THE MYSTERY OF THRESHOLD
I
There is no doubt that at the entrance on
a new phase of life something has to be given
up. The child, when it has become the man,
puts away childish things. Saint Paul showed
in these words, and in many others which he
has left us, that he had tasted of the elixir of
life, that he was on his way towards the Gates
of Gold. With each drop of the divine draught
which is put into the cup of pleasure something
is purged away from that cup to make room
for the magic drop. For Nature deals with
her children generously: man's cup is always
full to the brim; and if he chooses to taste
of the fine and life-giving essence, he must
cast away something of the grosser and less
sensitive part of himself. This has to be done
daily, hourly, momently, in order that the
draught of life may steadily increase. And to
do this unflinchingly, a man must be his own
schoolmaster, must recognise that he is always
in need of wisdom, must be ready to practise
any austerities, to use the birch-rod unhesitatingly
against himself, in order to gain his
end. It becomes evident to any one who regards
the subject seriously, that only a man who has
the potentialities in him both of the voluptuary
and the stoic has any chance of entering
the Golden Gates. He must be capable of
testing and valuing to its most delicate fraction
every joy existence has to give; and he must
be capable of denying himself all pleasure, and
that without suffering from the denial. When
he has accomplished the development of this
double possibility, then he is able to begin
sifting his pleasures and taking away from his
consciousness those which belong absolutely to
the man of clay. When those are put back,
there is the next range of more refined pleasures
to be dealt with. The dealing with these
which will enable a man to find the essence of
life is not the method pursued by the stoic
philosopher. The stoic does not allow that
there is joy within pleasure, and by denying
himself the one loses the other. But the true
philosopher, who has studied life itself without
being bound by any system of thought, sees
that the kernel is within the shell, and that,
instead of crunching up the whole nut like
a gross and indifferent feeder, the essence of
the thing is obtained by cracking the shell and
casting it away. All emotion, all sensation,
lends itself to this process, else it could not be
a part of man's development, an essential of
his nature. For that there is before him power,
life, perfection, and that every portion of his
passage thitherwards is crowded with the means
of helping him to his goal, can only be denied
by those who refuse to acknowledge life as
apart from matter. Their mental position is so
absolutely arbitrary that it is useless to encounter
or combat it. Through all time the unseen
has been pressing on the seen, the immaterial
overpowering the material; through all time
the signs and tokens of that which is beyond
matter have been waiting for the men of
matter to test and weigh them. Those who
will not do so have chosen the place of pause
arbitrarily, and there is nothing to be done
but let them remain there undisturbed, working
that treadmill which they believe to be the
utmost activity of existence.
II
There is no doubt that a man must educate
himself to perceive that which is beyond matter,
just as he must educate himself to perceive
that which is in matter. Every one knows that
the early life of a child is one long process
of adjustment, of learning to understand the
use of the senses with regard to their special
provinces, and of practice in the exercise of
difficult, complex, yet imperfect organs entirely
in reference to the perception of the world of
matter. The child is in earnest and works on
without hesitation if he means to live. Some
infants born into the light of earth shrink from
it, and refuse to attack the immense task which
is before them, and which must be accomplished
in order to make life in matter possible.
These go back to the ranks of the unborn;
we see them lay down their manifold instrument,
the body, and fade into sleep. So it is
with the great crowd of humanity when it has
triumphed and conquered and enjoyed in the
world of matter. The individuals in that
crowd, which seems so powerful and confident
in its familiar demesne, are infants in the
presence of the immaterial universe. And we
see them, on all sides, daily and hourly, refusing
to enter it, sinking back into the ranks of
the dwellers in physical life, clinging to the
consciousnesses they have experienced and
understand. The intellectual rejection of all
purely spiritual knowledge is the most marked
indication of this indolence, of which thinkers
of every standing are certainly guilty.
That the initial effort is a heavy one is
evident, and it is clearly a question of strength,
as well as of willing activity. But there is
no way of acquiring this strength, or of using
it when acquired, except by the exercise of the
will. It is vain to expect to be born into great
possessions. In the kingdom of life there is no
heredity except from the man's own past. He
has to accumulate that which is his. This is
evident to any observer of life who uses his
eyes without blinding them by prejudice; and
even when prejudice is present, it is impossible
for a man of sense not to perceive the fact. It
is from this that we get the doctrine of punishment
and salvation, either lasting through great
ages after death, or eternal. This doctrine is a
narrow and unintelligent mode of stating the
fact in Nature that what a man sows that shall
he reap. Swedenborg's great mind saw the fact
so clearly that he hardened it into a finality in
reference to this particular existence, his prejudices
making it impossible for him to perceive
the possibility of new action when there is no
longer the sensuous world to act in. He was too
dogmatic for scientific observation, and would
not see that, as the spring follows the autumn,
and the day the night, so birth must follow
death. He went very near the threshold of the
Gates of Gold, and passed beyond mere intellectualism,
only to pause at a point but one
step farther. The glimpse of the life beyond
which he had obtained appeared to him to
contain the universe; and on his fragment of
experience he built up a theory to include all
life, and refused progress beyond that state
or any possibility outside it. This is only
another form of the weary treadmill. But
Swedenborg stands foremost in the crowd of
witnesses to the fact that the Golden Gates
exist and can be seen from the heights of
thought, and he has cast us a faint surge of
sensation from their threshold.
III
When once one has considered the meaning
of those Gates, it is evident that there is
no other way out of this form of life except
through them. They only can admit man to
the place where he becomes the fruit of which
manhood is the blossom. Nature is the kindest
of mothers to those who need her; she never
wearies of her children or desires them to lessen
in multitude. Her friendly arms open wide to
the vast throng who desire birth and to dwell
in forms; and while they continue to desire
it, she continues to smile a welcome. Why,
then, should she shut her doors on any? When
one life in her heart has not worn out a hundredth
part of the soul's longing for sensation
such as it finds there, what reason can there
be for its departure to any other place? Surely
the seeds of desire spring up where the sower
has sown them. This seems but reasonable; and
on this apparently self-evident fact the Indian
mind has based its theory of re-incarnation, of
birth and re-birth in matter, which has become
so familiar a part of Eastern thought as no
longer to need demonstration. The Indian
knows it as the Western knows that the day
he is living through is but one of many days
which make up the span of a man's life. This
certainty which is possessed by the Eastern with
regard to natural laws that control the great
sweep of the soul's existence is simply acquired
by habits of thought. The mind of many is
fixed on subjects which in the West are considered
unthinkable. Thus it is that the East
has produced the great flowers of the spiritual
growth of humanity. On the mental steps of a
million men Buddha passed through the Gates
of Gold; and because a great crowd pressed
about the threshold he was able to leave behind
him words which prove that those Gates
will open.