THE LAW OF TRANSMUTATION
External life is a succession of picture blocks with which we have
builded our thoughts into shapes and forms manifest to the mortal
senses. But back of every act there is the invisible ideal which
prompted it, so that to the one who has the interior vision; one who
looks at life from the citadel of his own interior nature instead of
merely sensing it by external contact, every material thing tells its
interior story; everything has an esoteric or occult meaning. It is
said that mystic truths have been veiled in symbolical language; but
to those who know the language of symbolism, there is no veil; what
seems so is due to the refractory character of the mind which is
limited to sense consciousness.
There are two words much used in this day of the Dawn which give the
key to the trend of the cosmic cycle upon which the earth has entered.
The word "union," or its equivalent, enters into almost every phase of
our busy life as well as into ethical and philosophical thought. This
word, with much that it stands for, has superseded the word
"agreement," or "combination" or "partnership," formerly used. Union
means something more interior, than do these other words, even when
applied to commercial issues.
The business man says to his partners "let us unite on this question."
They are already partners, but unless there is a unity of thought and
ideals, their partnership is an unsatisfactory and unfruitful one. We
have labor unions which are intended to suggest a solidarity of
effort; a merging of interests; a welding together into one
thought-force, of those who enter the organization. The fullness of
meaning of this word "union" is not adequately expressed in the words
lodge, or club, or any of the terms used to designate an organization
of men in social or commercial combination.
In union there is strength; but in partnership, or in clubs, there may
be no quality of union, although there is the outward bond of
fellowship. "I shall look into this" we say when we want to know more
of a subject than appears on the surface. We want to know the within.
We want to fathom the interior meaning; to get below the surface, or
the appearance of it. This is the other word of vital import--the word
_within_. We see it everywhere like a signpost directing our footsteps
toward home.
The Master Jesus said that the immortal kingdom was within, but the
Christian world evidently has not believed Him. He also told those who
would listen to Him, that there was but one commandment that was truly
spiritual, but as he did not come to destroy anything that existed,
but only to transmute it, He paid no attention to the commandments
already in vogue, but contented Himself with a repetition of the one
and only commandment of the Father-Mother God Principle which begat
him: "That ye love one another."
Now we are being told from the housetops and from the streets and
through all the channels of the physical senses to look within. That
which you are--not what you appear to be to the eyes of the
sense-conscious--but that which you are in your interior nature, is
what counts to you. The writer who writes because he is paid to write
salable stuff, harps upon the necessity for "efficiency" in the
commercial game; but when the word is impartially considered
efficiency consists in the long run in reliability, and reliability is
measured by one's honesty; integrity; square-dealing; wise
judgment--interior qualities all. It matters not whether the skin be
white or black or brown or yellow or green; whether you are of
imposing stature or but four feet tall; it is what you are within that
constitutes true efficiency.
So the kingdom whatever it may be whether of heaven or hell; of love;
or of power; or of ambition; the kingdom is within. The source of your
power is in the interior of your nature.
If we go to slang, which offers the line of least resistance to the
Cosmic Law, we find that the cue has been given over and over again to
those who are interiorly awake to receive it. "You are not in on
this," has been said to one who was left out of some supposedly
desirable thing; or "you are not _in_ it," meaning that you are not up
to the required standard. Even as the walls of a building only
imperfectly indicate the nature of that which is within, that which
the building stands for; that which it symbolizes, so physical
appearances are symbolical hieroglyphs of the inner nature.
"Learn to look into the hearts of men" admonishes the spiritual
teacher. "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." The character of
the heart is the test, and though a man's lips utter words that are at
variance with his inner nature, yet if we have learned to look within,
we are not deceived. This then is the key to the kingdom--interior
vision.
Words are like buildings; like personalities; they have their exterior
and their interior message. Knowledge may be accumulated; piled up
like a mountain of possessions. But knowledge may not bestow one grain
of true wisdom. It is only as we extract the interior message from
knowledge that we attain wisdom. We possess knowledge and we _find_
wisdom, when we have transmuted that knowledge into its interior
meaning.
The fundamental difference between mysticism and theology is a
difference founded upon this axiom. The true mystic penetrates to the
interior nature of manifestation and gets the message of Experience.
Mysticism excludes nothing. It includes the manifest with the
interior; it penetrates the outer and seeks the interior; but never
does the true mystic confound the spirit with the letter; never does
he mistake the external for the Reality; the symbol for the message.
Suppose that what is generally called the practical side of life were
the only reality. What would be the inevitable conclusion of the
thinker if he were to consider only the outer, the manifest, the
visible results of a given achievement? He would conclude that
civilization is insane.
If we did not know with an intuitional grasp of truth that all this
which we call "marvels of achievement" is symbolical of what Man is in
his interior nature, it would be the veriest folly. What, for example,
is there in a modern sky-scraper indicative of man's advanced
civilization?
With millions of acres of unused land, it would be inconceivable folly
to project into the inoffensive atmosphere twenty-eight stories of
wood and iron merely to buy and sell the products of man's brain and
hands. But while our Twentieth Century feverish activities are
ostensibly engaged in the external world, they are symbolizing,
embodying, teaching if we will but learn, the fact of the evolution of
man's interior nature. Sky-scrapers are indicative of the heights to
which we are aspiring; to which we are climbing; air-ships only tell
us that man in his interior nature--in his reality--is not a creeping,
crawling Thing, chained to the earth. He may, if he will, soar into
ethereal realms. He has wings, and if he so desires, he may use them.
Wireless telegraphy would be a much less consequential discovery, did
it not foreshadow the coming time when mind will speak to mind
regardless of desert wastes and imponderable mountains that seemingly
intervene. Wireless messages are the result of vibrations set in
motion by means of a dynamo and received by an instrument attuned to a
corresponding rate of motion. But no dynamo ever invented has the
power that is centered in the dynamic will of a human being. Brute
strength is paralyzed into inactivity by the comparatively puny
strength of a man. The fierceness of the lion, the tremendous force of
the elephant, give way before the potent power of Man's desire--an
interior quality.
Do skyscrapers, or air ships, or wireless telegraph systems make us
happier? If they do, is it not because of their ethical rather than
their so-called practical value? Is it not because they prove to man
his power to use the plastic material of the planet and control it to
do his bidding? Rapid transit adds to convenience; but above and
beyond all the so-called practical valuation which can be put upon
modern inventions and accomplishment is the message which these
mechanical marvels present to the mind. The message that man is not a
machine; that he is not a creature but a creator; that he is not a
miserable worm of the dust, but a winged god.
Greater than all the other benefits bestowed by modern mechanical
marvels is the knowledge of each other which has resulted from
intercommunication between nation and nation. The great breeder of
discord and the waste of hatred is the idea of segregation. The man of
the cave and the club feared his next door neighbor, because he did
not know him, and the animal-man fears that which he does not know;
his imagination pictures the unknown one as something monstrous and
dangerous. Intimacy will teach us that people of a distant country are
like ourselves, even though they may dress differently; even though
they may wear their hair an inch longer or shorter; may eat a diet of
nuts instead of meat; may pray standing up rather than kneeling down.
Upon such trifling and absurd differences as these are based our ideas
of "alien" races and "foreign" nations.
Annihilation of space and time accomplished by modern mechanical
inventions has made us familiar with the interior life of other human
beings and has compelled us to the knowledge that they have feelings,
emotions, desires, hopes, aspirations, and faults, exactly like our
own, and thus will be established a bond of unity, which will reach
the heart of our neighbor. If this bond of unity has not as yet been
established, it is because the majority of Mankind are still only
sense-conscious. They have not yet assimilated the knowledge which the
past few years has precipitated in such an avalanche that the
slow-moving mind cannot keep pace with it. But out of all this
knowledge must come in due time the quality of wisdom. Wisdom seeks
love as the only eternal reality. Not because God has commanded that
we shall do so; not because of a sentimental ideal, but because any
other course is futile, foolish, silly and does not "get us anywhere"
as the slangologists rightly express it.
Thus everything in the busy commercial world, seemingly bent upon
perpetuating external forms and systems, is in reality a symbolic
language of which "unity" and "within" are the pivotal centers. These
two words are really complementary, because it is only with the
interior nature that unity can be established.
We may conjoin; combine; contact; cohere. We may form partnerships,
corporations, combinations from the outside. These are external
expressions of the interior desire for unity, but union is of the
interior nature only.
With the more intimate knowledge of each other which
intercommunication between nations makes general, each little
segregated mass of human beings must sooner or later arrive at the
conclusion that we are very much alike and that to "get together" on
any proposition involving the welfare of all humanity is a much less
costly and a far more satisfactory way of settling matters than by
going to war over it. Not that this idea is yet fixed in the brains of
the majority, but there is creeping into man's cranium a faint thought
that perhaps the survival of the fittest will be best maintained by
peaceful methods; an idea that honor can neither be maintained nor
appeased by shedding blood. This knowledge will bring us to the wise
observation that fundamentally, cosmically there is no place for
enmity between nations and races and classes and the sexes; that the
whole conglomerated mass of hatreds and inherited enmities and
segregated interests; the absurd idea that one part of the world can
permanently prosper by the enslavement of any part; the undeveloped
and savage ideas that underlie our civilization; all these
thought-concepts have no more reality in the cosmic scheme of things,
than have the picture-blocks of the child in the adult life.
The world has been living through a nightmare. The warfare which
belongs to the animal plane of Man's evolving consciousness has been
carried into the mental world as well. Not only do men fight like
tigers in the jungles, but they fight with tongue and pen as well,
using food products, textile fabrics, inventions, mechanical devices
and the creations of brains of men, for their weapons. But this type
of warfare will not much longer survive. Mankind must choose between
transmutation or annihilation. Hatred is self-destructive. Blind
indeed must be those who can expect to escape this law. "They who use
the sword shall perish by the sword." How else can it be? There is but
one force. If we use it to construct, we are constructed. If we use it
to destroy we are destroyed, since it is by the very nature of law
that we become involved in that which we employ. It is a simple sum in
arithmetic. We may either add or subtract. If we add, there is no
limit. If we subtract we ultimately wipe off the slate.
The fact is dawning upon an increasing number of thinkers, that even
as brain is superseding brawn in the marts of the world, so there is
still a finer and higher and better force, so potential in its power
that nothing can withstand its melting, merging, unifying motive. That
power is love, without which though we have all else we are but as
"sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal."
Even as the ferocious man-eating animals have disappeared from the
earth; even as the giant gladiators, the mailed knights, the erotic
pomp and regalia of Imperialism, with their captives chained to their
chariot-wheels; the cruel despots, the tyrannical masters and scourged
slaves; the bloody sacrifices, the horrible games of the
amphitheatres, even as these one-time evidences of alleged
"civilization" have passed away, so too will time see the dissolution
of our own "false gods." Transmuted into pure and perfect love and
peace and equality, the power now misapplied in the work of hate and
destruction, will increase a thousand fold and be directed toward the
maintenance of a balanced world--a world in which Love and Wisdom are
united.
We are always fearful of changes. The bat-like eyes of the multitude
are blinded by the light of the sun. Why cannot we trust the Cosmic
Law which has always given us a better ideal in the place of the
decadent one? If we prefer to use the word God, then let us say why
cannot we trust God?
In the external world, then, the idea that a part of this sphere is
inherently antagonistic to another; that men are born enemies; that
the female and the male must forever struggle for supremacy--all these
ideas are disappearing. "Unity" is the password to the coming
civilization. If then we will accept this conclusion and apply it to
our individual selves, we will conclude that no function of the human
organism should merit disapproval; or be regarded as an enemy. Before
we can arrive at a balanced and sane world without, we must come to a
balanced and sane state within our own organism.
We must know that the sex function, the most vital of all the various
expressions of life in the individual body as well as in the social
body and the racial body, is not an enemy with whom we must maintain
unceasing warfare, but a wise and trustworthy friend with whom we may
safely co-operate, neither repressing this vital force until we have
conquered it and dragged it like a bleeding captive behind our
chariot-wheels, nor should we like the drug-slave become lost in the
clutches of an abnormal appetite.
Indeed, as the forces of life become transmuted from the physical
appetites to the finer, and interior desires of the soul,
abnormalities and perversions of sex-force will be impossible.
Sex-force is, at the Center of Being, unpolluted. It is pure, perfect
and harmonious. It is divine. Why? Because it is bi-une; it is
balanced.
In our present-day lopsided civilization, we find that nearly every
one is lop-sided, and unbalanced. Alienists declare that almost every
man and woman has some hobby or mania. Doubtless this is true. An age
of specialization would incline the race toward "lopsidedness." But
the source of Life is balanced; if we come to the place where we
consciously unite with that interior source we will no longer be
unbalanced, because the central source of life is Sex, and Sex is, at
the center of the radius, bi-une, which is to say balanced. There is
no chance for sex supremacy, for domination, or dispute, or jealousy.
There is equilibrium.
It is probable that to those who cannot compass the consciousness that
equality does not mean identicalness this sort of balanced life will
appear tame and tasteless. Few women perhaps and certainly fewer men
can imagine a sex-union in which love is so great, so over-powering
and at the same time so perfect, that there is no room for jealousy.
The average person believes that jealousy is inseparable from
sex-love. But even as our antediluvian ancestors could not imagine the
mechanical miracles of the telephone and the telegraph, so we fail to
comprehend the infinite depth and intensity of our interior being
until we come to the place where we awake from the sleep of the mortal
and glimpse the heights of the immortal life.
No one can give to another this interior wisdom--this philosopher's
stone, by means of which all baser instincts are transmuted into the
pure golden-tinted light of illumination. He can but point the way and
promise that the results are mathematically proportionate to effort,
and effort will be backed by individual desire.
We do not hold, as do many writers dealing with the physiological side
of the subject of Sex, that the sex function is primarily designed for
purposes of procreation and that any other expression of sex is
contrary to nature. The essential function of sex is to vitalize.
Procreation is one of the uses of sex-love, but it is not its primary
function.
Until men and women have absolute control over their sex impulses they
are still on the plane of sense-consciousness; and as long as they
remain only sense-conscious they miss the very thing that they seek.
All that is pleasureable in sex-contact that reaches any man or woman
who is only sense-conscious is no more than a faint echo of the
ecstacy of divine and perfect love which is known to the spiritual
alchemist, who has discovered the art of transmutation and thus found
the key to the gate of eternal life.
As long as we remain limited to the plane of sense-consciousness, old
age is a blessing. It compels transmutation of the love-nature into
interior channels. By the failure of the physical organism to express
the sex-desires, this force is given an opportunity to become
transmuted into higher, finer and more intense and beautiful thoughts.
It takes on whatever quality of soul we have acquired and it fosters
that quality--be it much or little--so that we may not go into the
interior realms a spiritual pauper.
Even as our physical childhood is a prelude to mental adultship, so
old age, our "second childhood," is a prelude to our soul adultship,
and the character of our old age period is prophetic of our state in
the soul life.
There are some extremely aged persons whom we cannot, if we have any
degree of interior vision, classify as old; the youth and beauty and
love-radiance of their interior nature is so potent that it shines
through the worn and wrinkled garment that covers it; and we know that
when that garment shall have been removed by the hands of Death, that
the soul will be clothed in radiant youth and beauty, and light.
This is indeed the esoteric cause of the widespread repudiation of a
mental recognition of age.
"I am seventy years young" says the man who hopes for eternal youth
and life; and if he says it from the standpoint of wisdom--the wisdom
that knows himself an immortal soul fired by pure and holy spiritual
love, then indeed his words are truly symbolical.
But if he utters them merely in desperate defiance of organic decay,
they are empty and he will enter the after-life, even as he leaves
this one, without having attained that which he craves.
This truth is an integral part of the cosmos, from which there is no
appeal; no reprieve; no immunity, no "respecter of persons." The law
is absolute and it is also just. Pure and perfect love is the price of
immortal life. There is no other "coin of the realm."
"But," questions the initiate, "why cannot those who know, if there be
such in the world today, give us this mystical formula? Why do they
not tell us how we may reach this desirable state of spiritual
sex-love, which affords such divine happiness to those who find it?"
The query is pertinent and the desire is natural; the doubt of its
reality is consistent, yet we are constrained to say that in the very
nature of such inquiry the disciple of the Hidden Wisdom voices his
unreadiness for _Illumination_. The desire for self-gratification,
though right and natural to the sense-conscious plane, is yet inimical
to attainment of spiritual consciousness.
There is a spiritual message in the persistently inculcated doctrine
of sacrifice. It is not that a Supreme Being desires sacrifice, or
gifts, or adulation, or homage, or worship, or that any power glories
in our unhappiness. It is not that we may purchase any spiritual thing
by giving up something which we prize, but it is because our spirit
becomes attuned to the central source of Life by means of our
willingness to perform what to the sense-conscious plane of existence
seems a sacrifice.
"He sought for others the good he desired for himself; let him pass
on" is the Egyptian phrasing of the Golden Rule, and this states it as
clearly as it can be stated.
Yet should any one take this truism as an unfailing formula and expect
to enter the golden gate of eternal life because of obedience to the
letter of the pass-word, he would fail. Altruism _is_; it is not mere
recognition of a word.
We may presuppose another natural and instinctive query: "If then only
by union with one's true mate one can enter the bliss of eternal life
and love, should not we drop every other responsibility, sever all
ties of relationship, give up wife or husband or family or work, and
search for the one perfect complementary, finding which, is found the
answer to all life's problems?"
Again we can only say that the seeker would be disappointed. We should
remember the story of Sir Launfall. Returning from the unfruitful
quest of long years for the Holy Grail (the golden chalice), he
learned the lesson of Truth from the beggar at his own door to whom he
gave the cup of cold water _without any consciousness of doing a good
deed_; without hope of thereby finding the grail.
He who seeks with the selfish thought of securing for self any good
will not find it though he should give away every farthing to the
poor; though he should never permit one unkind word to pass his lips;
though he should fast and scourge and deny the flesh; kneel all day
and all night in prayer. As long as he holds to the thought of self
and of _obtaining_ something so long will he miss the _attainment_.
Spiritual insight establishes two facts beyond cavil or dispute or
reversion. One is that God's laws cannot be broken. We are not trying
to say that they should not be broken; or that they cannot be broken
with impunity; or that if broken we shall be punished. They simply
cannot be broken--they are unbreakable.
We cannot buy or sell or beg or steal or borrow or take as a gift, or
in any wise acquire immortal godhood, except by attaining it any more
than we can come to physical manhood or womanhood except by growing to
it; and by the same law no one can keep it from us; neither priest nor
scribe; neither prophet nor inventor. We are a law unto ourselves. No
one can break the law of your being any more than you can break that
of another. No power on earth or in the celestial spheres or in the
intervening spaces can keep that which is our own from us. Wherefore
then, should we tear ourselves and each other with strife and jealousy
and wounded honor and outraged marriage vows, when either partner to a
marriage contract sees fit to sever that relationship?
If you lose out in what you believed to be love, be sure that the
object of your desires was not yours to lose; in all the spheres there
is only one who is yours by divine right and no one can by any
possibility usurp your place in the final issue; and that place once
found no one can oust you from it. But remember what we have said in
previous chapters of the word "found;" it is from within.
How vain and how foolish it is to think that a power so stupendous, so
magnificent and so beneficent as to project this immense panorama of
life; to establish such marvelous diversity within such simple unity;
to bestow the bliss of love, could make a mistake. How puerile has
been the teaching that we can sin against the Eternal God. We need not
worry about the Supreme and Eternal Power. "The dice of God are
loaded." Our concern is with ourselves, lest we imagine that we may
cheat in the game of life.
We are self-centered, free-willed; immune from any possibility of
offending the universe. The whole problem of life and death, in so far
as it relates to our individual selves, is "up to us." We can delay
arrival at the goal of our desires; we can dally by the wayside if we
will. Only our own loss, our own suffering, our own unsatisfied
longing shall punish us. But who is so stupid that he would remain
wandering in the bleak and barren desert, when he might by a turn of
his hand enter fields Elysian and merge his soul into the boundless
areas of infinite bliss and wisdom?
We should not imagine that death will do this for us. Death is nothing
more phenomenal than withdrawing from one room to another. The soul
may strive on for ages through many incarnations. Only one thing can
free it; and that is love; love for others than the personal self. The
broader and deeper the love nature, the wider it reaches out to enfold
in its tender protection all living things, the more nearly divine we
become, and the sooner will we touch the area of the spiritual and
attract our own.
It is evident that self-seeking even for so worthy a possession as
one's own counterpart defeats the very effort. We are not to seek; we
are only to prepare ourselves to be ready and worthy; when we shall
have done this, nothing can withhold our own from us; not though the
two halves of the One Being are separated by all the barriers which
the sense-conscious race of men have erected between themselves and
the bliss of Heaven. Says Emerson: "What is thine, will gravitate to
thee." We need not therefore go about apprehensively fearful lest we
lose that which belongs to us; in so doing we are apt to keep our eyes
glued to the earth, thus forgetting that it is from the higher realms
of vibration "whence cometh our light."
Says Emerson: "O, believe as thou livest, that every sound that is
spoken over the round world which thou oughtest to hear will vibrate
on thine ear. Every proverb, every book, every by-word that belongs to
thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open or
winding passages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will, but the
great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his
embrace. And this because the great and tender heart in thee is the
heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there
anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly, an endless
circulation through all men as the water of the globe is all one sea,
and truly seen its tide is one."
Here then are specific and trustworthy statements for the further
enlightenment of the student of the problems of Sex. Like algebraical
propositions they prove themselves when correctly solved. Immortal
godhood is attained by counterpartal union, because the Central Source
of Life is bi-une. Immortality is our spiritual birthright, but we
must claim it if we would consciously realize this truth.
God is the bi-une creative principle, and we are literally and in
truth the "image and likeness" of this bi-une Being. Not one
hermaphroditic personality but a pair. A pair is one whole, even
though each of the pair is distinct in form and diverse in temperament
and qualities. We are especially emphatic upon this point because
there has been so much vague and speculative theorizing upon this
definition of a bi-une Being. Your perfect mate is distinctively
masculine or distinctively feminine in sex as the case may be; and he
or she is your mate because of this perfection of distinctiveness.
Our former ideas of femininity and of masculinity were faulty. Woman
is not less but much more womanly, if she has exchanged fear for
courage; deceit for truthfulness; ill-health for vitality;
helplessness for helpfulness. Even as a man is more manly when he
spares the nesting birds where formerly he ruthlessly destroyed; when
he unites protection with bravery; when he knows sympathy from
weakness; when he combines sentiment with principle; and gentleness
with vigor.
No mortal can by any possibility break the laws of God. Therefore you
are not to try to enforce your ideas of morality upon others. Who has
constituted you book-keeper for the universe? You are to concern
yourself with establishing happiness upon this earth.
You are to see to it that your love is big and broad enough;
all-inclusive enough to wish to see every one happy from your
immediate family to your far-off neighbor in Central Africa. You need
not worry about whether they break the moral code as you see it. You
are to render love and service to this world with all your heart and
all your power; if you do this, you will reach the goal of your
desires.
No mortal can by any other method than love and the service that is
rendered through love seek and find the "Holy Grail," which is to say
the bliss of spiritual union with his Beloved. Therefore to fly from
the responsibilities and the environment in which you are, without
regard to the welfare of others, is to defeat your own quest; neither
do we claim that you should under all circumstances remain chained to
a post like an unwilling captive, poisoning your mind with resentment
and hatred.
There is no one formula which fits all cases--other than that given in
love and service. The Golden Rule which tells us to do unto others as
we would have them do unto us, has another side to its shield, and it
may read "Do not permit others to do unto you what you would not do to
them." If you seek freedom from a specific environment from no other
motive than personal selfishness, you may be doing yourself an
injury; but if you are also doing an injury to others by remaining,
then you are doubly mistaken in your course.
The way of attainment is not easy, although the formula is simple; it
may be briefly but concisely summed up in the vital and important word
"unselfishness." "Not mine but thine also," is the watchword of the
wise in love. Not possession of the Beloved One, but union with him or
her. There is just one big world of difference between these two
points of view. More than that, there is the difference of Heaven and
Hell.