... A wonderful morning--a rare Monday--the highest hold yet--all is
ascending. All beings are so wonderful. I sit on a certain bench to
work one morning--the next morning cushions are there for me.... I
speak a sentence from a book with a word how much it means and how
worthy to love--and the sentence is brought to me illuminated on
vellum.... They bring the finest fruits--honey for tea, cream for
peeled figs, black bread perfectly toasted, the perfection of unsalted
butter.... I walk up the mountain to work--and the voice of the
gardener is a benediction from the Most High--and I stand for a moment
looking toward your sea over the city, and the birds say, "It is time."
There is a pool of lilies at the top, an Alhambran villa, great rose
gardens.... I come to the pool--dip my feet in the still waters and I
know from that how chill the night has been. I look at the lilies--how
far they have opened--and know the time of day. I pray for a moment
under a priestly Pine ... and my heart goes out in the new joy we have
found--the joy of knowing that one may be the king of the world and the
confirmed Son of God--if he but learn the one lesson--to want nothing.
Pool of lilies in the morning sun. (A little lizard is walking along
the arm of the bench. My bare feet are quiet, and he wonders what kind
of barkless trees they are. He is here and there. One sees his body
move, not the members. The sun puts him to sleep.) ... The pool is
still as the waters of sleep. The Sea--I think of her always as the
emotional body of the world--the old Sea Mother with diamond-tipped
emotions. And then I think of the Master Jesus walking upon the Sea
and saying "Peace be still" to the stormy waters.... Each Soul must
say that to his emotions. We learn to walk upright upon the earth,
then to still the waters, then to have dominion over the birds of the
air--and last to be seven times refined in the Fire.... Earth, water,
air, fire--the first quaternary.... Yes, we are learning to say "Peace
be still" to the stormy waters. We do not know how beautiful they are
until they obey.
... Out of the still waters in the pure blue starlight, the lily
blooms--the lotus on the still lagoons of the Soul.... Naked as a
serpent's head, the sealed bud rises from the water in the night....
Out of the power that follows the peace upon the waters--for the blooms
of the spirit lift greatly in the tranquillity of the heart that
follows the storm--out of the power of peace upon the waters, the lotus
rises and waits like a bride in the dawn-dusk for her Lord Sun to brush
back the veils and find her heart.
* * * * *
It is only the beginning of heaven we find here. We weary of the
world and turn back to the Father's House. We have plucked the fruits
of pain--we have thirsted and hungered again and again.... Out of
the darkness we have formed the thought, at last, that there must be
quenching waters, and somewhere bread to eat that does not perish....
You can say it in a thousand ways. The Prodigal tells the story. He
arises and turns back. Evolution has ceased, involution begins again.
He is being folded back to the Father with all the treasures of Egypt.
He has ceased to diffuse himself in generation, through which he has
become an integral part of every fibre of the world, and begins now to
call in and synthesise all his spiritual possessions. The processes of
diffusion were in pain--the integration is joy again. Each day of the
up-slope his step quickens. The more he knows, the more he believes.
The more he sees, the larger his faith--the more his treasures, the
more sumptuous his order. "Unto him who hath it shall be given."
Again, it is merely lifting the consciousness from time to eternity,
from the cramp of space to the flow of the universe--from pain to
play--from desire to radiation.... One ascends and at each steps sees
farther. Day by day, the work of the installation of the higher powers
goes on. We give up nothing but that which impedes the inflow of
godly forces. That which we think we want to-day will look as absurd
to-morrow as the hopelessness of a child over a plaything broken.
It's a way of loving every step. Thus we heal from the infinite tears
of the changes of matter and dissolution, and lift our love to the
Masters and the Immortal Gods. We dare love utterly only that which can
contain us. If the Masters loved us with all their power, we would fall
in the madness of too much light.... Always, they give us all the love
that we can endure.... We give our all to them and expand daily, until
we know the passion to break ourselves open in ecstasy, like the king
bee under the whirring wings of the queen.
In the human body, the diaphragm is the surface of the waters. If
our consciousness is below that, we are in generation. To become
regenerated is to lift the balance of consciousness above--to
rise like the lotus from the face of stilled waters.... It is a
quickened vibration. Simultaneously, one lifts from cerebration to
intuition--from the time of matter to the spaciousness of Soul--from
the light of the camp-fire in the night, to the full day upon the
plain--from the son of man to the Son of God--from the pain of loving
with desire to the irresistible creativeness of wanting nothing but to
give.