to desire in our system of thought. Is it the Tree of Life in the midst
of the Garden of the Soul? or is it the Upas Tree creating a wilderness
of death all around? This is the issue on which we have to form a
judgment, and this judgment must colour all our conception of life and
determine the entire range of our possibilities. Let us, then, try to
picture to ourselves the ideal proposed by the systems to which I have
alluded--a man who has succeeded in entirely annihilating all desire. To
him all things must be alike. The good and the evil must be as one, for
nothing has any longer the power to raise any desire in him; he has no
longer any feeling which shall prompt him to say, "This is good,
therefore I choose it; that is evil, therefore I reject it"; for all
choice implies the perception of something more desirable in what is
chosen than in what is rejected, and consequently the existence of that
feeling of desire which has been entirely eliminated from the ideal we
are contemplating.
Then, if the perception of all that makes one thing preferable to
another has been obliterated, there can be no motive for any sort of
action whatever. Endue a being who has thus extinguished his faculty of
desire with the power to create a universe, and he has no motive for
employing it. Endue him with all knowledge, and it will be useless to
him; for, since desire has no place in him, he is without any purpose
for which to turn his knowledge to account. And with Love we cannot
endue him, for that is desire in its supreme degree. But if all this be
excluded, what is left of the man? Nothing, except the mere outward
form. If he has actually obtained this ideal, he has practically ceased
to be. Nothing can by any means interest him, for there is nothing to
attract or repel in one thing more than in another. He must be dead
alike to all feeling and to all motive of action, for both feeling and
action imply the preference for one condition rather than another; and
where desire is utterly extinguished, no such preference can exist.
No doubt some one may object that it is only evil desires which are thus
to be suppressed; but a perusal of the writings of the schools of
thought in question will show that this is not the case. The foundation
of the whole system is that _all_ desire must be obliterated, the desire
for the good just as much as the desire for the evil. The good is as
much "illusion" as the evil, and until we have reached absolute
indifference to both we have not attained freedom. When we have utterly
crushed out _all_ desire we are free. And the practical results of such
a philosophy are shown in the case of Indian devotees, who, in pursuance
of their resolve to crush out _all_ desire, both for good and evil
alike, become nothing more than outward images of men, from which all
power of perception and of action have long since fled.
The mergence in the universal, at which they thus aim, becomes nothing
more than a self-induced hypnotism, which, if maintained for a
sufficient length of time, saps away every power of mental and bodily
activity, leaving nothing but the outside husk of an attenuated human
form--the hopeless wreck of what was once a living man. This is the
logical result of a system which assumes for its starting-point that
desire is evil in itself, that every desire is _per se_ a form of
bondage, independently of the nature of its object. The majority of the
followers of this philosophy may lack sufficient resolution to carry it
out rigorously to its practical conclusions; but whether their ideal is
to be realised in this world or in some other, the utter extinction of
desire means nothing else than absolute apathy, without feeling and
without action.
How entirely false such an idea is--not only from the standpoint of our
daily life, but also from that of the most transcendental conception of
the Universal Principle--is evidenced by the mere fact that anything
exists at all. If the highest ideal is that of utter apathy, then the
Creative Power of the universe must be extremely low-minded; and all
that we have hitherto been accustomed to look upon as the marvellous
order and beauty of creation, is nothing but a display of vulgarity and
ignorance of sound philosophy.
But the fact that creation exists proves that the Universal Mind thinks
differently, and we have only to look around to see that the true ideal
is the exercise of creative power. Hence, so far from desire being a
thing to be annihilated, it is the very root of every conceivable mode
of Life. Without it Life could not be. Every form of expression implies
the selection of all that goes to make up that form, and the passing-by
of whatever is not required for that purpose; hence a desire for that
which is selected in preference to what is laid aside. And this
selective desire is none other than the universal Law of Attraction.
Whether this law acts as the chemical affinity of apparently unconscious
atoms, or in the instinctive, if unreasoned, attractions of the
vegetable and animal worlds, it is still the principle of selective
affinity; and it continues to be the same when it passes on into the
higher kingdoms which are ruled by reason and conscious purpose. The
modes of activity in each of these kingdoms are dictated by the nature
of the kingdom; but the activity itself always results from the
preference of a certain subject for a certain object, to the exclusion
of all others; and all action consists in the reciprocal movement of the
two towards each other in obedience to the law of their affinity.
When this takes place in the kingdom of conscious individuality, the
affinities exhibit themselves as mental action; but the principle of
selection prevails without exception throughout the universe. In the
conscious mind this attraction towards its affinity becomes desire; the
desire to create some condition of things better than that now existing.
Our want of knowledge may cause us to make mistakes as to what this
better thing really is, and so in seeking to carry out our desire we may
give it a wrong direction; but the fault is not in the desire itself,
but in our mistaken notion of what it is that it requires for its
satisfaction. Hence unrest and dissatisfaction until its true affinity
is found; but, as soon as this is discovered, the law of attraction at
once asserts itself and produces that better condition, the dream of
which first gave direction to our thoughts.
Thus it is eternally true that desire is the cause of all feeling and
all action; in other words, of all Life. The whole livingness of Life
consists in receiving or in radiating forth the vibrations produced by
the law of attraction; and in the kingdom of mind these vibrations
necessarily become conscious out-reachings of the mind in the direction
in which it feels attraction; that is to say, they become desires.
Desire is therefore the mind seeking to manifest itself in some form
which as yet exists only in its thought. It is the principle of
creation, whether the thing created be a world or a wooden spoon; both
have their origin in the desire to bring something into existence which
does not yet exist. Whatever may be the scale on which we exercise our
creative ability, the motive power must always be desire.
Desire is the force behind all things; it is the moving principle of
the universe and the innermost centre of all Life. Hence, to take the
negation of desire for our primal principle is to endeavour to stamp out
Life itself; but what we have to do is to acquire the requisite
knowledge by which to guide our desires to their true objects of
satisfaction. To do this is the whole end of knowledge; and any
knowledge applied otherwise is only a partial knowledge, which, having
failed in its purpose, is nothing but ignorance. Desire is thus the
sum-total of the livingness of Life, for it is that in which all
movement originates, whether on the physical level or the spiritual. In
a word, desire is the creative power, and must be carefully guarded,
trained, and directed accordingly; but thus to seek to develop it to the
highest perfection is the very opposite of trying to kill it outright.
And desire has fulfilment for its correlative. The desire and its
fulfilment are bound together as cause and effect; and when we realise
the law of their sequence, we shall be more than ever impressed with the
supreme importance of Desire as the great centre of Life.
IX
TOUCHING LIGHTLY
What is our point of support? Is it in ourselves or outside us? Are we
self-poised, or does our balance depend on something external? According
to the actual belief in which our answer to these questions is embodied
so will our lives be. In everything there are two parts, the essential
and the incidental--that which is the nucleus and _raison d'être_ of the
whole thing, and that which gathers round this nucleus and takes form
from it. The true knowledge always consists in distinguishing these two
from each other, and error always consists in misplacing them.
In all our affairs there are two factors, ourselves and the matter to be
dealt with; and since _for us_ the nature of anything is always
determined by our thought of it, it is entirely a question of our belief
which of these two factors shall be the essential and which the
accessory. Whichever we regard as the essential, the other at once
becomes the incidental. The incidental can never be absent. For any sort
of action to take place there must be _some_ conditions under which the
activity passes out into visible results; but the same sort of activity
may occur under a variety of different conditions, and may thus produce
very different visible results. So in every matter we shall always find
an essential or energising factor, and an incidental factor which
derives its quality from the nature of the energy.
We can therefore never escape from having to select our essential and
our incidental factor, and whichever we select as the essential, we
thereby place the other in the position of the incidental. If, then, we
make the mistake of reversing the true position and suppose that the
energising force comes from the merely accessory circumstances, we make
_them_ our point of support and lean upon _them_, and stand or fall with
them accordingly; and so we come into a condition of weakness and
obsequious waiting on all sorts of external influences, which is the
very reverse of that strength, wisdom, and opulence which are the only
meaning of Liberty.
But if we would ask ourselves the common-sense question Where can the
centre of a man's Life be except in himself? we shall see that in all
which pertains to us the energising centre must be in ourselves. We can
never get away from ourselves as the centre of our own universe, and the
sooner we clearly understand this the better. There is really no energy
in _our_ universe but what emanates from ourselves in the first
instance, and the power which appears to reside in our surroundings is
derived entirely from our own mind.
If once we realise this, and consider that the Life which flows into us
from the Universal Life-Principle is at every moment _new_ Life entirely
undifferentiated to any particular purpose besides that of supporting
our own individuality, and that it is therefore ours to externalise in
any form we will, then we find that this manifestation of the eternal
Life-Principle _in ourselves_ is the standpoint from which we can
control our surroundings. We must lean firmly on the central point of
our own being and not on anything else. Our mistake is in taking our
surroundings too much "_au grand serieux_." We should touch things more
lightly. As soon as we feel that their weight impedes our free handling
of them they are mastering us, and not we them.
Light handling does not mean weak handling. On the contrary, lightness
of touch is incompatible with a weak grasp of the instrument, which
implies that the weight of the tool is excessive relatively to the force
that seeks to guide it. A light, even playful handling, therefore
implies a firm grasp and perfect control over the instrument. It is only
in the hands of a Grinling Gibbons that the carving tool can create
miracles of aerial lightness from the solid wood. The light yet firm
touch tells not of weakness, but of power held in reserve; and if we
realise our own out-and-out spiritual nature we know that behind any
measure of power we may put forth there is the whole reserve of the
infinite to back us up.
As we come to know this we begin to handle things lightly, playing with
them as a juggler does with his flying knives, which cannot make the
slightest movement other than he has assigned to them, for we begin to
see that our control over things is part of the necessary order of the
universe. The disorder we have met with in the past has resulted
precisely from our never having attempted consciously to introduce this
element of our personal control as part of the system.
Of course, I speak of the _whole_ man, and not merely of that part of
him which Walt Whitman says is contained between his hat and his boots.
The _whole_ man is an infinitude, and the visible portion of him is the
instrument through which he looks out upon and enjoys all that belongs
to him, his own kingdom of the infinite. And when he learns that this is
the meaning of his conscious individuality, he sees _how_ it is that he
is infinite, and finds that he is one with Infinite Mind, which is the
innermost core of the universe. Having thus reached the true centre of
his own being, he can never give this central place to anything else,
but will realise that relatively to this all other things are in the
position of the incidental and accessory, and growing, daily in this
knowledge he will learn so to handle all things lightly, yet firmly,
that grief, fear, and error will have less and less space in his world,
until at last sorrow and sighing shall flee away, and everlasting joy
shall take their place. We may have taken only a few steps on the way as
yet, but they are in the right direction, and what we have to do now is
to go on.
X
PRESENT TRUTH
If Thought power is good for anything it is good for everything. If it
can produce one thing it can produce all things. For what is to hinder
it? Nothing can stop us from thinking. We can _think_ what we please,
and if to think is to form, then we can form what we please. The whole
question, therefore, resolves itself into this: Is it true that to think
is to form? If so, do we not see that our limitations are formed in
precisely the same way as our expansions? We think that conditions
outside our thought have power over us, and so we think power into them.
So the great question of life is whether there is any _other_ creative
power than Thought. If so, where is it, and what is it?
Both philosophy and religion lead us to the truth that "in the
beginning" there was no other creative power than Spirit, and the only
mode of activity we can possibly attribute to Spirit is Thought, and so
we find Thought as the root of all things. And if this was the case "in
the beginning" it must be so still; for if all things originate in
Thought, all things must be modes of Thought, and so it is impossible
for Spirit ever to hand over its creations to some power which is not
itself--that is to say, which is not Thought-power; and consequently all
the forms and circumstances that surround us are manifestations of the
creative power of Thought.
But it may be objected that this is God's Thought; and that the creative
power is in God and not Man. But this goes away from the self-evident
axiomatic truth that "in the beginning" nothing could have had any
origin except Thought. It is quite true that nothing has any origin
except in the Divine Mind, and Man himself is therefore a mode of the
Divine Thought. Again, Man is self-conscious; therefore Man is the
Divine Thought evolved into _individual_ consciousness, and when he
becomes sufficiently enlightened to realise this as his origin, then he
sees that he is a reproduction _in individuality_ of the _same_ spirit
which produces all things, and that his own thought in individuality has
exactly the same quality as the Divine Thought in universality, just as
fire is equally igneous whether burning round a large centre of
combustion or a small one, and thus we are logically brought to the
conclusion that our thought must have creative power.
But people say, "We have not found it so. We are surrounded by all sorts
of circumstances that we do not desire." Yes, you _fear_ them, and in so
doing you _think_ them; and in this way you are constantly exercising
this Divine prerogative of creation by Thought, only through ignorance
you use it in a wrong direction. Therefore the Book of Divine
Instructions so constantly repeats "Fear not; doubt not," because we can
never divest our Thought of its inherent creative quality, and the only
question is whether we shall use it ignorantly to our injury or
understandingly to our benefit.
The Master summed up his teaching in the aphorism that knowledge of the
Truth would make us free. Here is no announcement of anything we have to
do, or of anything that has to be done for us, in order to gain our
liberty, neither is it a statement of anything _future_. Truth _is_ what
is. He did not say, you must wait till something becomes true which is
not true _now_. He said: "Know what _is_ Truth now, and you will find
that the Truth concerning yourself is Liberty." If the knowledge of
Truth makes us free it can only be because in truth we are free already,
only we do not know it.
Our liberty consists in our reproducing on the scale of the individual
the same creative power of Thought which first brought the world into
existence, "so that the things which are seen were not made of things
which do appear." Let us, then, confidently claim our birthright as
"sons and daughters of the Almighty," and by habitually thinking the
good, the beautiful, and the true, surround ourselves with conditions
corresponding to our thoughts, and by our teaching and example help
others to do the same.
XI
YOURSELF
I want to talk to you about the livingness there is in being yourself.
It has at least the merit of simplicity, for it must surely be easier to
be oneself than to be something or somebody else. Yet that is what so
many are constantly trying to do; the self that is their own is not good
enough for them, and so they are always trying to go one better than
what God has made them, with endless strain and struggle as the
consequence. Of course, they are right to put before them an ideal
infinitely grander than anything they have yet attained--the only
possible way of progress is by following an ideal that is always a stage
ahead of us--but the mistake is in not seeing that its attainment is a
matter of growth, and that growth must be the expansion of something
that already exists in us, and therefore implies our being what we are
and where we are as its starting point. This growth is a continuous
process, and we cannot do next month's growth without first doing this
month's; but we are always wanting to jump into some ideal of the
future, not seeing that we can reach it only by steadily going on from
where we are now.
These considerations should make us more confident and more comfortable.
We are employing a force which is much greater than we believe ourselves
to be, yet it is not separate from us and needing to be persuaded or
compelled, or inveigled into doing what we want; it is the substratum of
our own being which is continually passing up into manifestation on the
visible plane and becoming that personal self to which we often limit
our attention without considering whence it proceeds. But in truth the
outer self is the surface growth of that individuality which lies
concealed far down in the deeps below, and which is none other than the
Spirit-of-Life which underlies all forms of manifestation.
Endeavour to realise what this Spirit must be in itself--that is to say,
apart from any of the conditions that arise from the various relations
which necessarily establish themselves between its various forms of
individualisation. In its homogeneous self what else can it be but pure
life--Essence-of-Life, if you like so to call it? Then realise that as
Essence-of-Life it exists in the innermost of _every one_ of its forms
of manifestation in as perfect simplicity as any we can attribute to it
in our most abstract conceptions. In this light we see it to be the
eternally self-generating power which, to express itself, flows into
form.
This universal Essence-of-Life is a continual becoming (into form), and
since we are a part of Nature we do not need to go further than
ourselves to find the life-giving energy at work with all its powers.
Hence all we have to do is to allow it to rise to the surface. We do not
have to _make_ it rise any more than the engineer who sinks the
bore-pipe for an artesian well has to make the water rise in it; the
water does that by its own energy, springing as a fountain a hundred
feet into the air. Just so we shall find a fountain of Essence-of-Life
ready to spring up in ourselves, inexhaustible and continually
increasing in its flow, as One taught long ago to a woman at a wayside
well.
This up-springing of Life-Essence is not another's--it is our own. It
does not require deep studies, hard labours, weary journeyings to attain
it; it is not the monopoly of this teacher or that writer, whose
lectures we must attend or whose books we must read to get it. It is the
innermost of _ourselves_, and a little common-sense thought as to how
anything comes to be anything will soon convince us that the great
inexhaustible life must be the very root and substance of us, permeating
every fibre of our being.
Surely to be this vast infinitude of living power must be enough to
satisfy all our desires, and yet this wonderful ideal is nothing else
but what we already are _in principio_--it is all there in ourselves
now, only awaiting our recognition for its manifestation. It is not the
Essence-of-Life which has to grow, for that is eternally perfect in
itself; but it is our recognition of it that has to grow, and this
growth cannot be forced. It must come by a natural process, the first
necessity of which is to abstain from all straining after being
something which at the present time we cannot naturally be. The Law of
our Evolution has put us in possession of certain powers and
opportunities, and our further development depends on our doing just
what these powers and opportunities make it possible for us to do, here
and now.
If we do what we are able to do to-day, it will open the way for us to
do something better to-morrow, and in this manner the growing process
will proceed healthily and happily in a rapidly increasing ratio. This
is so much easier than striving to compel things to be what they are
not, and it is also so much more fruitful in good results. It is not
sitting still doing nothing, and there is plenty of room for the
exercise of all our mental faculties, but these faculties are themselves
the outcome of the Essence-of-Life, and are not the creating power, but
only that which gives direction to it Now it is this moving power at the
back of the various faculties that is the true innermost self; and if we
realise the identity between the innermost and the outermost, we shall
see that we therefore have at our present disposal all that is necessary
for our unlimited development in the future.
Thus our livingness consists simply in being ourselves, only more so;
and in recognising this we get rid of a great burden of unnecessary
straining and striving, and the place of the old _sturm und drang_ will
be taken, not by inertia, but by a joyous activity which knows that it
always has the requisite power to manifest itself in forms of good and
beauty. What matters it whither this leads us? If we are following the
line of the beautiful and good, then we shall produce the beautiful and
good, and thus bring increasing joy into the world, whatever particular
form it may assume.