our associates are those
only who are a part of the dream; but when
we desire to speak with those who have tried
the Golden Gates and pushed them open, then
it is very necessary--in fact it is essential--to
discriminate, and not bring into our life the
confusions of our sleep. If we do, we are
reckoned as madmen, and fall back into the
darkness where there is no friend but chaos.
This chaos has followed every effort of man
that is written in history; after civilization has
flowered, the flower falls and dies, and winter
and darkness destroy it. While man refuses
to make the effort of discrimination which
would enable him to distinguish between the
shapes of night and the active figures of day,
this must inevitably happen.
But if man has the courage to resist this
reactionary tendency, to stand steadily on the
height he has reached and put out his foot in
search of yet another step, why should he
not find it? There is nothing to make one
suppose the pathway to end at a certain point,
except that tradition which has declared it is
so, and which men have accepted and hug to
themselves as a justification for their indolence.
VI
Indolence is, in fact, the curse of man. As
the Irish peasant and the cosmopolitan gypsy
dwell in dirt and poverty out of sheer idleness,
so does the man of the world live contented
in sensuous pleasures for the same reason. The
drinking of fine wines, the tasting of delicate
food, the love of bright sights and sounds, of
beautiful women and admirable surroundings,--these
are no better for the cultivated man,
no more satisfactory as a final goal of enjoyment
for him, than the coarse amusements and
gratifications of the boor are for the man
without cultivation. There can be no final
point, for life in every form is one vast series
of fine gradations; and the man who elects to
stand still at the point of culture he has
reached, and to avow that he can go no
further, is simply making an arbitrary statement
for the excuse of his indolence. Of course
there is a possibility of declaring that the gypsy
is content in his dirt and poverty, and, because
he is so, is as great a man as the most highly
cultured. But he only is so while he is ignorant;
the moment light enters the dim mind the
whole man turns towards it. So it is on the
higher platform; only the difficulty of penetrating
the mind, of admitting the light, is even
greater. The Irish peasant loves his whiskey,
and while he can have it cares nothing for the
great laws of morality and religion which are
supposed to govern humanity and induce men
to live temperately. The cultivated gourmand
cares only for subtle tastes and perfect flavors;
but he is as blind as the merest peasant to the
fact that there is anything beyond such gratifications.
Like the boor he is deluded by a
mirage that oppresses his soul; and he fancies,
having once obtained a sensuous joy that
pleases him, to give himself the utmost satisfaction
by endless repetition, till at last he
reaches madness. The bouquet of the wine he
loves enters his soul and poisons it, leaving
him with no thoughts but those of sensuous
desire; and he is in the same hopeless state
as the man who dies mad with drink. What
good has the drunkard obtained by his
madness? None; pain has at last swallowed
up pleasure utterly, and death steps in to
terminate the agony. The man suffers the final
penalty for his persistent ignorance of a law
of nature as inexorable as that of gravitation,--a
law which forbids a man to stand still.
Not twice can the same cup of pleasure be
tasted; the second time it must contain either
a grain of poison or a drop of the elixir of life.
The same argument holds good with regard
to intellectual pleasures; the same law operates.
We see men who are the flower of their
age in intellect, who pass beyond their fellows
and tower over them, entering at last upon a
fatal treadmill of thought, where they yield
to the innate indolence of the soul and begin
to delude themselves by the solace of repetition.
Then comes the barrenness and lack of
vitality,--that unhappy and disappointing
state into which great men too often enter
when middle life is just passed. The fire of
youth, the vigor of the young intellect, conquers
the inner inertia and makes the man
scale heights of thought and fill his mental
lungs with the free air of the mountains. But
then at last the physical reaction sets in; the
physical machinery of the brain loses its powerful
impetus and begins to relax its efforts,
simply because the youth of the body is at an
end. Now the man is assailed by the great
tempter of the race who stands forever on the
ladder of life waiting for those who climb so
far. He drops the poisoned drop into the ear,
and from that moment all consciousness takes
on a dulness, and the man becomes terrified
lest life is losing its possibilities for him. He
rushes back on to a familiar platform of
experience, and there finds comfort in touching
a well-known chord of passion or emotion.
And too many having done this linger on,
afraid to attempt the unknown, and satisfied to
touch continually that chord which responds
most readily. By this means they get the assurance
that life is still burning within them.
But at last their fate is the same as that of the
gourmand and the drunkard. The power of
the spell lessens daily as the machinery which
feels loses its vitality; and the man endeavors
to revive the old excitement and fervor by
striking the note more violently, by hugging
the thing that makes him feel, by drinking
the cup of poison to its fatal dregs. And then
he is lost; madness falls on his soul, as it
falls on the body of the drunkard. Life has no
longer any meaning for him, and he rushes
wildly into the abysses of intellectual insanity.
A lesser man who commits this great folly
wearies the spirits of others by a dull clinging
to familiar thought, by a persistent hugging of
the treadmill which he asserts to be the final
goal. The cloud that surrounds him is as fatal
as death itself, and men who once sat at his
feet turn away grieved, and have to look back
at his early words in order to remember his
greatness.
VII
What is the cure for this misery and waste
of effort? Is there one? Surely life itself has
a logic in it and a law which makes existence
possible; otherwise chaos and madness would
be the only state which would be attainable.
When a man drinks his first cup of pleasure
his soul is filled with the unutterable joy that
comes with a first, a fresh sensation. The drop
of poison that he puts into the second cup, and
which, if he persists in that folly, has to become
doubled and trebled till at last the whole cup
is poison,--that is the ignorant desire for
repetition and intensification; this evidently
means death, according to all analogy. The
child becomes the man; he cannot retain his
childhood and repeat and intensify the pleasures
of childhood except by paying the
inevitable price and becoming an idiot. The
plant strikes its roots into the ground and
throws up green leaves; then it blossoms and
bears fruit. That plant which will only make
roots or leaves, pausing persistently in its development,
is regarded by the gardener as a thing
which is useless and must be cast out.
The man who chooses the way of effort,
and refuses to allow the sleep of indolence to
dull his soul, finds in his pleasures a new and
finer joy each time he tastes them,--a something
subtile and remote which removes them
more and more from the state in which mere
sensuousness is all; this subtile essence is that
elixir of life which makes man immortal. He
who tastes it and who will not drink unless it
is in the cup finds life enlarge and the world
grow great before his eager eyes. He recognises
the soul within the woman he loves, and
passion becomes peace; he sees within his
thought the finer qualities of spiritual truth,
which is beyond the action of our mental machinery,
and then instead of entering on the
treadmill of intellectualisms he rests on the
broad back of the eagle of intuition and soars
into the fine air where the great poets found
their insight; he sees within his own power of
sensation, of pleasure in fresh air and sunshine,
in food and wine, in motion and rest, the possibilities
of the subtile man, the thing which
dies not either with the body or the brain. The
pleasures of art, of music, of light and loveliness,--within
these forms, which men repeat
till they find only the forms, he sees the glory
of the Gates of Gold, and passes through to
find the new life beyond which intoxicates and
strengthens, as the keen mountain air intoxicates
and strengthens, by its very vigor. But
if he has been pouring, drop by drop, more
and more of the elixir of life into his cup, he
is strong enough to breathe this intense air and
to live upon it. Then if he die or if he live in
physical form, alike he goes on and finds new
and finer joys, more perfect and satisfying
experiences, with every breath he draws in and
gives out.