Life is a travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken. We
cannot know beforehand. We are driven from behind, always as over the
edge of the precipice. It is a leap taken, into the beyond, as a lark
leaps into the sky, a fragment of earth which travels to be fused out,
sublimated, in the shining of the heavens.
But it is not death. Death is neither here nor there. Death is a
temporal, relative fact. In the absolute, it means nothing. The lark
falls from the sky and goes running back to her nest. This is the ebb of
the wave. The wave of earth flung up in spray, a lark, a cloud of larks,
against the white wave of the sun. The spray of earth and the foam of
heaven are one, consummated, a rainbow mid-way, a song. The larks return
to earth, the rays go back to heaven. But these are only the shuttles
that weave the iris, the song, mid-way, in absoluteness, timelessness.
Out of the dark, original flame issues a tiny green flicker, a weed
coming alive. On the edge of the bright, ultimate, spiritual flame of
the heavens is revealed a fragment of iris, a touch of green, a weed
coming into being. The two flames surge and intermingle, casting up a
crest of leaves and stems, their battlefield, their meeting-ground,
their marriage bed, the embrace becomes closer, more unthinkably vivid,
it leaps to climax, the battle grows fiercer, fiercer, intolerably, till
there is the swoon, the climax, the consummation, the little yellow disk
gleams absolute between heaven and earth, radiant of both eternities,
framed in the two infinities. Which is a weed, a sow-thistle bursting
into blossom. And we, the foreshore in whom the waves of dark and light
are unequally seething, we can see this perfection, this absolute, as
time opens to disclose it for a moment, like the Dove that hovered
incandescent from heaven, before it is closed again in utter
timelessness.
“But the wind passeth over it and is gone.”
The wind passes over it and we are gone. It is time which blows in like
a wind, closing up the clouds again upon the perfect gleam. It is the
wind of time, out of either eternity, a wind which has a source and an
issue, which swirls past the light of this absolute, like waves past a
lighted buoy. For the light is not temporal nor eternal, but absolute.
And we, who are temporal and eternal, at moments only we cease from our
temporality. In these, our moments, we see the sow-thistle gleaming,
light within darkness, darkness within light, consummated, we are with
the song and the iris.
And then it is we, not the iris, not the song, who are blown away. We
are blown for a moment against the yellow light of the window, the
flower, then on again into the dark turmoil.
We have made a mistake. We are like travellers travelling in a train,
who watch the country pass by and pass away; all of us who watch the sun
setting, sliding down into extinction, we are mistaken. It is not the
country which passes by and fades, it is not the sun which sinks to
oblivion. Neither is it the flower that withers, nor the song that dies
out.
It is we who are carried past in the seethe of mortality. The flower is
timeless and beyond condition. It is we who are swept on in the
condition of time. So we shall be swept as long as time lasts. Death is
part of the story. But we have being also in timelessness, we shall
become again absolute, as we have been absolute, as we are absolute.
We know that we are purely absolute. We know in the last issue we are
absolved from all opposition. We know that in the process of life we are
purely relative. But timelessness is our fate, and time is subordinate
to our fate. But time is eternal.
And the life of man is like a flower that comes into blossom and passes
away. In the beginning, the light touches the darkness, the darkness
touches the light, and the two embrace. They embrace in opposition, only
in their desire is their unanimity. There are two separate statements,
the dark wants the light, and the light wants the dark. But these two
statements are contained within the one: “They want each other.” And
this is the condition of absoluteness, this condition of their wanting
each other, that which makes light and dark consummate even in
opposition. The interrelation between them, this is constant and
absolute, let it be called love or power or what it may. It is all the
things that it can be called.
In the beginning, light touches darkness and darkness touches light.
Then life has begun. The light enfolds and implicates and involves the
dark, the dark receives and interpenetrates the light, they come nearer,
they are more finely combined, till they burst into the crisis of
oneness, the blossom, the utter being, the transcendent and timeless
flame of the iris.
Then time passes on. Out of the swoon the waves ebb back, dark towards
the dark, light towards the light. They ebb back and away, the leaves
return unto the darkness of the earth, the quivering glimmer of
substance returns into the light, the green of the last wavering iris
disappears, the waves ebb apart, further, further, further.
Yet they never separate. The whole flood recedes, the tides are going to
separate. And they separate entirely, save for one enfolded ripple, the
tiny, silent, scarce-visible enfolded pools of the seeds. These lie
potent, the meeting-ground, the well-head wherein the tides will surge
again, when the turn comes.
This is the life of man. In him too the tide sweeps together towards the
utter consummation, the consummation with the darkness, the consummation
with the light, flesh and spirit, one culminating crisis, when man
passes into timelessness and absoluteness.
The residue of imperfect fusion and unfulfilled desire remains, the
child, the well-head where the tides will flow in again, the seed. The
absolute relation is never fully revealed. It leaps to its maximum of
revelation in the flower, the mature life. But some of it rolls aside,
lies potent in the enfolded seed. My desire is fulfilled, I, as
individual am become timeless and absolute, perfect. But the whole
desire of which I am part remains yet to be consummated. In me the two
waves clash to perfect consummation. But immediately upon the clash come
the next waves of the tide rippling in, the ripples, forerunners, which
tinily meet and enfold each other, the seed, the unborn child. For we
are all waves of the tide. But the tide contains all the waves.
It may happen that waves which meet and mingle come to no consummation,
only a confusion and a swirl and a falling away again. These are the
myriad lives of human beings which pass in confusion of nothingness, the
uncreated lives. There are myriads of human lives that are not absolute
nor timeless, myriads that just waver and toss temporarily, never become
more than relative, never come into being. They have no being, no
immortality. There are myriads of plants that never come to flower, but
which perish away for ever, always separated in the fringe of time,
never united, never consummated, never brought forth.
I know I am compound of two waves, I, who am temporal and mortal. When I
am timeless and absolute, all duality has vanished. But whilst I am
temporal and mortal, I am framed in the struggle and embrace of the two
opposite waves of darkness and of light.
There is the wave of light in me which seeks the darkness, which has for
its goal the Source and the Beginning, for its God the Almighty Creator
to Whom is all power and glory. Thither the light of the seed of man
struggles and aspires, into the infinite darkness, the womb of all
creation.
What way is it that leads me on to the Source, to the Beginning? It is
the way of the blood, the way of power. Down the road of the blood,
further and further into the darkness, I come to the Almighty God Who
was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. I come to the Source
of Power. I am received back into the utter darkness of the Creator, I
am once again with Him.
This is a consummation, a becoming eternal. This is an arrival into
eternity. But eternity is only relative.
I can become one with God, consummated into eternity, by taking the road
down the senses into the utter darkness of power, till I am one with the
darkness of initial power, beyond knowledge of any opposite.
It is thus, seeking consummation in the utter darkness, that I come to
the woman in desire. She is the doorway, she is the gate to the dark
eternity of power, the creator’s power. When I put my hand on her, my
heart beats with a passion of fear and ecstasy, for I touch my own
passing away, my own ceasing-to-be, I apprehend my own consummation in a
darkness which obliterates me in its infinity. My veins rock as if they
were being destroyed, the blood takes fire on the edge of oblivion, and
beats backward and forward. I resist, yet I am compelled; the woman
resists, yet she is compelled. And we are the relative parts dominated
by the strange compulsion of the absolute.
Gradually my veins relax their gates, gradually the rocking blood goes
forward, quivers on the edge of oblivion, then yields itself up, passes
into the borderland of oblivion. Oh, and then I would die, I would
quickly die, to have all power, all life at once, to come instantly to
pure, eternal oblivion, the source of life. But patience is fierce at
the bottom of me; fierce, indomitable, abiding patience. So my blood
goes forth in shock after shock of delirious passing-away, in shock
after shock entering into consummation, till my soul is slipping its
moorings, my mind, my will fuses down, I melt out and am gone into the
eternal darkness, the primal creative darkness reigns, and I am not, and
at last _I am_.
Shock after shock of ecstasy and the anguish of ecstasy, death after
death of trespass into the unknown, till I fall down into the flame, I
lapse into the intolerable flame, a pallid shadow I am transfused into
the flux of unendurable darkness, and am gone. No spark nor vestige
remains within the supreme dark flow of the flame, I am contributed
again to the immortal source. I am with the dark Almighty of the
beginning.
Till, new-created, I am thrown forth again on the shore of creation,
warm and lustrous, goodly, new born from the darkness out of which all
time has issued.
And then, new-born on the knees of darkness, new-issued from the womb of
creation, I open my eyes to the light and know the goal, the end, the
light which stands over the end of the journey, the everlasting day, the
oneness of the spirit.
The new journey, the new life has begun, the travelling to the opposite
eternity, to the infinite light of the Spirit, the consummation in the
Spirit.
My source and issue is in two eternities, I am founded in the two
infinities. But absolute is the rainbow that goes between; the iris of
my very being.
It may be, however, that the seed of light never propagates within the
darkness, that the light in me is sterile, that I am never re-born
within the womb, the Source, to be issued towards the opposite eternity.
It may be there is a great inequality, disproportion, within me, that I
am nearly all darkness, like the night, with a few glimmers of cold
light, moonlight, like the tiger with white eyes of reflected light
brindled in the flame of darkness. Then I shall return again and again
to the womb of darkness, avid, never satisfied, my spirit will fall
unfertile into the womb, will never be conceived there, never brought
forth. I shall know the one consummation, the one direction only, into
the darkness. It will be with me for ever the almost, almost, almost, of
satisfaction, of fulfilment. I shall know the one eternity, the one
infinite, the one immortality, I shall have partial being; but never the
whole, never the full. There is an infinite which does not know me. I am
always relative, always partial, always, in the last issue,
unconsummate.
The barren womb can never be satisfied, if the quick of darkness be
sterile within it. But neither can the unfertile loins be satisfied, if
the seed of light, of the spirit, be dead within them. They will return
again and again and again to the womb of darkness, asking, asking, and
never satisfied.
Then the unconsummated soul, unsatisfied, uncreated in part, will seek
to make itself whole by bringing the whole world under its own order,
will seek to make itself absolute and timeless by devouring its
opposite. Adhering to the one eternity of darkness, it will seek to
devour the eternity of light. Realising the one infinite of the Source,
it will endeavour to absorb into its oneness the opposite infinite of
the Goal. This is the infinite with its tail in its mouth.
Consummated in one infinite, and one alone, this soul will assert the
oneness of all things, that all things are one in the One Infinite of
the Darkness, of the Source. One is one and all alone and ever more
shall be so. This is the cry of the Soul consummated in one eternity
only.
There is one eternity, one infinite, one God. “Thou shalt have no other
god before me.”
But why this Commandment, unless there were in truth another god, at
least the equal of Jehovah?
Consummated in the darkness only, having not enough strength in the
light, the partial soul cries out in a convulsion of insistence that
the darkness alone is infinite and eternal, that all light is from the
small, contained sources, the lamps lighted at will by the desire of the
Creator, the sun, the moon and stars. These are the lamps and candles of
the Almighty, which He blows out at will. These are little portions of
special darkness, darkness transfigured, these lights.
There is one God, one Creator, one Almighty; there is one infinite and
one eternity, it is the infinite and the eternity of the Source. There
is One Way: it is the Way of the Law. There is one Life, the Life of
Creation, there is one Goal, the Beginning, there is one immortality,
the immortality of the great I Am. All is God, the One God. Those who
deny this are to be stamped out, tortured, tortured for ever.
It is possible then to deny it?
Having declared the One God, then the partial soul, fulfilled of the
darkness only, proceeds to establish this God on earth, to devour and
obliterate all else.
Rising from the darkness of consummation in the flesh, with the woman,
it seeks to establish its kingdom over all the world. It strides forth,
the lord, the master, strong for mastery. It will dominate all, all, it
will bring all under the rules of itself, of the One, the Darkness
lighted with the lamps of its own choice.
This is the heroic tyrant, the fabulous king-warrior, like Sardanapolus
or Caesar, like Saul even. These warrior kings seek to pass beyond all
relatedness, to become absolute in might and power. And they fall
inevitably. Their Judas is a David, a Brutus: the individual who knows
something of both flames, but commits himself to neither. He holds
himself, in his own ego, superior either to the creative dark
power-flame, or the conscious love-flame. And so, he is the small man
slaying the great. He is virtuous egoistic Brutus, or David: David
slaying the preposterous Goliath, overthrowing the heroic Saul, taking
Bathsheba and sending Uriah to death: David dancing naked before the
Ark, asserting the oneness, his own oneness, the one infinity,
_himself_, the egoistic God, I AM. And David never went in unto Michal
any more, because she jeered at him. So that she was barren all her
life.
But it was David who really was barren. Michal, when she mocked, mocked
the sterility of David. For the spirit in him was blasted with
unfertility; he could not become born again, he could not be conceived
in the spirit. Michal, the womb of profound darkness, could not conceive
to the overweak seed of David’s spirit. David’s seed was too impure, too
feeble in sheer spirit, too egoistic, it bred and begot preponderant
egoists. The flood of vanity set in after David, the lamps and candles
began to gutter.
Power is sheer flame, and spirit is sheer flame, and between them is the
clue of the Holy Ghost. But David put a false clue between them: the
clue of his own ego, cunning and _triumphant_.
It is unfertility of spirit which sends man raging to the woman, and
sends him raging away again, unsatisfied. It is not the woman’s
barrenness: it is his own. It is sterility in himself which makes a Don
Juan.
And the course of the barren spirit is dogmatically to assert One God,
One Way, One Glory, one exclusive salvation. And this One God is indeed
God, this one Way is the way, but it is the way of egoism, and the One
God is the reflection, inevitably, of the worshipper’s ego.
This is the sham Crown, which the victorious lion and the victorious
unicorn alike puts on his own head. When either _triumphs_, the true
crown disappears, and the triumphant puts a false crown on his own head:
the crown of sterile egoism. The true Crown is above the fight itself,
and above the embrace itself, not upon the brow of either fighter or
lover. Or, if you like, in the true fight it shines equally upon the
brow of the defeated and the winner. For sometimes, it is blessed to be
beaten in a fight.
He who triumphs, perishes. As Caesar perished, and Napoleon. In the
fight they were wonderful, and the power was with them. But when they
would be supreme, sheer triumphers, exalted in their own ego, then they
fell. Triumph is a false absolution, the winner salutes his enemy, and
the light of victory is on _both_ their brows, since both are
consummated.
In the same way, Jesus triumphant perished. Any individual who will
triumph, in love or in war, perishes. There is no triumph. There is but
consummation in either case.
So Shelley also perishes. He wants to be love triumphant, as Napoleon
wanted to be power triumphant. Both fell.
In both, there is the spuriousness of the _ego_ trying to seize the
Crown that belongs only to the consummation.
In the Roman “Triumph” itself lay the source of Rome’s downfall. And in
the arrogance of England’s dispensation of Liberty in the world lies the
downfall of England. When Liberty triumphs, as in Russia, where then is
the British Empire? Where then is the British Lion, crowned _Fidei
Defensor_, Defender of the Faith of Liberty and Love? When liberty needs
no more defending, then the protective lion had better look out.
Take care of asserting any absolute, either of power or love, of empire
or democracy. The moment power _triumphs_, it becomes spurious with
sheer egoism, like Caesar and Napoleon. And the moment democracy
triumphs, it too becomes hideous with egoism, like Russia now.
Either lion or unicorn, triumphant, turns into a sheer beast of prey.
Foe it has none: only prey--or victims.
So we have seen in the world, every time that power has triumphed: every
time the lion and the eagle have jammed the crown down on their heads.
Now it will be given us to see democracy triumphant, the unicorn and the
dove seizing the crown, and on the instant turning into beasts of prey.
The true crown is upon the consummation itself, not upon the triumph of
one over another, neither in love nor in power. The ego is the false
absolute. And the ego crowned with the crown is the monster and the
tyrant, whether it represent one man, an Emperor, or a whole mass of
people, a Demos. A million egos summed up under a crown are not _better_
than one individual crowned ego. They are a million times worse.