I
We come up through many slaveries into freedom. It is the end of a
considerable road to be able to stand against the morning sun, saying:
"I want nothing but to give----" ... To be able to say this without an
answering laugh of mockery in the heart, where old King Desire sits
with his dogs.
To be free--that is to be irresistible. Do you want love? You only
spoil it when you stipulate what the return shall be--how the
proffering of the return shall be ordered and arranged. The great love
is giving; great love is incandescence. One must be radiant to be
happy. It is so literally. It is so, fold within fold....
One sees gold, looking up from below, and its attraction becomes
eminent among all desires for the time. We pass it by and look down, as
the spirit of man should look down upon gold, and it becomes a mineral
merely. You can enjoy it as you enjoy other people's roses. It bestows
itself. Others seek to bestow it upon you.
Hold to nothing in matter. It is slavery. Give yourself laughingly to
your work for daily bread without thought of result. Then, and not
until then, are you inimitable in your task. Order the performance of
your task with mere brain and attach it to your ambitions--you but do
what the many accomplish. Your product is multiple, not a perfect cube.
It cannot unfold into the Cross. It misses Resurrection. You must be
free, even to perform your work in the world. You must be free to be
irresistible.... Genius is approach to freedom. It finds its own paths;
it cuts itself free from the forms and vehicles of others.
We have known the dark slavery of the opinions of others. Many of us
have cast off such bonds, who are still slaves to our own opinions.
We learn to stop lying to others before we learn to stop lying to
ourselves. Until we are free, we have no opinion that is fit to endure;
until we are free, our opinions are coloured and formed in the matrices
of personal self, which is subject to death.
It's all so simple. We have to put down what is in our hands to help
others. We have to still our own thought to listen to another's saying.
We have to silence the self to hear the Master.
This silencing goes on and on in all our work. Pain shows the way....
We must traverse the deserts. We must cross all the rivers. We must see
one by one every material thing betray us. This is the Path--money,
opinions, ambitions, health, friends, desires, all betray so long as we
obstruct their approaches with our own conceptions and our own greeds.
We rise one by one above these illusions. The last and greatest is
that desire which is born in generation.... All the old reaches its
highest perfection in the human love story. All Nature binds one to the
loveliness of this tale. It is the way to the Way. Because it is not
the Way itself, it appears to end. The great intensities of agony now
begin. The soul realises that only the foothills of pain are passed;
that here are the mountains, here are the deep valleys that contain the
Gethsemanes and timbers for the Cross, and the plan by which the Cross
must be morticed and tenoned....
The sea, the mountain, gold, the rose, the child, the peasant's
simplicity, the coming of the coolness of evening, the glory of the
clay and waterfall, mist and cloud and star, the deep healing winds
that come slowly with their heavy fruitage of power from the mountains,
the swift winds with the holy breath of the Sea--all these in the
breast of the mate.... When this dream is taken, one bleeds, laterally
and full-length. One wants to die; thus he overcomes death. He feels
the great burden in which all other burdens lose themselves. When he
passes this highest series of inland peaks, the distances stretch clear
and shining ahead. This the test of faith because you deal with love
itself. Your soul, in its earliest advices, tells you that your love of
earth is pure.
It is. It is good. It is the highest here.
It is still to be perfected by the races, even by the new races, who
must be born bright with its untried magic.... But so long as it is
idolatry to that which is subject to change, it is hourly impregnating
the life itself with the seeds of pain....
You are called to the love of Souls. Sooner or later you must go. It
is the Path. It is the steep path to the Master. You give up all to
go this way--and then you laugh to find it all returned in lovelier
dimensions. You take your idolatry from the plane of mutation--lift it
into the glorious and changeless plateaus of the spirit....
You turn from the Seen to the Unseen.
This is the passage. You are called to go alone a little way--to be
worthy of the great Meeting. You carry your gifts of the passage woven
into the Seamless Robe of your being. All that impedes day by day you
cast aside, as an army making a perilous retreat casts off day by day
its impedimenta--until at last you stand naked upon the eminence, and
the Voice says, "Be not Ashamed--I am the Beloved...."
* * * * *
Out of slaveries.... We think at first that God is without--at last we
look for Him within. We come from the happiness of the Father's House
making our great journey, but our Soul's quest continually is for the
happiness again. Yet we must not look back. It is failure to go back.
That which we have left unfinished, is not behind, but awaiting ahead.
We are slaves to our bodily health until we learn that the body is
superbly fitted for obedience to the Soul; that it comes into its
rhythm and beauty only when mastered. Indeed the very process of
mastery is to lead it to the Fountain of Youth.
We learn that truly to be rich, we must give continually. We learn by
the quickenings of our spirit that white lines run from the brows of
all creatures to an apex which is God--that God is all. All is God....
All is one. We are one. We are brothers. One house for all at the end
of the Road.... We find the King in our own Souls. We learn from that
that all men are Kings. We bow to all Souls. All souls are rays of God.
We come at last to see the sons of God in the eyes of passing men.
Our passion now is outpoured. That is joy. We ask nothing but to give,
to heal,--to permit the spirit of the Healing Masters to flow through
us, but first we clear away the obstructions of the self.
Achieving our own chastity, we perceive the potential chastity in every
face. We are deluded no longer. The imbecile cannot hide our eyes from
the Flame. All purity must be found within. We have no fault with
others when we are cleansed. We see the heroes then, the giants, the
runners, the singers, the charioteers.
* * * * *
We learn that we can give nothing real away--that all we do for others
is service for ourselves. We give pain for joy, time for eternity, the
human for the divine--give to receive, give to be radiant. We must be
Flame to be fed by the Flame Itself.
* * * * *
We are prepared by every suffering, every humiliation, until the
personality bows at last.... Personality is good. It has brought us
where we are. Do not kill it out before its work is finished. We do not
realise its beauty until we see it mastered--until we see it with the
eyes of the Soul. All one story. We learn to love step by step. We love
ourselves, our possessions, our children, our friends, our mates, our
Masters, our God.... The higher we go, the more perfectly we contain
all the gradations.
The last sufferings, the last tests, are so often through the human
love story, because all weaknesses are easily shown through that--all
our pains so quickly received.... The bright sandals of the Master at
last are heard across the Hills. One laughs then, for He brings with
Him the beloved we have cried for so long.... Not in the love of desire
after that, but the love of giving, the love that casts out fear, that
passes understanding, that fulfils the law, the irresistible love of
the Christ.