THE PATHWAY OF LOVE
Love is the Great Reality.
Everything else in this world of Experience is either tributary to
love or it is an unsatisfying substitute for love; or a counterfeit of
love. Love is the one cohesive, unifying, constructive force, and it
is at the same time the only liberating force.
Hatred, as exemplified in warfare, may sometimes appear to free a
people from the rule of a tyrant, but unless love be at the root of
the "casus belli," other and more direful disasters will follow in the
wake of seeming victory.
There is an erroneous idea, quite general among Christian people, that
Death frees the spirit from the bonds that hold it to the mortal and
the incomplete. Death only drops off the garment of the flesh; there
are innumeral sheathings yet to be shed, before the soul grows the
wings with which to soar to the celestial realms, where Love reigns
supreme.
Love is the only power on earth or in the spheres, that can liberate
us either from our own prejudices and hatreds and fears; or from the
limitations and attractions of the animal-man.
Love is, indeed, the Alpha and Omega of Life. "There is no other God
but Thee," has been the cry of every race on this globe,
apostrophizing the unrecognized little baby-God, personified and
presented to the race-mind as Horus; or as Krishna, or as Christ; but
always it is Love, the Invisible, the Beautiful One, who is adored.
Ingersoll with his wonderful gift of word-painting, and inspired by
that great love of humanity which characterized him, has said:
"Love is the only bow on life's dark cloud. It is the morning and
evening star. It shines on the babe and sheds its radiance on the
tomb. It is the mother of art; inspirer of poet, patriot and
philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart; builder of every
home; kindler of every fire on the hearth; it was the first dress of
immortality. It fills the world with melody, for music is the voice of
love. Love is the magician, the enchanter that changes worthless
things to joy and makes right royal queens and kings of common clay.
It is the perfume of that wonderful flower, the heart, and without
that sacred passion that divine swoon, we are less than beasts, but
with it--earth is Heaven and we are gods."
It would be superfluous to state here, that Love has ever been
recognized as the supreme prize, lacking which all other gifts of life
are worthless.
It is admitted that Love is almost the only thing in this age of
commercial supremacy which can not be bought. Though it may be
bartered for.
Although it be unreservedly admitted that Love is the all-powerful and
magic solvent which transmutes all baser emotions into the higher,
the general inference will be drawn that this type of love is not
sexual. It will be termed parental; humanitarian, self-sacrificing, or
altruistic love, and the point may be taken that if humanity had
developed nothing higher than the love which is manifested in the sex
instinct, the world would be a sorry one indeed, since sexual love, as
we have witnessed its ascent from protoplasm to man, has been, in most
instances, a blind urge toward personal gratification, not more lofty
than the need of supplying the craving for food. This is quite true of
animals, and of the lower types of animal-man; not necessarily the
earliest types of men, but the lowest types, which we still have with
us but happily in decreasing numbers.
But even among animals we find evidences of something vague,
indefinite, but insistent which leads the animal to exhibit what we
term a tendency toward _selection_; and in the animal also, through
the exigencies of sexual love, we find parental love, and here again
we note a peculiarity which ascends also into the family life of
humans, namely, that in some instances what we have called the
maternal love, the gentle, care-taking, guarding and protecting love,
is demonstrated by the male. This is less common with the animals than
with Man, but it is sometimes found and proves the existence of the
evolutionary trend toward balance in the individual, as well as in the
family.
If maternal love were confined strictly to the female parent, and the
procreative instinct were the legitimate inheritance of the male only,
we could never hope for a perfect sexual union, for the very cogent
reason that the love of the male would never equal that of the female,
since our capacity grows by becoming diffused.
As the world stands today, parental love takes a higher place in the
life of the family, and of the nation and of the race (the family on a
larger scale), than does love of husband or wife; and over and above
even parental love we have been accustomed to place the love of God.
Now we know that there are many who claim that their love of this
abstract God supercedes that of love for their family, but we may
tacitly agree to take this statement as either an admission of fear of
the Unknown or the realization that there are heights and depths of
the love-principle which they have not yet penetrated, something to
which the spirit soars. They intuitively recognize that there is some
perfected state to which we aspire, else human love would never flower
into its full possibilities.
And so when we declare that we love God above all other loves; more
than wife or husband; children or parents; we are but admitting that
we realize in our interior nature that we have not yet loved any
_human being_ with as great a love as we are capable of.
If any one holds the mistaken idea--and it is one that is very
generally held--that the perfect sex union can be attained by no finer
phase of emotion than that expressed in procreation; and that in
order to develop the highest quality of sex-love, he must eschew all
other phases of manifestation, and concentrate the forces of his being
in the direction of sexual expression, he will meet with dire defeat.
The laws of the cosmos cannot be broken. We are constantly confronted
with the admonition, the child of Fear, to "be careful not to break
the laws of God." We need not worry at all about the laws of God,
whether we call these Cosmic Law, or Nature, or Divine Providence or
something else. Our concern is with ourselves. Neither need we worry
whether our neighbor obeys the moral code as we see it. So long as he
does not refuse to us our right to follow our own ideals, we may
permit him the same liberty.
God, as manifested in the cosmic law of transmutation, will take care
of Him-Her-Self. Morality can not be extinguished. Love cannot be
killed by men. We can only hurt ourselves in trying.
Love is neither fickle, capricious nor sly, notwithstanding tomes of
seeming evidence to the contrary. Love is the most perfect
mathematician in the universe. With whatsoever measure a man or a
woman metes out love, with that same measure it is returned. Neither
is Love blind. Love is depicted thus, because he is not concerned with
appearances, but with realities. He is not gazing without, but within.
He is doing his best, the poor little neglected Love-god, with the
material at hand since he must fulfill the law of his being. He seeks
to unite lovers in their interior nature, but as each of the would-be
happy pair is bent on gazing without, instead of within, he is
handicapped. And when unhappiness follows, they blame the blindness of
Love, instead of realizing that He is depicted with a bandage over His
eyes, to indicate that Love is an interior quality. So too, the
Egyptian God Horus, the God of Love, was depicted with his finger on
his lips, to typify the truth that true love is not noisy, blustering,
jealous, burning, ranting, protesting. He is silent; soft; melting;
blissful; magnetic; _uniting_.
Our noisy civilization, seeking happiness in Things, mistakes
protestations and appearances for realities, and so modern marriages
are consummated on this basis, and the caricaturists have depicted
Cupid as having exchanged his love-darts for dollars, but this is a
slander on the little god who wouldn't know a dollar if he could see
one. "It is not true that one knows what one sees; one sees what one
knows," declared a clever Frenchman, and as the average modern bride
and bridegroom are forced, or think they are, by modern standards of
living, to know dollars better than they know Love, their perverted
vision sees Cupid's arrows tipped with the dollar mark. But even the
dollar mark spells US, united, and if they are indeed truly united in
love, wealth untold is theirs, and if they are not thus united then
indeed are they poor in happiness, which is the only real poverty.
But even in the very failure to attain happiness in things, married
couples have learned or they are learning, that there is an interior
nature which must be considered if marital happiness is expected.
In all too many instances it may take many experiences and the road to
the heights may for a time be lost but let us remember that "Love
never faileth."
It has been said that "love makes gods of men," and we have taken this
phrase as a charming bit of hyperbole, whereas it is a literal truth,
because when two individual souls have rounded and balanced their
natures by means of love, they come together in an eternal union, and
are immortal; "in their flesh they have seen God," and the pilgrimage
is ended.
There is a phrase current at the present day, belonging to slang, that
universal language of the masses, "the Volapuk of the melting-pot." It
comes to us simultaneously with the affinity-wave and the soul-mate
quest; and it is both pertinent and timely, although by no means
always wisely applied. It is the expression "I have found my
seek-no-farther; he (or she) is the Real Thing."
Life is a succession of experiences in the quest of immortality.
Immortality would be a curse instead of a blessing if attained alone.
Even the attainment of so unworthy an ambition as riches is a mockery
if unshared by others. Fame is like a ruined and deserted castle to
the one who has achieved it, unless there be the one other to share
it. Even the philosopher, the philanthropist, the humanitarian, he
whose love nature is supposed to find satisfaction in making others
happy--can not realize the completeness and fullness of joy, unless
there is the one mate with whom he may share his altruistic work; or
lacking this, he looks to the Life Beyond for the completeness which
he does not find here.
Renan says: "One reason why religion remains on such a material plane
for many is because they have never known a great and vitalizing love;
a love where intellect, spirit and sex finds its perfect mate."
Verily, love is the only vitalizing power in the universe; and when
denied the interior union which should exist between a conjoining
pair, Love does the best He can, and infuses into the relationship as
much of the divine nectar as they will accept.
_There is no impure love._ I repeat: There is no impure love. The
impurity is in the mortal mind of man, obstructing his vision until he
fails to see the purity of that which fain would lift him from the
Slough of Despond to the Heights of Bliss.
If love be always pure, if it be always the uplifting, unifying,
constructive power of the universe, what becomes of the apparent fact
that men have sinned for love of woman; that for love of man, women
have lost their self-respect, their hope of Heaven; and have sunk to
depths below that of the brute creation?
What becomes of the all too many instances where human nature appears
to love vice; to be under the spell, as it were of a passionate love
for all that is ignoble and defiling? How, then, can we say that love
is always pure when it leads to such disaster?
Love never leads to disaster, though love may follow wheresoever the
erring mind of man leads, and thus Love is all too frequently dragged
from his true place of exaltation, and brought into the arena of human
conflict. Love is no fighter; He never opposes; He only concurs; He
unites if there is anything with which he can establish an affinity of
union.
Egoism is the arch-enemy of love, selfishness is the manifestation of
egoism. Selfishness seeks to possess; it is selfishness that causes a
man to commit crime, in order that he may bedeck the woman he loves
with jewels and fine raiment. He is buying her bodily presence with
the baubles which he vainly believes will bind her to him; and he must
be taught the lesson of the Yoga sutras "not this way; not this way;"
and the more worthy he is of redemption, the more certainly will he be
caught in the trap of his own making, lest he really perish; whereas
by seeming defeat, outward defeat, he may learn the true path of
inwardness. Certainly Love is the only guide to whom he may safely
trust his redemption.
If a woman really sinks into the depths of degradation through what
appears to be love, it is because selfishness and vanity have
temporarily supplanted Love. But there is another side to the
question. Society has very erroneous ideas of success and failure; and
in looking at these opposite ends of the same pole, Society may be
standing on it's head.
A story illustrative of this inverted view of success is worth
repeating.
A young Englishman of aristocratic family, tired of the inanities of
social life, and denied the privilege of entering the commercial
world, emigrated to the South Seas. It was reported at home that he
had married a native Samoan woman and was living the simple life of
the Islanders. English society, when his name was mentioned at all,
spoke of him with hushed voices and with a "what a pity y' know"
manner as of one who had sunk below the depths of ordinary failure.
Subsequently a friend visited Samoa and found the young man enjoying
life and evidently supremely content. In the course of conversation
the visitor chanced to speak of a mutual friend who had been rather
wild in the days when they both knew him, and thinking to impart
agreeable news to the exile, the visitor eagerly assured him that "Sir
Arthur is respectably married and settled down now" whereupon the
self-constituted exile commiseratingly responded with: "what a pity;
and he was such a decent sort, too." So we may see that there is much
in the point of view.
Happiness is the final test of success or failure; and we may trust
this test, because no one can be happy in any other than the
progressive, upward-trending life. Dissipation has never been a
satisfactory substitute for happiness. Wealth is valueless to the
possessor if it shuts out love; and if love be present, wealth holds
but an inconsequential place.
However it be, the pathway of Love is long; and between the force of
attraction which unites two atoms in chemical affinity, and the union
of two perfected human beings, in whom Love and Wisdom are balanced,
there are many degrees of the manifestation of Love, and the question
inevitably arises "what shall we do with those marriages that are not
yet perfect?"
If, as here premised, there is in the entire universe but one mate for
each man and each woman; and if the union of perfect mates is the only
truly spiritual union; if this union precludes the possibility of
"temptation" in any other direction, what is to be done with all the
marriages which we know to be imperfect; wherein it is evident that
soul-union is not present? Are they immoral, and are they to be
abandoned? And is marital infidelity in such instances immoral?
It is. Infidelity is always immoral, because all deceit and deception
and dishonesty are immoral.
Let us see what constitutes infidelity, irrespective of marriage.
Infidelity is to be unfaithful to a trust imposed; to betray a
confidence; to break a promise. This is the abstract definition and it
is the only definition that will withstand analysis, whether applied
to the marriage vows or to other promises and pledges.
Obviously the answer to this question, then, is to either not impose
upon oneself or upon another "vows"; or, if we do so impose, not to
break them; but if vows are not to be broken, they may, thank Heaven,
be dissolved.
And surely the marriage ceremony of the future will not impose vows or
promises, because intelligent men and women must rise superior to the
necessity for bonds and promises. A marriage ceremony is, even at its
very highest, when the contracting persons are spiritually mated,
nothing more than announcement to the society of which they are
members, of the fact of their mutual agreement to live outwardly, as
well as inwardly, in sexual union.
We make too much of the marriage ceremony and too little of the
fitness for marriage. The business of the clergyman is altogether too
much confined to seeing whether a couple is "respectably" bonded, and
altogether too little as to whether they are spiritually united.
Possession! that is the word that spells unhappiness, in married life;
each wants to possess the other; neither one tries for the spirit of
union. Possession cannot be divorced from deceit.
Vows and promises challenge us to keep them, and because our pathway
leads upward to freedom, we constantly find these vows and promises
staring us in the face and daring us to advance. We must substitute
mutual confidence for vows. Vows are childish and puerile. If we
cannot keep faith without vows then are we sadly lacking in faith and
should cultivate it by offering to others the freedom of action we
would have ourselves. When the time comes, as it will, that a husband
and wife can "talk it over" in a friendly, mutually helpful frame of
mind, when either one is attracted by another, there will be no
further opportunity for infidelity; and the sooner we rid the world of
a belief in sin and immorality, the sooner will Love reign.
It is said of the sages of India that they can live in the jungles and
the ferocious tigers will not harm them; how do they accomplish this?
They have disassociated themselves from ferocity. They do not desire
to crush or kill the tiger. Their minds are so filled with love and
compassion that there is no point of connection between them and the
destructive instinct in the beast.
When we get away from the fear of "impure" love; when we get away from
the tremendous load of belief in evil which keeps the back bent and
the eyes lowered to the dust, we will be ready to meet the pure and
perfect love when it comes; and when we are fit for it we will meet it
and when we have found this pearl of great price, all doubt and fear,
all jealousy; all dissatisfaction will vanish. There will be no fear
of "losing" each other. The union is an interior one, and even though
"seas divide and mountains vast, rear their proud crests 'tween thee
and me," the call of soul to soul will be felt and answered. Byron says:
"There are two souls of equal flow,
Whose gentle streams so calmly run,
That when they part--they part? Oh no,
They cannot part, those souls are one."
With a sentiment such as this between two beings, what need for vows
and promises, and bonds?
It is customary for writers on the sex question to emphatically, even
feverishly, emphasize the fact that they have no intention of implying
that they would do away with the bonds of matrimony; and although this
conclusion is inevitable where one's intellect is active and the
faculty of deduction brought into play, yet the false modesty that
prevails and the prejudices that blind the eyes of the multitude, and
above all, the tendency of the undeveloped race-mind to impute
personal motives to such as would, if permitted, lead them to a freer,
and consequently a purer life, impel the writer to deny that which is,
finally, the very point at issue.
In the interest of Truth, we are compelled to state that we would do
away with "bonds." We would substitute therefor mutual agreements,
subject to renewal or repudiation within certain defined and mutually
helpful conditions. Vows and bonds and oaths are the crutches of the
crippled human race. We need not always walk lame.
It may be argued that man is still largely animal; yes, but the surest
way to keep him so is to treat him like an animal. If we remind him
that he is also a man and that he may be a god; and if we point out to
him the way in which he may accomplish this transmutation, no man has
so little intelligence that he will not attempt to follow, when
assured that God-hood means a bliss so great that he can hardly
imagine it; that it means cessation of the "endless round of births
and deaths" from which Gautama, the Buddha, sought to free himself.
Mankind has always been promised immortality through spiritual
union--with what? An abstract principle called God, or Aum or any
other impersonal formless all-inclusive Being?
No, but with his mate.
On this point we trust that there will not remain any obscurity. There
is no higher God than Love. There is no higher love than sexual-love
in its highest manifestation. The more we truly love, the more love
flows into and through our consciousness, until from a tiny little
pearly drop of the "wine of life" we ascend to the Olympian Heights
and imbibe floods of the "nectar of the Gods."
Even the libertine, that pauper in the realm of Love, wants the
perfect life. His soul is forever hungry for that which he gropingly
tries to catch and chain and possess; and which by virtue of these
same desires will evade him until he ceases thus to seek, and instead
of demanding possession of the object of his desires, he asks for
union. Union is interior; possession is always and ever limited to
exterior contact. They who would enter the sanctuary and defile the
"Holy of Holies" are saved from such a load of self-inflicted sin;
they cannot if they would. There is but one key which will open the
golden gate to heaven. The way chosen by the libertine is in exactly
the opposite direction.
Are all marriages that are not soul-mate unions immoral? Most
certainly not. Are all unions that are not married immoral. Most
certainly not.
We have made an attempt to define sexual immorality and we have
concluded that as yet there is no absolute standard in civilized or
uncivilized ethics, since, as Letourneau points out, what is immoral
in Pekin or Calcutta may be moral in Paris or London. Truth is
adherence to facts in whatever section of the world. Tolerance;
sympathy; charity; may be clearly defined wherever we roam. Sexual
immorality has no stable standards. We here suggest one and submit
that it is the only one possible of universal concurrence. It is based
upon personal freedom. Wherever the sexual relation is made a
convenience; or where either one marries in the face of his or her own
realization that there is no love bestowed, that relationship is
immoral. Thus, it will be seen that sexual immorality is independent
of marriage, and cannot be estimated by law. Marriage for money; for
position; for convenience; for anything other than a desire for mutual
helpfulness, is immoral. Indulgence in the sexual act for selfish
gratification without regard to the welfare of each other; for money;
or pastime; or for any motive other than a reverential expression of
an unselfish love, is immoral and is a prostitution of the divine
office of sex.
But, though not all sex relationships can be perfect and eternal, yet
all may, if we desire, be moral. And all moral and sexual
relationships must, and will, lead to perfect sex-union, whenever the
time comes that either one is ready for the completement. This truth
need not, and will not, disrupt any happy marriages.
If the Church had not made the mistake of teaching the fallacy that
sex-love is a strictly earthly or mortal function, divorcing Sex from
pure love; and if the Theology had not tried to substitute the love
of, and union with, an abstract Creator for love of mates in
soul-union, perhaps there would be exhibited less impatience of the
restraints of marriage.
But with a cat-and-dog married life on the one hand and the prospect
of an inane, blank, and sexless union with an abstract God-idea on the
other, it is small wonder that mortal consciousness has rebelled, and
has decided to take its chances with Hell, rather than to forego the
happiness which is intuitively sensed as being the direct prerogative
of perfect mating.
If this God-idea had not been presented as an eternal, unescapable
finality, there might have been hope; but to fly about a throne
endlessly, night and day, singing, "I want to be nothing; nothing;
only to lie at His feet"--the prospect appalls!
Small wonder that the conclusion has been deduced that "life is too
short" for anything like domestic misery, when domestic happiness is
the only happiness we know, and that is to cease at death!
But, if we take the truthful view of marriage and of heaven; if we
realize that mortal life is Experience; that as we learn by
experience, we acquire knowledge; as we accumulate knowledge, we begin
to glimpse wisdom; and that when we have sufficient Wisdom and
sufficient Love, we graduate into the classification of God-hood,
immortality; and that immortality means union with our mate;
sex-union, in all that constitutes its highest and most satisfying
aspect as we know it, with infinitely more of beauty and love and
bliss, there is an incentive to aspire.
Love is the only way that immortality can be attained. It cannot be
"taken," like degrees of secret societies. It cannot be purloined, or
feigned. Fear has never made people good. The doctrine of punishment
has never deterred the sinner. Even in his apparent acceptance of the
doctrine of sin and of consequent punishment, the poor sinner has
known better. Humanity has progressed in spite of the fear that has
dwarfed our stature.
In the new day, with hope ahead and fear transmuted into a wise
patience, this earth may yet be a "fit dwelling-place for the gods."
Leigh Hunt says: "Love is a personal proof that something good and
earnest and eternal is meant us; such a bribe and foretaste of bliss
being given us to keep us in the lists of time and progression; and
when the world has realized what love urges it to obtain, perhaps
death will cease and all the souls which love has created crowd back
at its summons to inhabit their perfected world."
We are prone to consider such statements as only so many beautiful
words--elusive, ethereal, and descriptive of something that is always
in the future; but if it be always in the future it will never be
ours; we cannot catch up with it; and thus it becomes a mockery. These
prophetic utterances are literal truths.
Let us confide to you a little secret: We are as much spirit now as we
will be when death has unloosed the bindings of our disguise--the
body. The real of each of us is what we are now, in our interior
nature.
While we are building the business which sustains our physical body;
while we are studying law or medicine or philosophy or religion or
whatsoever, we are at the same time developing the interior nature
which we are now, and which we will be when the life of the body
ceases. Not all business men are alike, and yet, if business were
their only reality, they must needs be all the same for employing the
same methods. Not all doctors are alike although they graduate from
the same school of medicine. The inner entity that we are, stands or
falls in the final test, by the motives; the desires; the sentiments;
the sympathies; the generosities; the forgiveness; the kind impulses;
the pities; the charities; the tolerances; we feel while we are
apparently engrossed in the outer life. Together, these little
impulses, perhaps forgotten in the rush of the day's seemingly
important business affairs, come finally to be the ladder by which we
climb to the spiritual heights where the bliss of true and perfect,
melting, merging, liquid-love, of the one and only mate awaits us.
One thing more. This also is a secret. Perhaps you will not even
believe it, but it is true: Poets are the practical members of our
crazy civilization. Business men are practical only when they are
also, and above all, idealists.