I gave your letter to a distressed soul: she returned thanks, saying it
was a cooling draught to one athirst. The thanks of course are yours.
Now this lady says it was refreshment to the weary, that letter. True,
or she would not say it. But it was not so to me nor to you.
We needed it not. But she illustrates a certain state of progress.
She is not yet where we are; but which is happier? She is happier,
but poorer in hope. We are not all too happy, but are rich in hope,
knowing the prize at the end of time, and not deterred by the clouds,
the storms, the miasms and dreadful beasts of prey that line the road.
Let us, then, at the very outset wash out of our souls all desire for
reward, all hope that we may attain. For so long as we thus hope and
desire, we shall be separated from the Self. If in the Self all things
_are_, then we cannot wish to be something which we can only compass by
excluding something else.
So being beyond this lady so grateful, we find that everything we
meet on this illusory plane of existence is a lure that in one way or
another has power to draw us out of our path. That is the point we are
at, and we may call it the point where lures of Maya have omnipresent
power. Therefore we must beware of the illusions of matter.
Before we got to this stage we knew well the fateful lure, the dazzling
mirror of the elemental Self, here and there in well-defined places,
and intrenched as it was, so to say, in strongly-marked defenses. Those
we assaulted; and that was what it desired, for it did think that it
then had no need to exercise the enchantment which is hard because so
subtle, and so distributed here and there that we find no citadels
to take, no battalions in array. But now our dearest friends are
unconsciously in league with the deceptive in nature. How strongly do
I realize the dejection of Arjuna as he let his bow drop from his hand
and sat down on his chariot in despair. But he had a sure spot to rest
upon. He used his own. He had Krishna near, and he might fight on.
So in passing along those stages where the grateful lady and others
are, we may perhaps have found one spot we may call our own and possess
no other qualification for the task. That spot is enough. It is our
belief in the Self, in Masters: it is the little flame of intuition we
have allowed to burn, that we have fostered with care.
Then come these dreadful lures. They are, in fact, but mere carcasses,
shells of monsters from past existences, offering themselves that we
may give them life to terrify us as soon as we have entered them either
by fear or love. No matter which way we enter, whether by attachment or
by repugnant horror, it is all one: they are in one case vivified by a
lover; in the other by a slave who would be free but cannot.
Here it is the lure of enjoyment of natural pleasures, growing out of
life's physical basis; there it is self-praise, anger, vanity, what
not? Even these beautiful hills and river, they mock one, for they live
on untrammelled. Perhaps they do not speak to us because they know the
superiority of silence. They laugh with each other at us in the night,
amused at the wild struggle of this petty man who would pull the sky
down. Ach! God of Heaven! And all the sucklings of Theosophy wish that
some great, well-diplomæd Adept would come and open the secret box;
but they do not imagine that other students have stepped on the spikes
that defend the entrance to the way that leads to the gate of the Path.
But we will not blame them, nor yet wish for the things--the special
lots--that some of them have abstracted, because now that we know the
dreadful power that despair and doubt and violated conscience have,
we prefer to prepare wisely and carefully, and not rush in like fools
where angels do not pass uninvited.
But, Companion, I remind you of the power of the lure. This Path passes
along under a sky and in a clime where every weed grows a yard in the
night. It has no discrimination. Thus even after weeks or months of
devotion, or years of work, we are surprised at small seeds of vanity
or any other thing which would be easily conquered in other years of
inattentive life, but which seem now to arise as if helped by some
damnable intelligence. This great power of self-illusion is strong
enough to create a roaring torrent or a mountain of ice between us and
our Masters.
In respect to the question of sex. It is, as you know, given much
prominence by both women and men to the detriment of the one sex or the
other, or of any supposed sex. There are those who say that the female
sex is not to be thought of in the spirit; that all is male. Others say
the same for the female. Now both are wrong. In the True there is no
sex, and when I said "There all men are women and all women are men,"
I was only using rhetoric to accentuate the idea that neither one nor
the other was predominant, but that the two were coalesced, so to say,
into _one_. In the same way you might say, "men are animals there and
_vice versa_." Mind, this is in regard to Spirit, and not in regard
to the psychical states. For in the psychical states there are still
distinctions, as the psychical, though higher than the material, is not
as high as Spirit, for it still partakes of matter. For in the Spirit
or Atma _all_ experiences of _all_ forms of life and death are found
at once, and he who is one with the Atma knows the whole manifested
Universe at once. I have spoken of this condition before as the Turya
or fourth state.
When I say that the female _principle_ represents matter, I do not mean
_women_, for they in any one or more cases may be full of the masculine
principle, and _vice versa_.
Matter is illusionary and vain, and so the female element is
illusionary and vain, as well as tending to the _established order_.[D]
So in the _Kaballa_ it is said that the woman is a wall about the man.
A balance is necessary, and that balance is found in women, or the
woman element. You can easily see that the general tendency of women
is to keep things as they are and not to have change. Woman--not here
and there women--has never been the pioneer in great reforms. Of course
many single individual women have been, but the tendency of the great
mass of the women has always been to keep things as they are until
the men have brought about the great change. This is why women always
support any established religion, no matter what,--Christian, Jewish,
Buddhist, or Brahmin. The Buddhist women are as much believers in their
religion and averse from changing it as are their Christian sisters
opposed in the mass to changing theirs.
Now as to telling which element predominates in any single person,
it is hard to give a general test rule. But perhaps it might be
found in whether a person is given to abstract or concrete thought,
and similarly whether given to mere superficial things or to deep
fundamental matters. But you must work that out, I think, for yourself.
Of course in the spiritual life no organ _disappears_, but we must find
out what would be the mode of operation of any organ in its spiritual
counterpart. As I understand, the spiritual counterparts of the organs
are _powers_, and not organs, as the eye is the power to see, the ear
the power to hear, and so on. The generative organs would then become
the creative power and perhaps the Will. You must not suppose that in
the spirit life the organs are reproduced as we see them.
One instance will suffice. One may see pictures in the astral light
through the back of the head or the stomach. In neither place is there
any eye, yet we see. It must be by the power of seeing, which in the
material body needs the specialized place or specializing organ known
as the eye. We hear often through the head without the aid of the
auricular apparatus, which shows us that there is the power of hearing
and of transmitting and receiving sounds without the aid of an external
ear or its inside cerebral apparatus. So of course all these things
survive in that way. Any other view is grossly material, leading to a
deification of this unreal body, which is only an image of the reality,
and a poor one at that.
In thinking over these matters you ought always to keep in mind the
three plain distinctions of _physical, psychical, and spiritual, always
remembering that the last includes the other two_. All the astral
things are of the psychical nature, which is partly material and
therefore very deceptive. But all are necessary, for they are, they
exist.
The Deity is subject to this law, or rather it is the law of the Deity.
The Deity desires experience or self-knowledge, which is only to be
attained by stepping, so to say, aside from self. So the Deity produces
the manifested universes consisting of matter, psychical nature, and
spirit. In the Spirit alone resides the great consciousness of the
whole; and so it goes on ever producing and drawing into Itself,
accumulating such vast and enormous experiences that the pen falls down
at the thought. How can that be put into language? It is impossible,
for we at once are met with the thought that the Deity must know all
at all times. Yet there is a vastness and an awe-inspiring influence
in this thought of the Day and Night of Brahman. It is a thing to
be thought over in the secret recesses of the heart, and not for
discussion. _It is the All._
And now, my Brother, for the present I leave you. May your restored
health enable you to do more work for the world.
I salute you, my Brother, and wish you to reach the terrace of
enlightenment.