The Writings of George S Arundale
Nirvana
A Study in Synthetic Consciousness
by
George S. Arundale
First published 1926
To
Two Elder
Brothers
Annie Besant and Charles Webster
Leadbeater by whose aid these experiences were possible and to those in
whom Nirvana shines revealed
FOREWORD
I HAVE been
asked by my life-long friend Bishop Arundale to write a few words of
introduction to his book. I consider it a very remarkable production - a
valiant attempt to describe the indescribable. Few among men still living on
earth are they who have experienced Nirvana; fewer still have made any
endeavour to record their impressions. Those of us who have touched that truly
tremendous altitude know well that all human words fall short in the effort,
that all earthly colours are hopelessly inadequate, to depict its supernal
glories; yet must we
try, even
though we are foredoomed to failure. That which is given to us we must share
with our brethren, so far as may be, for that is the law of the occult life; in
obedience to that law this book is written.
I have
myself tried to convey in words something of that supercelestial atmosphere, as
you may read in The Masters and the Path, but I think my brother Bishop has
been more
successful
than I. There is a living fire in his words. True, that which he has seen
cannot be portrayed; yet the enthusiasm which he throws into the essay is so
infectious that we feel ourselves on the very verge of understanding. Much of
upliftment, much of help he certainly can and does give us; if we cannot yet
know all, at least we are nearer to the knowing, at least we are encouraged by
the testimony of one who already knows. And where he stands now, all will stand
one day.
So let us
unite in outpouring our heartfelt gratitude for this rare book which he has
given us; and the best way in which we can show it is to aid him and to follow
him in the splendid work which he is doing in the service of our Holy Masters.
My son
George has asked me to add a few words to the above, written by one who knows.
To try to describe Nirvana is as hopeless a task as to try to empty the ocean
into a thimble. Yet it is one of the efforts that are made by heroes only.
I recall
the words spoken by one who greatly dared in this lower world, as marking the
heroic enthusiast:It is better to climb nobly and to fail,Than ignobly not to
climb at all.
AUTHOR’S
PREFACE
I THINK I
may say I have been a rather strenuous person for many years, for over
twenty-five years now, under the inspiring guidance of my revered Chief, Dr.
Annie Besant; and my strenuousness has been very much on the physical plane.
I confess
to having thought little of what people call “higher things,” of causes and of
origins, of theories of life, of planes of nature, of hierarchies of beings,
and so forth. I have had work to do in the outer world, and I have tried to do
it, and have not concerned myself with whys and wherefores. Whenever I
have
studied, I have studied specifically to the immediate ends of a particular
piece of work. I have never studied for study’s sake.
I have
never cared for wisdom for what wisdom is, but for what wisdom can do. My
universe is full of the things I need. If I could not relate a thing to my
work, then that thing has been out of my perspective, at all events for the
time being. I have been one-pointed, even though I may have turned my eyes from
much upon which they might usefully have rested.
But during
the last year or so I have been making a discovery. I have discovered that however
much I may have been strenuous on the physical plane, this physical plane
strenuousness has been almost as nothing compared with my strenuousness on
other planes. This is probably the case with everybody, but it came as a great
surprise to me on the physical plane. I began at once to realize that I must
cease to live in these plane-tight compartments. I must begin to live on many
planes simultaneously. I began to realize that the one life unites all planes
and all things; and that in reality there is nothing which should be
indifferent to me. Everything is related to everything else, and everything
modifies everything else. Why, the far-distant Sun Himself presses physically
upon every part of the world, as science itself teaches us.
So I
brooded much upon this unity, both in and out of the body, and tried to live
more from the universal than from the particular. The result has been, I hope,
bigger living, more effective living. But I had no clear perception ] of unity,
only a sense of it, a vague idea of it just sufficient to make life strangely
and intriguingly different.
Many years
ago, it was in 1912 at
It was
almost as if my consciousness flickered between George Arundale as George
Arundale and George Arundale as the orange grove. I was two entities, yet one.
And as I lived as the orange grove a gardener entered and began to pluck some
of the oranges and to cut off some of the branches. All these things the
gardener was doing to me. I rebelled
not as George Arundale might rebel, not with my mind and my will, but as
orange groves apparently do rebel. I was conscious of discomfort, of loss, not
exactly of pain but of something next door to it. I was the more discomforted
because the gardener did not treat me reverently or affectionately, but as if I
were inanimate with no feelings, with no capacity for sensation.
Why could
he not realise that the same life was in us both? If he had only had the
attitude of asking my permission, of begging my pardon, for his actions, of
conveying to me that I could make others happy by sharing myself with them, I
should not have minded so much. But he was callous, selfish, and treated the
orange grove as a slave instead of as a comrade. He hurt me every time he
plucked an orange or cut off a branch. With a different attitude on his part,
he might have had all my oranges, all my branches, and we might have rejoiced
together, for we could have worked together. As it was, being at his mercy and
treated as his chattel, life was only just worth living, and I was a poor
orange grove, because uncared for.
This
experience of consciousness in the vegetable kingdom opened before my eyes an
entirely new conception of consciousness at different levels of unfoldment, and
of the implications of the all-embracing unity. I have never been the same since.
I have never been able to pluck a flower, or even to uproot a weed, without as
it were silently explaining my reasons to the plant or to the weed, requesting
a sacrifice for some definite, I will not necessarily say larger, good.
And I have
never found any lack of co-operation. Interestingly enough, I always feel that
I must justify my actions to the life which I am thereby affecting, and for
this very reason I am more than ever a vegetarian. How can I explain, how can I
have the face to explain, to sheep or cattle, to birds or fishes, that I ask
them to sacrifice themselves, with an inevitable accompaniment of much
suffering, simply to gratify my palate, or because I myself suffer from the
delusion that I cannot live without eating flesh food? To make such a request
is grossly, disgustingly selfish; and though I can behave, if I choose, like a
robber or pirate, and steal by force, still there is fortunately just enough of
the honourable gentleman about me, at least in this particular direction, to cause
me utterly to decline to make so monstrous a demand, whereby I must inevitably
lower the dignity of the kingdom to which I belong, making the subhuman
kingdoms wonder what kind of evolution it is that causes those who should know
better to prey upon those who cannot resist force, whose only defence is their
right to live.
From time
to time I have had other visions of this glorious unity, but none so
inexpressible as that which marked the opening of the doors of Nirvana to the
knock I had learned to give.
One night I
suddenly awoke with a most vivid remembrance of a supreme exaltation, of a
marvellous expansion of consciousness, absolutely indescribable, though then
and there I felt I must somehow or other record it on paper. It was about 1
a.m., and part of me was very much disinclined to take the trouble to sit up
and write, even though pencil and paper were by my bedside as has been my habit
for some time in case an idea came during the fruitful hours when sleep
minimizes physical interference. But another part of me insisted. So I sat up
and wrote that with which this book begins, and I remember hearing:
“This is
Nirvana.” And I knew it was Nirvana. I was immensely astonished, I confess, for
I had never before given a thought to Nirvana, at all events on the physical
plane.
What I
wrote was very i strange to me at first. My waking consciousness was not
accustomed to reflect Nirvanic consciousness, and the process of remembrance
was physically painful. However I wrote down all that came to me, and my pencil
found it exceedingly difficult to travel at the rate at which the thoughts
poured through. I could hardly read my own handwriting, so fast I wrote; and
certainly I hardly knew what I was writing. I wrote for hours, and was all
aglow with exaltation.
The whole
of my being seemed re oriented. I was born again; and when the day came I found
all changed. A new note had been sounded in my being, new values had come to
everything, and since then I have been occupied in readjustment, so that I may
gradually blend my old world with my new world.
Practically
the whole of the book had been written either between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. or
between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., and many nights have been passed in the physically
painful, though spiritually wonderfully uplifting, process of striving to hold
a reflection of Nirvana in the physical brain and in the waking consciousness.
Needless to
say, even the most beautiful description of Nirvana which could be
conceived out here must inevitably be
nothing less than a caricature of Nirvana as it in reality is. What then must
my poor efforts be! It is almost a blasphemy to publish them, even as a feeble
attempt to indicate a shadow of Nirvanic glories. They fall indescribably short
of the reality. Yet it seems to be better to have even these than nothing; and
many who have read some extracts have felt an upliftment. With Bishop
Leadbeater’s encouragement, therefore, this book is issued as a poor sketch by
an unpractised hand, conveyed through deadening media, of a world of incomparable
glories. I ought to add that even the glories I know can only be those of the
very lowest sub plane of Nirvana, and even then only a few of the glories of
this sub-plane, for I have only just been born into Nirvana, and have yet to
develop the senses appropriate to my new world.
As time
passes, however, more and more of Nirvanic consciousness penetrates my being,
and it is as if I had begun a stupendous journey from a great Resurrection to
an Ascension the glories of which are as different from those of Nirvana as is
the Sun from our Earth.
I hope the
account of my own experiences will help others to contact this royal
consciousness of Nirvana. It is within the near reach, no doubt, of many; while
some today, and many in days gone by, have known Nirvana as I can only hope to
know it after long effort and concentration. My own description is not, of
course, of Nirvana as it actually is, even on the lowest subplane. It is of
Nirvana as it has appeared to me, of as much of Nirvana as I have been able to
assimilate. Much of the description is doubtless coloured by my personality.
Another
description, totally different, might well be quite as true, possibly far more
true. I can only say I have done the best I could with the powers at my
disposal, and I am well aware that the narrative is in many ways made up of a
number of disconnected parts. The reason for this is that I have written night
after night as I was moved to write, without thought of what I had already
written. Each section is, therefore, the pen impression of a particular vision
of the Nirvanic landscape, just as it impressed itself upon me at the time.
NOTE TO THE
SECOND EDITION
I AM
naturally gratified that after a few months a second edition of Nirvana is
demanded. I think the value of the little book has been more in the direction
of suggestion as to lines of experiment than as a description of the conditions
obtaining under the Nirvanic mode of consciousness. Frankly, the reader will
find little description, for description is impossible; but he will find many
impressions, and my advice to him is to pay just as much or as little attention
as he feels disposed to the details of the various impressions, and to
concentrate on the atmosphere of which they are particular expressions as the
result of the medium, George Arundale, through which the atmosphere must needs
filter. For example, I write of Lightning-standing-still. A reader might well
exclaim: “Ah! I think I know what you mean. I should not call it Lightning, nor
Lightning-standing-still. I should call it so and so. That would be the kind of
filtration ix] I should get from that selfsame atmosphere which we both sense,
but which I should describe so differently.” Let Nirvana help you to Nirvana,
be your road what it may. All I can say is that I happened to take a route
which I have described as best I could in the following pages.
With this
latitude open to every reader, there is one door I want to shut in his face,
and that is the door of common sense. If you have nothing but common sense at
your disposal I am afraid Nirvana will mean little or nothing to you. To
understand either Buddhi or Nirvana a distinctly uncommon sense is needed.
Common
sense will not help you in these regions any more than it will help you to
understand modern physics since Einstein. Bertrand Russell tells us in his A.
B. C. of Relativity that a new kind of thinking must dawn upon our mental
worlds as a result of the introduction of new conceptions and notions regarding
physical things, even though these conceptions and notions be by no means yet
entirely verified. He adjures us to start thinking in terms of these “modern
physical notions rather than in terms of the notions derived from common sense
and embodied in traditional physics”.
That is
exactly what has to be done by those who have contacted the outer fringes of
Buddhi and Nirvana. It is not common sense and the tradition of the lower
worlds with which they are now concerned, but rather with an uncommon sense
which is an extraordinarily refined sense, as yet extremely uncommon but some
day to become common in its turn. Remember that the use of uncommon sense does
not mean that we cease to be efficient in the lower worlds.
On the
contrary, we become far more efficient, for we build with stone and not with
sand. We live more truly because nearer to the Real, even though in its
ignorance and common sense the outer world may laugh, ridicule, persecute,
despise. Indeed, Bertrand Russell goes further than I should have dared to go,
though by no means further than I should be prepared to go, in the following
startling utterance taken from the same little book:
It is
possible that the desire for rational explanation may be carried too far ...
every apparent law of nature which strikes us as reasonable is not really a law
of nature, but a concealed convention, plastered on to nature by our love of
what we, in our arrogance, choose to consider rational. Eddington hints that a
real law of nature is likely to stand out by the fact that it appears to us
irrational, since in that case it is less likely that we have invented it to
satisfy our intellectual taste.
A profoundly
true utterance which, had it been widely appreciated in times gone by and were
it widely appreciated today, would have saved many apostles of truth from
persecution and martyrdom and would enable the world to derive far more benefit
than it does from the researches of occultists and mystics - true pioneers,
true seekers after “real laws of nature” through the “irrational” and
superrational.
I have made
many corrections and a number of additions and modifications in this new
edition, and I have added a new chapter “Further Thoughts” - containing a few
results of further meditations. I hope these also will prove interesting, and
provocative of pioneering in the same direction.
G. S. A.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Author’s
Preface
Note to the
Second Edition.
I. The First Glimpse.
II. The First Readjustment.
III. The Inner Light upon Outer Things.
IV. A Meditation in the Himalayas
V. Some Reflections.
VI. The Awakening of Nirvana.
VII. The
Theosophical Society.
VIII. The
Immanence of Light.
IX. A Further Readjustment.
X. Further Thoughts.
XI. Mother-Light.
XII. The Dangers of Nirvana.
XIII. The Glorious Task
CHAPTER I
THE FIRST
GLIMPSE
Magnificent
The morning
rose, in memorable pomp,
Glorious as
ere I had beheld. In front
The sea lay
laughing at a distance; near
The solid
mountains shone, bright as the clouds,
Green-tinctured,
drenched in empyrean light;
And in the
meadows and the lower grounds
Was all the
sweetness of a common dawn, -
Dews,
vapours, and the melody of birds,
And
labourers going forth to till the fields.
Ah I need I
say, dear Friend, that to the brim
My heart
was full; I made no vows, but vows
Were then
made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given,
that I should be, else sinning greatly,
A dedicated
Spirit. On I walked,
In thankful
blessedness, which yet survives.
WORDSWORTH,
(The Prelude, Bk. IV)
MY first remembrance is of seeing the Master
K.H. * (*Those who have undergone occult
training are aware how supremely magnificent as a Teacher is this Great Master.
He is, of course, a high Official in the world’s education department, and
apprentices from all departments have the honour to come under His inspiring
guidance. I myself have had this honour, and although I do not belong to the
education department, I still have the inestimable privilege of His gracious
guidance. It was a great joy to me to enter the new pathway under the
benevolent watchfulness of this gracious Friend, to Whom I owe so much; and it
was a great joy, too, to make the entry with the help of the Master’s
representative in the outer world, our wonderful elder brother Bishop
Leadbeater.
Only those
who have had C. W. L. as teacher can possibly know all that a teacher can
really be. The evil-minded and the ignorant traduce him, as it is their habit
to traduce others of his great line; but future generations shall rise up and
call him blessed, while today there are many who count it their greatest joy to
stand by his side as his persecutors yelp at his heels.) looking as I had never
seen Him before. Radiant He is always, supremely radiant, but now He was more
than radiant, and I cannot find a word down here to describe Him in the glory
in which I perceived Him with the first flash of Nirvanic consciousness.
Majestic and radiant are poor words - “blinding” perhaps expresses it better,
for just for a moment I was overwhelmed. I almost wanted to veil my face from
sight of Him, and yet I could not keep my eyes from Him, so unfathomably
splendid did He appear-only less glorious than the KING* (*The Supreme Ruler of
this world, the veritable KING, within Whose consciousness all things live and
move and have their being. Some there are in the world who have seen Him, but
who can only gaze upon Him as He veils His glory before their feeble eyes.
He is
indeed the Lightning, in the Light of which Nirvana is but shadow. And as the
first glimpse comes of Nirvana, there comes with it the memory of an audience
of the KING-the marvellous stillness, then the blinding Presence, and then the
power to see.) as I afterwards realised, though at the time no greater glory
could I conceive.
I summon up
my courage. I feel as if He were saying to me: “Welcome to a new kingdom which
you must learn to conquer.” In His power my consciousness unfolds, and I step
as it were across a threshold into Nirvana. Words and phrases, however
beautiful, however majestic, almost desecrate as they strive to describe
conditions there. Even the faint touch of first experience of this lofty level
dwarfs into insignificance all other experiences of all other planes, save only
the entry into the presence of the One Initiator.
I remember
my first glimpse of the Buddhic plane on the occasion of admission to the ranks
of the Great White Brotherhood. I recall to this day my marvelling at the
vision of the Master in His Buddhic vehicle; and well do I remember in the days
that followed, the wondrous sense of unity with all things, with the trees and
flowers, feeling with them all, growing with them and in them, suffering and
rejoicing in and with them. I remember, too, the casting off of the friend of
ages - the causal body, and I remember a vivid rending contrast between the
moment before and the moment after the glimpse into the new kingdom. I remember
how it was as if from out the sunshine I had suddenly entered a dark tunnel
with a seemingly unending vista of blackness stretching infinitely far into a
limitless beyond.
Was there
light at the end? I could see none. Must this blackness last for ever? Well, be
it as it may, I must enter this tunnel, for I can do no other, to quote the
words of Luther. Darkness enfolds me, blackness permeates me. Shall I never
again know light? Yet I look forward and press onward. And at last the tunnel
ends, the blackness vanishes, and I step into a light more glorious by far than
the light I left. I had to let go the light I knew in order that I might enter
into a light more real. It seems to be ever thus.
That which
we are ready to let go, to lose, we find unto life eternal. In the occultist
there must be a spirit of daring, of adventure, of eagerness to risk. He must
be willing to let the lesser go before he has grasped the greater. And in the
interspace there is a momentary loneliness which must be borne happily and
joyfully, for it is in loneliness that is born the power to strive, the
strength to sustain and to protect. Those who cannot endure loneliness are not
yet ready to be moulded into leaders of men.
But to-day
the Master seems to me as One Whom I have never known before, robed in the
glories of a Kingdom I am entering as a little child.
The new
consciousness enfolds me, and in a moment my world is full of new, strange,
glorious values. All is different, supremely different, though the same. A new
Divinity is open to my eyes, and unfolds to my gaze a new meaning, a new
purpose. It
is the Buddhic unity transcended, glorified - a more marvellous unity; in some
wonderful way it is merged in a state vaster and more tremendous.
There is
something even more true than the truth in the unity I have so far known,
something more real. It seems impossible, and yet it is so.What is the nature
of that of which even Buddhic glory is but a limitation? I must use words, and
words seem a terrible anti-climax. I can only say it is the Glory of a Light
Transcendent, a world of Light which is the image of God’s own Eternity.
Face to
face do I seem to be with an “unspotted mirror” of His Power and with an image
of His Goodness. And the mirror, the image, is an endless
It is
another baptism, another immersion into the Waters of the Real. At every stage
of growth a baptism, to be succeeded by a confirmation, to be followed some day
by an ordination, a consecration to, because an identification, whether
complete or not, with the Higher Self. Brotherhood in the outer world; unity in
the Buddhic world; light transcendent in Nirvana. And if on the threshold I am
transported by its glory, how shall it be when I begin to ascend to the summit?
Description falters even before this first lifting of the veil. Thought and
feeling distort and narrow infinitely. At best one can but suggest and hint.
The rest is a matter of individual incommunicable experience.
This Light
Transcendent is even nearer to the Real than the Buddhic Unity which hitherto
had seemed the most stupendous fact in all the world. Light the beginning;
Light the path; Light the future. God said: “Let there be Light,” and there was
and is Light indescribable. Beautiful as is the light in the world, it is but
the faint and feeble image of the Light Triumphant - the adjective somehow
seems appropriate - of these regions of the Real.It is the Sun-Light of the Sun
ere it descends into the forms in which we know it. It is Light purified of
form. It is Light which is the Life of form. It is an ever-present “intimation
of immortality,” a Future within the Now, and thus Eternal. It is an I do not
say “the” - apotheosis and essence of the light we know.
All the
glory of the most wonderful dawn (and one feels nothing can be more wonderful
than a perfect Eastern dawn), is brought to glorious fruition and splendid
perfection in that eternal noon-day which is Nirvana. The glory of the Buddhic
plane is but the dawning of a Nirvanic Day.
Yet, as I
write these words, I remember knowing, as I stood awe-struck upon the threshold
of Nirvana, that beyond even that, to me, supreme unfoldment lay unfathomable,
immeasurable splendours, to which Nirvana itself - the noon-day of the Buddhic
dawning - is but as a dawn, a promise, a shadow. I could sense this.
I had to
sense it to preserve my balance. I must hold fast to proportion even in these
stupendous regions. That Unity could be transcended I knew, for was not the
Light-Glory before my eyes? But there is more even than Light-Glory. Some day
in the far-off future I shall know a Glory that is even more than the
Glory of
Light.
I call this
Light of Nirvana the noon-day of the Buddhic dawn. But it is only noon-day
because for the time being it represents the utmost capacity of my
consciousness. Same years ago the Light of Buddhi was the
I look back
upon glorious dawns, and upon glorious noondays. I see before me other
noon-days before which this Nirvanic noon-day itself must pale into a dawn. Is
there no limit to growth? None that I can perceive. And if I talk of dawns and
noon-days, are there also evenings, even-tides, glorious evenings, evenings no
less wonderful than the dawns, with light as beautiful as the light of dawn, as
the light of noon-time? I think there are.
There are
no nights, perhaps; at least no blackness. But there comes from time to time a
stillness, a hush, which is the Silence of a consummation.[There comes the
hush, the silence, the stillness, just before a birth into a new region of
Light, just before a new dawn. It is not that the noon-day light has lessened,
but that a light more glorious still is beginning to shed its refulgence upon a
lesser light, so that it is as if a noon-time had turned to evening by reason
of contrast with the greater glory to be. And in that evening, in that hush
which is the shadow of a greater glory, the neophyte gathers up reverently the
powers he has gained, to use them in the conquest of the new kingdom of Light
about to appear above the horizon.
God is
Light, Light is God. Man is Light. All is Light. A new meaning to the ancient
Egyptian exhortations: “Look for the Light!” “Follow the Light!” Perceive and
learn to be at one with the Light of God in all things. I look upon the world.
I see the world in terms of Light. God-Light in manifestation in man-light, in
rock-light, in tree-light, in creature-light. All is light - a blinding glory
at the centre, translated into colour-light, into sound-light, into form-light,
into substance-light as it descends into ever-increasing manifestation. At the
circumference light as we know it in the manifested universe, light [expressed
in innumerable ways. At the centre that glory which is beyond all form, all
colour, all substance. Yet the circumference is but the centre externalised, so
there is the blinding glory everywhere - the God-Light - the blazing seed of
futurity in each individual thing in every kingdom.* (*Compare, in this
connexion, that very interesting book “Colour-Music: The Art of Light,” by A.
B. Klein. (Crosby Lockwood & Son,
In each
May I quote
here a beautiful passage from Ruskin’s The Ethics of the Dust in which he
describes the glorious pathway of evolution in the mineral kingdom, the Light
in prison becoming the Light free, thence to enter into higher tabernacles to
tread pathways no less glorious and virtually identical in process?
A pure or
holy state of anything is that in which all its parts are helpful or
consistent. The highest and first law of the universe, and the other name of
life, is, therefore, ‘help’. The other name of death is ‘separation’.
Government and co-operation are in all things, and eternally, the laws of life.
Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in all things, the laws of death.
Perhaps the
best, though the most familiar, example we could take of the nature and power
of consistence, will be that of the possible changes in the dust we tread on.
Exclusive
of animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more absolute type of impurity, than
the mud or slime of a damp over-trodden path, in the outskirts of a manufacturing
town. I do not say mud of the road, because that is mixed with animal refuse;
but take merely an ounce or two of the blackest slime of a beaten footpath, on
a rainy day, near a manufacturing town. That slime we shall find in most cases
composed of clay (or brickdust, which is burnt clay) mixed with soot, a little
sand, and water. All these elements are at helpless war with each other, and
destroy reciprocally each other’s nature and power: competing and fighting for
place at every tread of your foot; sand squeezing out clay, and clay squeezing
out water, and soot meddling everywhere, and defiling the whole. Let us suppose
that this ounce of mud is left in perfect rest, and that its elements gather
together, like to like, so that their atoms may get into the closest relations
possible.
Let the
clay begin. Ridding itself of all
foreign substance, it gradually becomes a white earth, already very beautiful, and fit, with
help of congealing fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and painted on, and
be kept in kings’ palaces. But such artificial consistence is not its best.
Leave it still quiet, to follow its own instinct of unity, and it becomes, not
only white, but clear; not only clear, but hard; not only clear and hard, but
so set that it can deal with light in a wonderful way, and gather out of it the
loveliest blue rays only, refusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire.
Such being
the consummation of the clay, we give similar permission of quiet to the sand.
It also becomes, first a white earth;
then proceeds to grow clear and hard, and at last arranges itself in
mysterious, infinitely fine parallel lines, which have the power of reflecting,
not merely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the
greatest beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material whatsoever.
We call it then an opal.
In next
order the soot sets to work. It cannot make itself white at first; but, instead
of being discouraged, tries harder and harder; and comes out clear at last; and
the hardest thing in the world: and for the blackness that it had, obtains in
exchange the power of reflecting all the rays of the sun at once, in the
vividest blaze that any solid thing can shoot. We call it then a diamond.
Last of
all, the water purifies or unites itself; contented enough if it only reach the
form of a dewdrop: but, if we insist on its proceeding to a more perfect
consistence, it crystallises into the shape of a star. And, for the ounce of
slime which we had by political economy of competition, we have, by political
economy of co-operation, a sapphire, an opal, and a diamond, set in the
midst of a star of snow.
… I have
asked you to hear that, children, because, from all that we have seen in the
work and play of these past days, I would have you gain at least one grave and
enduring thought. The seeming trouble - the unquestionable degradation - of the
elements of the physical earth, must passively wait the appointed time of their
repose, or their restoration. It can only be brought about for them by the
agency of external law. But if, indeed, there be a nobler life in us than in
these strangely moving atoms; - if, indeed there is an eternal difference
between the fire which inhabits them, and that which animates us - it must be
shown, by each of us in his appointed place, not merely in the patience, but in
the activity of our hope; not merely by our desire, but our labour, for the
time when the Dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for foundations
of the gates of the city of God.
The human
clay, now trampled and despised, will not be - cannot be - knit into strength
and light by accidents or ordinances of unassisted fate. By human cruelty and
iniquity it has been afflicted; - by human mercy and justice it must be raised
and, in all fear or questioning of what is or is not, the real message of
creation, or of revelation, you may assuredly find perfect peace, if you are
resolved to do that which your Lord has plainly required - and content that He
should indeed require no more of you - than to do Justice, to love Mercy, and
to walk humbly with Him.
In every
kingdom it is the same. The free time after time realizing its imprisonment
because it has conquered its kingdom, and bursting its bonds afresh that a
still mightier and more splendid freedom may be achieved. The flower of every
kingdom an unfolded colour-glory, sound-glory, substance-glory, form-glory,
passing thence to win a nobler freedom. Of course, the word “imprisonment” is
hardly accurate, for there is probably little, if any, sense of imprisonment
until the prison-doors are about to be opened that the soul may enter into a
bondage less restricted. Fortunately for us, we generally see our prisons only
as we leave them. Until then a prison is an opportunity. Let us beware of so
missing our opportunities that bondage takes their place, and a veritable
prison-house closes in upon us.
Another
image in my consciousness is of a Light-nucleus, imprisoned lightning, charged
with the spirit of Divinity, as a Sun below the horizon of the world, or of a
From out
the dawn in its tenderness comes the dawn in its iridescent vigour - a
wonderful aurora of colour - a veritable spectrum of Light. And then all
colours bend before their Lord and Master, merging themselves in Him. The Sun
has risen and passes onwards to the glory of a perfect day. The perfect Dawn is
the Light which is Buddhi, but Nirvana is the Light which is the Day; not yet
the Eternal Noontide, but a partial consummation of the dawn.
Thus my
image in terms of Colour-Light. But it comes to me in terms of Sound-Light.
First, the soft note expressing the Divine essence, the key-note or basic tone
of the individuality whatever it may be-the note which gives the individuality.
Then the mystic chord, swelling as it were out of the single sound, the nature
chord of the, individuality. And so on into an equally
veritable
spectrum of sound, an aurora of music, a great and majestic symphony declaring
in terms of music the new goal to be achieved. A hush of soundless silence in
which the glorious music of an achievement is marvellously merged, so that the
very silence has become more vibrant, the Voice of the Silence has gained articulateness. In the hush, sound stirs
once more to greater ends, and as time passes unfolds from archetypal note to
mystic chord, from mystic chord to magic
symphony, and then again that silence in which the symphony is blended, which
it has enriched. Can you not hear your own growth in terms of colour, in terms
of music? Can you not hear the faint beginnings, can you not pre-sense the
mighty ends? I have heard the beginnings of Nirvana in terms of sound, in terms
of colour; and I seem to hear as if far away in deep distance the symphony of
the achievement of Nirvana, as I can dimly perceive the apotheosis of that
Light which even at the outset is so hopelessly indescribable. Is there not a
note which sounds the beginning of the Birth into the Mysteries of the Real? Is
there not a symphony which marks its fruition, a symphony gathered up into a
silence and issuing forth therefrom as the note of a new endeavour, the note of
the Baptism?
Is
there not the note and symphony of the
Transfiguration, the note and symphony of a Crucifixion-Resurrection, of an
Ascension, and of consecrations yet beyond? And so with Light. Lose yourselves,
my readers, now and then at least in these reachings into the Real, bathe
yourselves in these true imaginings. So do you gain a glimpse and an
understanding of the Eternal, and of the inevitable, glory beyond those
contrasts which seem in time so dark and dreary but which thus serve to teach
us of the sunshine everlasting.
Out of
sleep and dream I am awake, though to regions beyond I may still be dreaming.
But the dream is true, for it is the vision of the final conquest of the
kingdom of man and the standing upon the threshold of the kingdoms of the
superman. Let me try to put my vision otherwise. I look upon the world, and I
see our Lord the Sun expressed in myriad suns. Each monad I perceive to be a
Sun in miniature.
The Sun
Divine throws off spark-suns charged with all His attributes. The process of
evolution begins, and these sparks burst into colour, or rather gradually
unfold in terms of colour; rainbows with sun-hearts, or nuclei or centres.
God’s Light thus imprisoned in form begins its long pathway of transcending
form, thus acquiring self-consciousness. Every atom of light is an atom of
unconscious Divinity, slowly but surely fulfilling the will of the Sun that it
shall become unfolded into self-conscious Divinity. Every atom is a Sun
unconscious, and shall become a Sun self-conscious. And the Sun-Light, which is
the Light that is free, shines upon the Sun-Light, which is the Light
imprisoned; Light the wanderer in the darkness, until the Light within and the
Light without blend into a perfect whole, earth-light kissing Heaven-Light and
becoming Sun-Light.
Bathed in
the Lightning-standing-still which is Nirvana, I perceive the imprisoned lightnings
in all things. I perceive the Light which is dull-the savage; the Light which
is bright - the man evolved; the Light which is glory - the Superman, the
Master. I see colour everywhere in process of transmutation, of glorification,
of transcendence. There is no blackness anywhere in the sense of a negation of
Light. God said: “Let there be Light.” And there was and is light everywhere.
“His Light shineth even in our darkness.”
And as
before I might express my vision in terms of sound, of music, in terms of
gloriously growing forms. For, as time passes, I begin to perceive that while
my first impression found instant expression in the word “Light,” and specially
in the phrase “Lightning-standing-still,” I now know that this Light conception
is but a quality of Nirvana, an aspect, a facet of the diamond sphere. In
truth, Nirvana is an essence of things and a flower of things. It is an Alpha
and an Omega. I am gradually, though only very, very slowly, beginning to look
for Nirvana in all things. I cannot say that I have found Nirvana in all
things, but I think I have reached the point of at least knowing that Nirvana
is there. I know, though I do not yet perceive. I may, perhaps, best describe
to you this knowledge in terms of Light, or it may be in terms of Sound, or in
terms of Form.
But Nirvana
is beyond all these. Nirvana is a Mode of Being, a Mode that transcends Light
and Sound and Form, though shadowed at least in all that we can know down here
of the most glorious Light, Sound and Form. Have you tried to transcend the
farthest limits of your consciousness? Have you ever striven to rise, first
measurably and then almost immeasurably, above and beyond yourself? Have you
ever tried to know your bondage and then to burst the bonds? Have you ever recognized
your limitations, your many weaknesses, and have you then ever known yourself
as having triumphed over them, so that you have become unrecognizable to
yourself as well as to others? Thus do you reach after Nirvana, however long
may be the road on which you have to travel. Light - yes; Sound - yes; even
Form from out the Formless - yes. But Nirvana is a mighty Spiritual Essence of
all these things, and you approach it by learning to transcend yourself, to be
an alchemist transmuting marvellously the lower into the higher. Awake! Arise!
Know that Nirvana is your very being, and therefore realise yourself.
Everywhere
in God’s workshop of the world, Master-Painters, Master-Singers,
Master-Sculptors, Master-Builders at work. Sun-Light the common material.
Sun-Light fashioned into forms - colour-forms, sound-forms, forms of every
kind; but all Sun-Light. And we are apprentices to these Masters of Crafts, and
fashion after them in our childish ways. Yet we, too, are some day to become
Master-Craftsmen, Masters of the Light in the future as we are children of the
Light to-day. From darkness our Masters of the Light lead us to the Light, from
the darkness and colour-divisions of unconscious divinity into the pure white
radiance of Divine Self-Consciousness. But as I hold Nirvanic consciousness in
the valleys of my being, as I remember the summits while living on the plains,
I can for the time being transcend time.
There is,
as long as the Nirvanic consciousness holds, no becoming, no dawning, no
colour-only a perfect Radiance, beginningless and endless. It is thus that
Nirvana is Bliss, and I know now why some Great Ones enfold Themselves in it to
the end of the Age.
It is a
supreme consummation, and opens out a Pathway of stupendous glory.I realise,
too, that here is no selfishness, there could be none, of course, in entering
Nirvana and exploring it to the end, if end there be. To abide in Nirvana, not
to go forth therefrom, is a form of service to the world, for to enter Nirvana
is to make a channel between the world and Nirvana so that the world is one
step nearer to the Nirvanic dawn, and in some indescribable way the world is
drawn into Nirvana, or should I rather say becomes more “Nirvanic,” because a
Son of the world abides therein.
I look upon
races, upon nations, upon peoples, upon faiths, upon communities - as colours
in the universal spectrum, and yet each a spectrum in itself. I must study
these colours, that I may the more purposefully serve. I see
I know the
power of Light, and therefore the power of colour. The Nirvanic Light is power,
not cold power, but blazing power, at least as I sensed it. And even the word
“power” is a limitation, for I know now in a measure that I can begin to
understand the meaning of the three great attributes of God-Light -
Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence. I see each colour emerging from its
archetype, descending into darkness, ascending into Light. At first faint, dim,
crude, changing from shade to shade. The swinging of the pendulum of growth
between the colours of darkness and the colours of Light. Gradually, slowly,
the fiercer hues of the colours of discord and of hatred mellow into the
splendid shades of Love.
I know the
Universes to be colour-schemes. One universe a rose scheme, another a yellow
scheme, a third a blue scheme, and so on. What is our colour-scheme? Rose?
Perhaps, and yet its heart is the blinding, glorious Light containing within
itself all light-rates within the mighty octave of its Being.
And now, in
the light of further experience, I can begin to interpret races, peoples,
nations, faiths, communities, in terms other than of Light, of colour. I hear
them all building their respective symphonies, resolving - slowly I am afraid -
their inevitable discords into equally inevitable harmonies. And these various
music-strivings go to the building of the great world Symphony, the basic note
and chord of which is present in variations in every subdivision of the world
whether large or small. I have written of our Universe as possibly a Rose
Universe. Is our earth a yellow sub-division of the general rose scheme? What
is the Note of our Universe, and what is the earth’s variant thereof? This is a
most fascinating theme for study, but as I am at present only in the region of
speculation, guessing, imagining, it seems hardly profitable to pursue the
investigation further.
The point
is that entry into Nirvana is an approach to the basic things of Being, those things
which are omnipresent and, from one point of view, changeless. Nirvana is
omnipresent. Nirvana is present in colour, in sound, in form, in substance.
Nirvana is the essence of them all; or should I not rather say a form of the
essence of them all, a fundamental mode of the root of their being?
I am living
in a Light-Eternity. I descend into a Colour-Time. Time is the breaking up of
Light-Eternal into colour; and there is the Light of the past, the Light of the
present, the Light of the future. Yet all within an Eternal Now.
The world
seems new with a new sacredness. The Power of the Light is in all things.
Through our very physical senses we touch the Light which is Divinity. It lies
about us, and in us. As we have variations round a music-note or music-theme or
motif, so is the world an almost infinite number of variations upon the theme
of the Universal Light. It is a Symphony of Light. It is also a Symphony of
Sound, and no less a Symphony of Silence. It is a Symphony of Colour and of
Form. And there are those who, hearing the Archetypal Symphony, seek to mellow
the harsh notes and cruder colours and forms of ignorance so that the world
orchestra, composed of all manifested life as the musicians, may, under the
baton, the mighty Rod of Power of the world’s Supreme Conductor, make a music
glorious - the archetype one with the actual.
The process
of evolution is a process of the individualization of Light on the way to
re-universalization on the plane of self-consciousness. Music is Light. Fire is
Light. The Arts and the Sciences are Light in evolution growing under the laws
of Light. The Scriptures tell us of the Light. There is a great Gospel
of the
Light, whence comes every faith, and to proclaim which comes every Saviour.
Light is right; darkness is wrong. We grow towards the Light as do the trees
and flowers.
I see our
Lord the Sun in each of us. Is the heart the sun of our body-world? Does the
blood reflect His rays? Are not all things Light-terms, Light-formulae?
What is Nirvana?
The Light Divine. I am touching, perhaps only for a moment, its lowest reaches,
its densest layers. All I have written is but of the Light Divine in its lowest
Nirvanic aspect. I cannot conceive down here even this Glory, but it leaves in
me as I return to earth a new perception of Reality. I have taken a step nearer
to the Real. There is a greater comradeship in the world than I had thought - a
deeper identity, a more glorious origin, a more glorious way, and a more
glorious goal. Round me everywhere and at all times are God's Sunshine
Messengers. Every colour speaks His Word and His Voice. Every form breathes His
purpose. I, dust in the Sunshine, yet am part of it, and looking upward to the
Sun I see the sign of my own Divinity, and the embodied promise of my ultimate
achievement. As is our Lord the Sun so shall we all be, for He has willed it
so.
Light is
language, thought, vesture and vehicle. A flash of light conveys for us down
here a whole philosophy. The whole of this pitifully feeble amount of Nirvanic
experience was doubtless within a single flash of Nirvanic Light penetrating my
being, or rather perhaps stirring at last from age-long dormancy within me.
Light is
the Will of the Sun, the Wisdom of the Sun, the Love of the Sun. It is written
in books that Nirvana is bliss. Even from that outermost region, at the
frontiers, I know Nirvana to be infinitely more. Just one glimpse and all
things seem to be made new, within me and without me. I remain, yet am wholly
changed, and everything round me seems to be undergoing a process of
revaluation.
Even now,
everything means far more than before. Every object, in every kingdom, seems in
one way far more a shadow of Reality than a reality, for I perceive how feeble
and inadequate must be all reflections of the Light. I did not know before that
they were so feeble. And yet, equally true is it that every object
is far more
real, far less of a shadow of Reality, than I had thought. I see the prison-opportunity
of form, and I perceive the shadows. I see the unfolding splendour of the
Light-Eternal, and I perceive the Real. All other worlds are shadow-worlds
compared with this Nirvanic world. And yet they are more real
worlds
because of this Nirvanic world, for I now perceive the seal of God’s purpose
set upon all things, and I must reverence all things in far deeper measure than
before.
Philosophers
talk of pure Being. I seem to be able to sense what pure Being must be, not
because I have contacted it, but because I have contacted that which is less
short of pure Being than all other consciousness-states I have so far
experienced. At present, speaking as a child in this new kingdom, Nirvana to me
is pure Life, Life which is Light. Not that colour has faded into this Light.
Colour
remains, but the spectrum of Nirvana is a glorification indescribable of the
colour-spectra of the planes below. It is more Light than colour. Indeed, only
as I grow a little accustomed to the Light, and my sensitiveness increases,
beginning
to adapt itself to its new environment, do I begin to perceive that within
Nirvanic Light are marvellous manifestations of colour apotheoses, of colour
relationships, schemes and interactions. For the moment, the sense of
evolution
is lost in the blinding glory of the Light. As I become more at home in a Home
one never thinks to own until one enters at its doors, I shall realize, as I do
not yet realize, that the eternal truth remains true, and becomes more true;
that to enter the Sun-Light, which is another way of saying to love God, there
is only one road - the service of that Light which lighteth
every man.
Thus, with
a new power which I shall learn to use, do I seem to enter upon a deeper
service. We are children of the Sun, sparks of this glorious Sun-Light. I look up
into the sky and I see my King. Sun-worshippers worship more truly, perhaps,
than they know. I, infinitesimal, ignorant and feeble, yes, even I, am a
servant of the Sun. As He shines upon the whole universe, so must I shine upon
my world. I must be sunshine, even as He is sunshine. It is sometimes said that
we cannot see God. I think I can see Him in part, and know something of His
sublimity, as I look upon the Sun. Even with my physical eyes, I know something
of His glory, and the whole world around me is His glory in manifestation. But
looking upon Him from the Nirvanic world, I know far, far more. Another veil is
lifted, and a fuller Glory shines upon me.
No words
can express my new sense of Him. It is, and must be, a mystery beyond words,
beyond feeling, beyond even thought. Indeed, I must not even make the attempt;
it is little short of blasphemy. But in the First Epistle General of
This then
is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is
Light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with
Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. But if we walk in the
light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.
And again
in the second chapter of the same Epistle, beginning at the ninth verse:He that
saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until
now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion
of stumbling in him.
A simple
message, but profoundly true. “In Him is no darkness at all, neither shadow of
turning.” Upon us all shines His Light perpetual. May we ever dwell in the
Light through the service of our brethren.
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST
READJUSTMENT
I compare …
man’s gradual progress in self-knowledge to his gradual decipherment of the
nature and meaning of the sunshine which reaches him as light and heat
indiscernibly intermingled.
MYERS, (Human
Personality and the Survival of Bodily Death).
IT is
curious how, as the days pass, one becomes increasingly conscious of a readjustment
to one’s surroundings, as well as of a perpetual contact with the non-physical.
My relationships with outer things have altered. It may be that the Buddhic
unity has itself become intensified, for more of reverence seems due
to
everything - to inanimate as much as to animate objects.
Indeed, I
see clearly that there is nothing which is inanimate. All is animate with
Sun-Light. All is alive with Sun-Sound, with Sun-Form. Even the minutest
microcosm is a perfect macrocosm in miniature - the pebble on the beach, the
speck of dust, the least animate insect. God is not original. Having made His
pattern, He
never
departs from it. Having chosen His pathway, He never diverges from it.
This
perception of the wonderful sameness of all things, which means that in essence
all things are vibrant with infinite potentiality, causes an interesting and
significant physical reaction to the outer world. I must lift things more carefully,
deliberately. I must touch things with more refinement in the touch. I must use
things with a greater sense of the purpose to which (there is no exaggeration
in the statement) they are dedicated. Nothing slipshod or careless is
tolerable.
Let
knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of
reverence in us dwell,
That mind
and soul, according well,
May make
one music as before, But vaster …
There is
much profound truth in these lines. Through increased reverence the music does
become vaster. I perceive divinity in the fountain-pen with which I write these
words. It seems unfair to the pen, indeed untrue to the essential being of the
pen, if I do not try to write carefully and neatly. The pen suffers other than
physically if ill-treated, if used less reverently than it might be used. I
seem to be under the necessity of educating, of cooperating with, my
surroundings all the time, largely by my general attitude, but in no small
measure by my more overt comradeship with the things that constitute them. My
office
tools depend upon me, look up to me. All this may be the intensification of the
Buddhic principle, but it is more than this.
Am I getting
nearer to the truth when I suggest that the Unity of Buddhi is more an outward,
forthgoing process, while the Unity of Nirvana is more an inward, indrawing
process? Do I
at the
Buddhic stage perceive my oneness with the world, and at the Nirvanic stage
perceive the potentiality of all things within me? I think there is something
of this kind, for our Lord the Sun seems at the Nirvanic stage to become the
centre of my being.
On further
contemplation, it seems as if at the Buddhic stage one goes out to find the
Unity, while at the Nirvanic stage one begins to realize it everywhere. At the
Buddhic stage one travels from centre to circumference, finding the centre as
much at the circumference as at the centre, if you understand what I
am trying to
convey. At the Nirvanic stage,that which has been two and yet one in two,
becomes one. All is centre, and one is on the verge of the conception that
under a certain mode of consciousness a centre need have no circumference, for
all is within the centre. We draw circumferences just as we
draw double
lines for easier writing. But we do not need them, and Nirvana is the state of
doing without them. At the Buddhic stage there is more of realization. At the
Nirvanic stage there is more of Being.
As I have
already written, the Sun seems to be my King, and I realize that down here I
must be a sun, the sun of my world, as He is the Sun of His system. In Him is
the source of all life. In me, too, is the source of all life, because I am in
Him, and of His Being. His rays pervade worlds. Do not mine, however
feebly,
pervade a world? I am an infinity in the becoming because I am infinity in
essence. Nothing is lacking in my nature to that stupendous end - the word “end”
is, of course, absurd. I am light even as He is Light. The Nirvanic consciousness
seems to produce a cognition of oneself as a throbbing, pulsating
energy or
power-nucleus, slowly but surely expanding, extending its kingdom far and wide,
and itself becoming more and more radiant as its frontiers are pushed forward
into space. I can conceive that in the
infinitely distant future my body shall be as the Sun and my kingdom a
universe. I am brought face to face with my potentiality, and with its
inevitable growth into power; it is a marvellous and stupendous grandeur;
omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence - in the becoming. I enter my Sanctum
Sanctorum. I enter the essence of my being. I perceive a burning, blinding Sun
- a miniature of the Sun Himself.
It seems to
me also that I am in constant contact with all outside me. This is probably a
way of putting the fact that I am conscious on the plane of Universal consciousness,
on which time and space are non-existent. An act of consciousness - and I
contact whatever I desire to contact. It is not a question of going anywhere,
of projection, but rather of tuning, and not even of tuning, but rather of
attending. The act of attention makes the contact.
Of course,
I am only at the very beginning of this, and I express myself badly and
uncertainly, because I am merely a child, and use child-language to express unfamiliar
relationships and to describe conditions about which I know next to nothing. I
am just like a baby trying to describe all it met on its first
journey
into the streets of the town, or the roads and lanes of the
country-side.
I have received impressions, but these filter through, have indeed been
contacted by, undeveloped organs. Still, perhaps you sense the truth within the
halting picture. William James in one of his books has said that the
nightingale of life’s eternal meaning is for ever singing in men’s hearts. From
the standpoint of the Nirvanic consciousness I realize that this is profoundly
true, but it means far more than probably he intended it to mean.
The eternal
meaning of life is indeed for ever singing in men's hearts, but it is not, I
think, until Buddhic, and later Nirvanic, consciousness is opened that one
begins to hear the song, or at any rate to begin to understand it. When one
does begin to hear it in one’s own heart, simultaneously one seems to hear it
in the hearts of all things, even though it sings as yet to ears that are deaf.
And then one knows that there is but One great Song of Life echoed in the hearts
of men and things, be its variations infinite.
Such
knowledge is it that brings one to a realization of the nature of Universal Consciousness.
Hearing the Song of Life in harmony of Glorious Light and Colour in its
Nirvanic manifestation, one hears the sound of its eternal meaning in all
things, and it is but an act of consciousness to hear its note in any
particular individuality, and thus to contact that individuality intimately. It
is, then, but a matter of tuning-in on to the wave-length required.
The
wireless apparatus is installed, even though very far from running smoothly,
and I seem able to tune-in to all manner of things everywhere, to persons, to
friends, to events, even though I may only rarely be able to hear accurately. I
see the “dead” living on in other bodies, and with us all the time. I see the
“living” in other parts of the world as near to me as those in physical
propinquity. I can draw the whole world into me, and thus annihilate time and
space. How much more than this world, so far as regards its sub-Nirvanic
states, I may be able thus to draw in, I do not know. But I am just now
beginning to perceive that the unfolding of Nirvanic consciousness brings one
into touch with other worlds than this earth of ours.
Certain
planets, of course, may be contacted comparatively easily without Nirvanic
consciousness, but its unfoldment makes possible journeys farther afield, for
on the Nirvanic plane infinitely more of our universe begins to be within
reach. I have not yet journeyed far afield, but I find myself in touch with
influences from distant places, the nature of which is for the time being more
than strange. There are mighty influences at work among us, down here in our
world, influences from far away, from other universes indeed as well as from
other planets. I can say no more at the moment, for all is vague. But it is
very intriguing. How strange one feels in one’s new world, with its almost
illimitable vistas and marvellous scenery, peopled with wonderful Presences,
linking together even universes within a stupendous cosmos.
It is a
wonder that the physical brain can stand even the feeblest reflection of it
all, for it is all so completely outside all previous experience. Clearly the physical
brain could not stand the strain but for the previous Buddhic experience, which
reinforced the brain, stamped it with Unity, enlarged its capacity, that it
might gradually become ready for the further expansion. The
Nirvanic
note would have been shattering but for the tuning-in the Buddhic contact
achieved.
How true it
is that language in this case conceals thought and meaning! I need Nirvanic
language to convey the sense of Nirvanic things, and my hearers need Nirvanic
understanding. How impossible to convey the sense of moreness in a medium which
stops short at that very moreness! Still, perhaps you have an impression of
that wondrous moreness, though until you too can begin to see, my words must
often seem confused and even muddled. As Myers has said so beautifully:
O, could I
tell, ye surely would believe it!
O, could I
only say what I have seen!
How should
I tell or how can ye receive it,
How, till
He bringeth you where I have been?
The more
one immerses oneself in even this lowest layer of Nirvanic consciousness the
greater becomes the clarification of consciousness on the lower planes. It is
like a fresh, pure stream of energy flowing through the great channels of life
and vivifying the outlook at every stage. We are continually working under the
Law of Readjustment, and each expansion of consciousness involves a further
readjustment to the Eternal Reality. Purer and purer becomes the refracting
medium as kingdom after kingdom of consciousness is conquered, till at last the
Light of the Real shines through undimmed, or as nearly undimmed as is possible
in the Universe of the Relative.
One of the
most striking examples of this clarification is in the discovery that it is far
more possible definitely to know God than I had supposed. Does one attain a
vision of God, of the Creator, in a Form capable of being understood by human
consciousness? I seem to have perceived God, not as an abstraction but as a
cognisable Reality - a Universality within a limitation, but the limitation rarefied
enough to reveal to me in deeper measure the nature of the Universality of God.
The expression is unsatisfactory, but it is as if I had experienced the
Individuality
of God. And the whole experience centres round the Sun which, putting it
bluntly, I perceive to be the Physical Vehicle of God whereby He creates,
gives, sustains and regenerates life. The Sun is, as it were, the Countenance
of God, the Light of which shines upon all things.
A little
more and I could describe, in so far as description is at all possible, a
manner of God’s revealing of Himself on this Nirvanic Plane. Not God unveiled.
I cannot see Him unveiled. The part cannot know the Whole as Whole. But I can
see Him as He interposes a shadow before my eyes. To me that very shadow, irridescent
with God, is God, even though but a shadow. I see God in limitation.
The part
perceives a shadow of the Whole. The
I realize,
too, more vividly the nature of Heaven, and somehow it does not seem so absurd
to place Heaven in the heavens as I had thought. Of course, heaven is a State
of
the title.
But is not the blue sky a Heaven in special measure? If I free myself from the
bondage of earth and body restrictions, and bathe myself in the sky above the
clouds, do I not experience a peace and a sense of the all-Power, the all-Wisdom
and the all-Love of God, which inevitably decreases as I return to the physical
level?
I seem also
to be able to some extent to apply Eternity to the terms of Time. Do I not
contact in some degree the Eternal Mind, or, should I say more truly, a Cosmic
Mind, and then Cosmic Emotions and a Cosmic Physical Plane? What is the
difference between these
The first
word that comes to me to express the difference is “Majesty”. Mind stripped of
all Time-mentality, of all constituents of the mental plane as we know it. Mind
filled with the spiritual counterparts, the archetypes, of the constituents of
our mental plane. The Cosmic Mind is an archetypal Mind which reflects itself
in the objects of the mental plane. It is not Absolute Mind, but the nearest
approach to Absolute Mind that I can so far conceive. The positive and the
negative, the subject and the object, have disappeared, and there is pure Mind,
Mind without the contrast between I and not-I, since the one is
merged in
the other.
The same
experience obtains on the plane of the emotions. On this Cosmic plane I contact
Cosmic Emotion, which impresses me as being Power in Motion. I have since often
looked at a physical plane storm and have seemed to perceive in it a likeness
to the plane of Cosmic Emotion, always assuming that the physical plane storm
is supremely purposeful and stormy to great and well-defined ends.
Cosmic
Emotion is power in motion, in spiral swirl, in vast pulsation. Again, as in
the case of the Cosmic Mind, I cease to sense the pairs of opposites. There is no
fundamental division of love-emotions and hate-emotions; they are mutually
merged in
archetypal emotion. I contact pure emotion, pure feeling, but not absolute
emotion or absolute feeling. I sense the difference because I perceive a
beyond, though I do not know the nature of that beyond.
These two
Cosmic states are reservoirs which feed their corresponding lower planes, and I
see how the pairs of opposites down here emerge from a Unity within or above,
but I feel sure that this very Unity itself is but relative. Further still
within or above there is a still deeper Unity, compared with which the Unity I
now contact is a world of diversity.
I perceive
an Apotheosis of Death. There is no death, only change, and always change with
purpose, change to a greater end. Death is recreation, renewal, the dropping of
fetters, the casting aside of a vehicle which has ceased to suffice,
the taking
off of an overcoat. Death is in very truth a birth into a fuller and larger
life, or a dipping down into matter under the law of readjustment. Progress
always, and progress towards Unity. We come ever nearer to each other and to
the Real through death. If only we could realize this!
I see that
Death is a form of Happiness, and that only our distance from happiness
prevents us from realizing the gift of happiness which death confers.
We grieve
because a friend has gone into the next room, and there seem to be no doors
between his room and ours. Yet there are doors, and we might open them if we
would and keep them for ever afterwards wide open. Grief is ignorance and often
selfish. The more we know the less we shall grieve, for true knowledge is
eternal happiness.
I turn for
a change to myself. I somehow know that my aura has undergone, or is
undergoing, a process of readjustment. Wherever there is an expansion of consciousness
there is a modification in the aura. What modification is being
brought
about in my own? It seems as if it were being irradiated with Nirvanic Light.
It has an electric intensity it did not before possess. The colours are in
process of rearrangement, apparently in rings like the rings of Saturn. Possibly,
indeed probably, this process began before, but the entry into Nirvanic
consciousness has given it a great impetus.
The silver
light-threads of Nirvana seem to interpenetrate the whole aura, enriching and
purifying the colours, and encircling, interpenetrating, my whole being, with a
Web of Light. The aura scintillates with Sun-Light. The aura sparkles in the
Sun.
I have
perceived since these words were written that not only does the aura undergo a
Light modification, including a re-arrangement of the colour-scheme, but that
the music of my being has undergone a beautiful enrichment. I feel myself to be
music. True, all is music, and has been from the beginning. But at last I am
beginning to understand my music and to be able to watch myself at work in the
Workshop of Sound, assembling the notes I need for the Symphony I am dedicated
to express, for the Sound-Universe it is my destiny to create.
Physical
plane Henry Ford assembling a motor car is but a reflection of innumerable
spiritual Henry Fords assembling the Universes, of which they shall be the
Suns, in the Colour Workshops, in the Sound Workshops, in the Great
Laboratory
of Evolution. The process is at work all the time, but only as we contact
Buddhi, and later Nirvana, do we begin really to know what we are doing, and
thus to do it more expeditiously and with more effective skill.
Each centre
(there are many centres) glows with the new life and the new promise. Am I in
the springtime of a new Cosmic year, of which the summer of spiritual maturity
is the Fifth of the Great Initiations, to the threshold of which sooner or
later I shall come? “Conquer this kingdom and you stand on the threshold of the
next.” The seed of my being has thrust its Light-shoots through the soils of
lower planes, and a bud is opening to the Sun in the pure Nirvanic air. Some
day this bud will become a flower - a flower of earth’s humanity in the
CHAPTER III
THE INNER
LIGHT UPON OUTER THINGS
The atom is
a sun in miniature in its own
universe of
the inconceivably minute.
ANNIE BESANT AND C. W. LEADBEATER
(Occult Chemistry).
AS the glow
comes before the fire, the dawn before the sunrise, so must the glow of dawning
perfection slowly but surely steal over us, body after body, as a sign that the
Sun within is learning to shine as shines so gloriously the Sun without. We
need to be set on fire so that we may gradually become one with the Fire
Eternal. We cannot know God as He is until we become all fire, even as He is
all fire. Open your hearts, then, to His Sunlight, that your whole being may
some day burst into flame, and thence into many flames - flames of Power, of
Wisdom, and of Love. In each one of us the spark is ready, the spark of
Divinity waiting to become a Fire. Nothing can extinguish this spark, however
dimly it may glow. At last the time must come for its emergence into flame, and
thence into that Fire which till then has slept in the world of the potential.
We are set
ready for the lighting. Let us concentrate upon ourselves the Rays of our Lord
the Sun through the burning-glass of aspiration and of service, and Time, the
sure and certain moulder of this burning glass, is God’s witness that the spark
shall thus become the Fire. May our service and our aspiration glow with the
warmth of understanding, the warmth which stimulates, with the light of wisdom,
the wisdom which clarifies, with the burning of power, the burning which
purifies. I seem to contact here a note of a great Ritual of Light, and Light
the medicine of the future. Light the Healer, Light the Redeemer, the Creator,
the Preserver, the Regenerator. The inoculations and drugs of the future will
be Light-variants, and the very food we eat will be concentrated Light, the
form being used to collect, in varying ways, the sustenance which is the Sunlight.
But even
more than this is there not a great Ceremonial of Light, a mystery of Light?
Not on this globe, perhaps, but on some other more advanced than this earth
there is, I think, a mighty Magic of the Light which some day we shall know and
use. I think that is the life of the colony of which Dr. Besant and Bishop
Leadbeater write in Man: Whence, How and Whither.
Light
already begins to play a definite part, but Light is in fact the philosopher’s
“stone,” the potent force of the alchemist, and some day the Science of Light
will be recognized as the Science of Sciences, with its Laws, its Ritual, its
Worship, its Philosophy, its Ethic and AEsthetic. I wish I had the wisdom to
understand even a little of the Science, for it is the key to all other
sciences. Some day it will be a Science intensely applicable even to the little
things of everyday life. We shall become in a wonderful way children of Light
because we are children of the Sun, and there will be a Eucharistic Service of
the Light even more glorious, if possible, than the Eucharistic Service of our
Lord the Christ.
I see our
Lord the Sun distributing Himself through His universe, extending Himself
through its immeasurable distances. I see His world learning gradually to use
him in His myriad aspects to meet its many needs.
I see these
things to be, and I see that our Lord the Sun grows because He shines. He grows
by shining. So must we. As we shine so we grow. And as I realize this I turn
outwards from the blinding glory of Nirvana to this world of ours living and
growing in relative darkness. Light-sparks everywhere, glittering and
scintillating as do the lights of a seaside town when viewed in the night from
passing ships. Light-sparks in every kingdom of nature, some dim indeed, feeble,
looking as if the slightest breath of adverse wind would blow them out and
leave a darkness blacker than ever. But no spark that God has lighted from His
Divinity can ever fade. Long may it remain feeble, slight may be the change
through ages of time.
But it
grows irresistibly. In each kingdom, sparks there are of more vivid brightness
- the jewels, the fruition, of the kingdom these. In the human kingdom I
perceive that the sparks have become flames, some small, some large. I see that
some of these flames are veritable lighthouses, shedding light upon the true
pathway of Life, warning from the ways of ignorance and pointing towards the
pathways of wisdom. They warn from the rocky places and beckon along the
channels of rapid growth. These are the world’s true benefactors, seers and
teachers, themselves on the threshold of those kingdoms beyond the human in
which are the mighty Fires growing into the semblance of the Fire of God. These
are the Elder Brethren of the worlds, veritable Pillars of Fire upholding the
And here
once again I compare the Buddhic plane with the Nirvanic, and I strive to
distinguish. It is very difficult to express the facts at all accurately. I
seem to see in the former an act of coalescence and in the latter an act of
identity. I perceive the former to be the assertion, the realization, of Unity
amidst, above, resolving diversity; while I perceive the latter to be a condition
of receding from all diversity, with a consequent readjustment,
reconfiguration, rearrangement of the Unity, so that it becomes a Oneness.
Buddhi the
One with the Second; Nirvana the One without a Second. Yes. I confirm my
previous judgment. And beyond Nirvana? Even the One changes, casts aside
another of the veils of the Real. Can I grope beyond this lowest sub-plane of
Nirvana and look upwards upon the higher rungs of the Nirvanic ladder? No hard
and fast divisions, no Light-tight compartments. Is there not perhaps an
intensification of the Oneness, for even at the bottom I find that any
qualification of the Oneness, however true, is a limitation, a negation, of
Nirvanic reality? Light? Yes, you can use the word to convey an infinitesimal
fraction of the truth. Music, Sound? Yes, you can use these words too. But
while you are using them you know that they veil the glory, even the little
shaft of glory which is all you yet perceive. But let me drop these veils. What
remains all the way up? Oneness, and of this Oneness no words may be used, no
expression in terms of Light or Sound or Form conveys the slightest real
meaning, only a suggestion which points in the direction of the Real. I will
meditate on this Oneness, live in it. So shall I begin to know it, though not
to convey the sense of it. And then shall come that which I can only now
describe as Transcendence.
But I have
said enough. I am foolish to strive to measure with words the immeasurable.I
see that we evolve under the laws of counterpart and reflection.
The world
of Nirvana itself is a sublimated counterpart of the world below as much as it
is an archetype. The planes above Nirvana are sublimated counterparts, each in
its own degree, of the Nirvana below them, the quality and nature of the
counterpart being determined by the Light-vibration quality of the plane.
The
development of the Nirvanic consciousness seems to affect the spirillae in the
brain, the kundalini, and the various centres generally; as also, of course,
the various bodies. I am conscious of a much more intense sensitiveness, of
being much more highly strung. I am, as it were, an extremely sensitive plate,
rather over-sensitive for conditions in the outer world. Probably I shall tone
down in due course, but in the earlier stages outer living becomes almost
painful.* (*As a matter of fact, in the light of further growth, I do not seem
to tone down.
On the
contrary, the sensitiveness increases steadily. But I have it under increasing self-control,
at all events up to a certain point. Life is more difficult from the standpoint
of daily contacts, and does not grow less difficult. But to counteract the
growing difficulty there is also growing an inner Peace which acts, may I
descend for a moment into a very material simile, as a wonderful
shock-absorber. But I realize that the time must come when it will no longer be
possible to live in the outer world and maintain a maximum of effectiveness. It
is for this reason, for the sake of more generous service, that our Elder
Brethren live away from the haunts of Their younger comrades.
They prefer
to give of Their all rather than to have continually to protect Themselves
against the discords of immaturity, thus using power which otherwise might be
free for service.) One seems to know people and things far more accurately;
they become impressed upon me as they are, rather than as they seem to be.
It would
seem that as the causal body disintegrates when the individual enters the
Buddhic plane, so is it with the Buddhic vehicle as one enters the Nirvanic
plane. This seems inevitable on what I call the plane of apotheoses, the
essential plane, the plane of fundamental archetype. I notice that I do not
write “archetypes,” and the reason seems to be that from one point of view
there is no plurality on the Nirvanic plane. Plurality begins on the plane
below, and even there it is plurality overshadowed, dominated, by Unity. Of
course, as one descends, the various bodies of lower planes are re-formed out of
the matter of the planes according to the vibration rate of the permanent atom.
Return from Nirvana, and the Buddhic vehicle is instantaneously formed. Return
from the Buddhic plane, and a causal body is immediately ready for use, though
not, of course, the age-long friend which reintegrates no more.
Why cannot
anyone enter Nirvana? It is a question of time, of course, and a question as to
how the time is occupied. Entry into Nirvana involves an expansion of
consciousness, and the lesser expansions must precede the greater. It seems to
be a matter of Sense of Reality. It is not enough to know what is called Truth.
One must know something of what is Truth, which is generally quite another
matter; and the Truth of things cannot be learned from books, or speeches,
except in part. These help, as does also experience. But in some way one must
not only discover Truth through experience, but also through a reaching out
into that which is beyond experience - gradually making experience of that
beyond. Similes come into my mind. Think of one of those curious
puzzle-pictures which they give to children. Each puzzle has a title, and one
works to that. This piece fits in here, that piece fits in there. Gradually the
picture forms and becomes complete. So is it with life, and with the various
planes of consciousness.
For
example, an individual entering into Buddhic consciousness obtains a general
idea of Buddhic principles, and gradually the experience fulfils the
principles, so that they become built into his very being. The Buddhic picture
becomes well recognizable. Buddhi has ceased to be that which it was at first,
an empty circle, an unexplored vastness. He has travelled throughout the
Buddhic world, has populated the circle, the vastness, with experience after experience
at ascending levels, until he reaches the summit and looks up to new plains, or
planes of being leading to mightier summits still. The individual is ready,
therefore, for another picture - that of Nirvana. But one cannot begin on
another picture until the former is on the road to completion.
It is no
doubt possible to imagine the stages ahead, and the effort is very useful and
helpful. But one must be strenuously working at the pictures one has already in
hand, deliberately and with the realisation that in each case the principles
must be fulfilled in practice.
The
physical-body picture, the emotions picture, the mind picture - all must be on
the road to completion, and each of us who reaches this stage must be hard at
work on them all. Then only is it possible for us to be allowed to begin
something still further. We speak of Theosophizing our lives. The word
“theosophizing”
covers our duty, be the centre of consciousness where it may.
But at each
stage we must build into our lives the essence of our highest achievement. If
the causal body is the highest active principle, we must see to it that we are
in all things true to the experiences of which the causal body is the
custodian. We must live from that body. If Buddhi has been contacted, we must see to it that the spirit
of that Unity ensouls each thought, each
feeling,
each word, each deed. So with Nirvana, and so beyond and beyond.
And we must
remember that nothing short of Truth suffices. Our conception of Truth is not
enough, however good it may be, however useful to us it may be. Facts, not
theories, are required. Not, perhaps, absolute fact - that is still beyond us;
but relatively pure facts, at all events. I seem to see the water of the
emotions
fructifying the seed of the mind so that it bursts into being.
Similarly I
see the water of the mind fructifying Buddhi, and the water of Buddhi
fructifying the Nirvanic seed. But the water must be pure, otherwise the seed
remains potential. When the potential within the seed becomes active, it sends
out Light-rays of its own quality which contact, summon to its aid, the
corresponding
rays of Light without, and another Light-body is in course of formation. Up
till that time the Light-rays from without passed through the vehicle, hardly, if
at all, affecting it. But now they find response to their stimuli, and in
interaction the Light-body comes into being.
I have for
some time been striving to bring down into the physical brain the means whereby
translation takes place into this new field of consciousness - Nirvana. So far
as I can contact, the process, it depends upon the capacity to respond on the
part of the embryonic atom of Nirvanic consciousness within
myself. I
seem to notice that these embryonic counterparts of the corresponding conditions
without pass through stages of what I must call prenatal development, the birth
into consciousness synchronizing with an expansion of consciousness which is
the veritable Initiation itself.
There is
the period of sleep, unconsciousness. There is the period of stirring,
restlessness, the dawn of consciousness. Then there is the period of awareness
- something less than awakening, yet a capacity intermittently to vibrate to
corresponding conditions without. And finally there is the awakening itself,
when the embryonic atom is not merely a nucleus, an embryo, but a vehicle, a
body. The Sun shines, and takes unto Himself a world, a universe. This is
Initiation.
I presume
that at the fourth of the Great Initiations the stirring of the life within the
Nirvanic atom, due to Buddhic and other impacts, is marvellously vitalized from
without by a treat Act of Unification on the part of the One Initiator or His
Deputy. A great expansion takes place; the vehicle is formed whereby entry is
gained into the kingdom now to be conquered. I take my abode for the first time
in a Nirvanic vehicle - if the word “vehicle” be
permitted -
and now the task is mine to develop the senses of this new potency; just as a
little child has to learn to use his senses in the physical world. Light, of
course, is the first discovery, for it is the primary, overwhelming experience.
I have spoken of “lightning-standing-still”.
Entry into
the Nirvanic world is as into lightning, blinding, penetrating, drenching. One
plunges into a sea of vibrant, vocal lightning. One cannot sink, but one has to
learn to swim.
One does
not sink, because the light within makes one buoyant. It is impossible to
conceive entry into this kingdom without the warrant of the awakened light
within, but were such a conception possible I realize that the only result
would
be
annihilation. And this shows me the relatively irresistible power of this
lightning-Light. I have striven to describe its glorious beauty; I might now
try to describe its awful power. Scientists speak of the mighty power within
the atom, and of the tremendous consequences could it be released. God tempers
the Light, or we should be destroyed. Only as self-control grows stronger, and
the Path of Purification is trodden with ever more rapid and firmer footsteps,
are potentialities released within ourselves, the negative within uniting with
the positive without.
At this
point I have since noticed that this Resurrection into the
Lightning-standing-still
has been preceded by the vigil of a Crucifixion. The Crucifixion and the
Resurrection, therefore, are the interdependent constituents of the Epoch of
the fourth of the Great Initiations, the Resurrection unsafe without the
Crucifixion. And to this end are there not indeed at every stage of life these
twins of Crucifixion and Resurrection? Do you not know innumerable
crucifixions, innumerable resurrections, some great, some small, some
tremendous, some insignificant? Are not Crucifixions and Resurrections
distributed throughout life, in every
typified by
this fourth Stage on the Path of Holiness, at which takes place the Crucifixion
of Selfishness, the utter subordination of the lower, the offering of all one
is in the service of all that lives, and the consequent Resurrection
into Power
– Power that may now be grasped because it can only be used to the Glory of God
and in the service of His worlds?
I look upon
those who have achieved the Resurrection and I perceive the justificatory
Crucifixions, Crucifixions none the less real and effective though some who
have gone through them have been conscious of no suffering. I would venture to
deny that suffering is an inevitable concomitant of Crucifixion, or at least of
the final Crucifixion in the human kingdom. It is often present, but it need
not be.
It is not
suffering that is indispensable, but offering, holding nothing back. I find, then,
that the capacity, aroused in the course of the ceremony of the fourth of the
Great Initiations, to respond to Nirvanic consciousness, opens to me this new
kingdom. If I am correctly describing the actual process of entry, I can only
suggest that it is a matter of setting up, or rather intensifying, certain
potentialities of vibration, so that all that vibrates differently falls away,
or at least goes out of perspective.
Do these other
rates of vibration, which we may call the lower bodies, either retire into a
kind of body-formula or, if they remain actually corporeal, do they lose for
the time practically all save the elemental life? I start vibrating at the
Nirvanic rate, and find myself in the Nirvanic consciousness. I sound the
Nirvanic note, which I heard definitely for the first time during the course of
the Initiation (though an echo of it may have come to me now and then before),
and the portals open to my summoning.
I shall
soon find - indeed, I am beginning now to find - that it is not in the least
necessary to be physically asleep in order to contact this consciousness. It
may be contacted in full waking consciousness, and I am now striving to learn
to do that. But if I try to examine this further step I seem to be using the
physical brain in a new way, or through new brain channels. Part of the process
consists in getting temporarily out of focus, out of perspective, so far as
lower planes are concerned; but this is done as in a flash.* (*As experience
grows, even this stage of getting out of focus is hardly noticeable. The only
simile at all appropriate is that of the jelly-fish which breathes in and out,
so that its
body opens out and withdraws, expands and contracts. This is what seems to take
place as one uses Nirvanic consciousness.
One expands
to outer things, contacts them in all their parts, interpenetrates them. This
is how the Oneness is experienced. Can you follow me when I describe my
consciousness unfolding and contacting outer things? On every plane of
consciousness this can and must be done, so that one contacts Buddhically,
Nirvanically, and so on.)Being very infantile in this new world I find it
difficult to hold the ordinary waking consciousness simultaneously with the
Nirvanic. I notice a tendency to drop off to sleep - to get out of the physical
body.
One curious
effect is that I seem to “see” (the word does not at all suit) with the whole
of myself, and not with any one organ. It is more contact than perception, more
attitude than sight.* (*This is the method of all planes except the physical.
It is so even in astral consciousness, but it becomes more noticeable as one
rises higher. And at these superior levels one learns to see every object or
entity from within as well as from outside - to see it as part of one self, or
rather of the Great Self in which one is now merged. This is what our author
expresses in his next paragraph. - C. W. L.)
I observe
that Nirvanic consciousness is not a consciousness apart; it is in a supreme
degree one with the world in which we live. It is all-penetrating, and in its
light there is a marvellous readjustment to Reality for everything. A similar
readjustment happened in a lesser degree in the case of the lower stages; and I
perceive the great expansions of consciousness which mark the
dividing
lines between the kingdoms of nature to be similar readjustments to Reality.
There is nothing in the world not amenable to the Light of Nirvana, for in it
things are perceived infinitely more as they are than as they seem to be.
The Light
of Nirvana is as a great tuning-fork. External objects, human and nonhuman,
vibrate more or less in accord. Hence it becomes far more possible for one who
has heard the Nirvanic Sound to gauge the relation between the things of the
outer worlds and the Nirvanic Real. Either they ring true, or
not true;
less real, or more real. In any case, there is unbroken relationship between
all planes of consciousness. Below is a reflection, a shadow, of the above.
That there is distortion is obvious, but this is because the lower has not yet
learned to reflect, within the measure of its capacity, perfectly. With
increasing
density is increasing limitation; yet on every plane the limitation must
gradually conform to the minimum rather than to that, maximum density with
which it began.
This brings
me to a point which strikes me as of considerable importance. I perceive that
the doctrine of Transubstantiation is not merely a truth in relation to the
ceremony of the Holy Eucharist, but one of the great laws of Nature, one of the
great processes of evolution. I perceive that all growth is in large measure a
process of transubstantiation; not, necessarily the abandonment of the lower,
but rather the substitution, in increasing measure, of the more real for the
less real as the motive power behind or within, or shall I say the disclosure,
in increasing measure, of the substans, of the essence, as the Life of all the
shadowing forms?
Taking
Nirvanic consciousness as an example, I seem to perceive that in my own being a
process of transubstantiation has taken place. I still live in the outer world,
and go through the routine of daily life. I think, I feel, I act, I speak. I
use the senses of my various bodies. To outward appearances I am not at all
changed. I am as much recognizable as George Arundale as ever; and the mere
superficial observer will detect no changes. Yet a transubstantiation has taken
place, the old background has given way to, has become merged in, a new
background. A
greater
reality has been substituted for a lesser reality as the ensouling power of my
being.
In the case
of the Bread and the Wine of the Eucharist, there, appears no change of outer
form. Yet the consecration causes in each the substitution of the
Christ-principle for the lower principles normal to these two substances. A
supreme Reality has been substituted for a relatively insignificant reality.
The Unity
of all Life makes this possible, and indeed not merely possible but inevitable.
The whole of life is a process of gradual transubstantiation, and in the Holy
Eucharist we are given a striking reminder of this essential fact.
Unfortunately,
we do not generally realize that the ceremony of the Eucharist is an epitome of
the whole ceremony of Life. Life is a constant process of substitution and
transubstantiation, these being specially marked and sharply defined at every
one of the great stages on the Path of Holiness. The expansion of consciousness
that takes place at each of the great Initiations is nothing less than a
transubstantiation; and the same is true of all lesser expansions of
consciousness. But in each case the earlier transubstantiation must be
fulfilled ere a deeper transubstantiation can take its place, leaving it potential
but
merged, as
the lesser merges in the greater.
I notice in
myself many interesting effects of the transubstantiation connected with the
awakening of Nirvanic consciousness. I notice, for instance, a great
clarification of issues. Many problems in life cease to be problems; the
solution of them is obvious. Many things which I go on doing I do differently,
or with other intent. The whole of daily life becomes, or is to become, an
offering to the newly-realized higher. Daily life must forsake the lesser Gods
for the newly-perceived greater Gods. At various stages in my existence I have
been living as unto this, that or the other standard. I may have been living as
unto myself, my lower self; I may have been living as unto men, or as unto a
code or creed. Now I must live as unto something beyond.
Perhaps, to
some small extent, I have all the while been living as unto the Lord - very
haltingly and feebly of course. But now I must live as unto Him less haltingly
and feebly because He has condescended to enter more closely into relationship
with me through a veritable process of transubstantiation, which is the same as
saying a process of self-realisation.
CHAPTER IV
A
MEDITATION IN THE
Northwards
soared
The
stainless ramps of huge Himala’s wall,
Ranged in
white ranks against the blue - untrod,
Infinite,
wonderful - whose uplands vast,
And lifted
universe of crest and crag,
Shoulder
and shelf, green slope and icy horn,
Riven
ravine, and splintered precipice
Led climbing
thought higher and higher, until
It seemed
to stand in heaven and speak with gods.
Beneath the
snows dark forests spread, sharp-laced
With
leaping cataracts and veiled with clouds
Lower grew
rose-oaks and the great fir groves
Where
echoed pheasant’s call and panther’s cry,
Clatter of
wild sheep on the stones, and scream
Of circling
eagles: under these the plain
Gleamed
like a praying-carpet at the foot
Of those
divinest altars.
The Light
of
THE
clarification of issues to which I have referred above finds valuable
expression in the bringing into relief of those shadows in my nature which have
yet to yield to the Light. I know myself, I think, as never have I known myself
before; and while I am appalled at my ignorance, my thirst for knowledge, or rather
for Truth, is immensely increased. Were this not so, I might well despair, for
what I know is of the size of the minutest speck of dust as compared with the
mighty earth. How little I really know.
It is no exaggeration,
indeed, to say that I know nothing. At best I have a few scraggy hypotheses,
some, I trust, founded on that Reality which is the essence of my being. But
how much there is to know, and how glorious the search. One feels like an
enthusiastic collector of gems, glorying in the searching and triumphing in the
finding. Never satisfied, but eternally hoping, and though never satisfied,
still utterly content, for there is so much to do with what one has. And there
is this advantage over the collector. There is nothing in the world, or out of
it, that is
not worth collecting. There is nothing which is not valuable experience. There
is nothing which does not contain a useful lesson. So the circumstances of life
are of little importance.
What
matters is our power to extract from them the nectar whereby we grow, the aqua
vitae.I here perceive once more the sharp difference between the quality of
Buddhic consciousness and that of Nirvanic consciousness. The former discloses
the Unity while the latter expresses it. Buddhi declares Unity, points to it
everywhere, discloses the thread of Unity running through all things, and so
unveils Truth. In Nirvana we begin an at-one-ment with the constituent elements
of this Unity, this Truth. Buddhi discloses the Plan; in Nirvana we begin to be
the Plan.
This is a
very partial statement of the facts, but perhaps it will do as a broad, rough
suggestion as to the general line of difference. Through Buddhi the
consciousness of Truth-Unity begins to become established. In Nirvana this
consciousness becomes intensified, and the process begins of tracing its
constituent elements to a more transcendent cause. From the planes below,
Buddhi may well appear to be an ultimate cause. Yet, standing on the Mount of
Buddhi we begin to perceive yet higher peaks, and we realize with still greater
awe and wonder the increasing vastness of that mountain-range of manifested
life of which even the glorious Mount of Buddhi is but a lesser peak. Dwelling
on this Mount of Buddhi we cannot fully perceive its nature, its relation to
the range as a whole, though from its height we may look down upon the view
below and perceive great unities of landscape where we had thought there were,
as we lived among them, but barriers and diversities.
I have
learned much in this direction by contemplating the great Himalayan range, the
physical plane range that separates the inner from the outer world, the
substance from the shadow. I have sat in meditation in the midst of this mighty
earthly shadow of the spiritual landscape of the manifested Logos. I have
contemplated
grandeur in the microcosms of the vegetation, of the plants and trees and
rocks, and in the ascending macrocosms of hills, of peaks, of mountains, of
ranges, unto the consummation of Gaurishankar* (*This was for some time
supposed to be the local name for Mount Everest, but more careful research
shows that this is not so. Mount Everest is Peak XV of the Official Survey, and
The
Tibetans call
These
mighty
Nowhere is
Buddhi or Nirvana nearer to man than in this physical Buddhi and physical
Nirvana of the
This
picture of the Himalayas and of their relation to these higher realms of
consciousness enters strongly into my mind - not, I think, merely because they
seem to be in some wonderful way the noble physical counterparts of these,
mighty inner regions, but for another reason which is very elusive, though I
feel I have the key to it in the dim memory of the supreme wonder of the summit
of Kailasa. I can see myself - I do not for the moment notice in what vehicle -
on that summit, sensing the mysterious, awesome and relentless silence, the
penetrating cold, the utter aloofness, the wondrous potentiality of
manifestation, from the many shades of unutterable calm and peace, the calm and
peace of winter, of spring, of summer, of autumn - each different in splendour
and in message, through gentle unrest to the most furious, raging and
cataclysmic storm. The air is alive with latent power, and I stand awestruck,
humbled, reverent, but with my own inherent Majesty revealed to me. Here at the
summit there seems to be pure potentiality, relieved from time to time by
manifestations of peace and storm. It is not what I see and feel that awes me,
but that which is beyond all sight and feeling, that which is held in leash by
the Logos Himself, that sense of irresistible potentiality which is even more
marvellous than its expression.
I find
myself merging in this mighty mountain-consciousness, and I find an almost
terrible sense of omnipotence. It is almost overwhelming; it would be quite
overwhelming did I not suddenly understand why the experience is accorded to
me.
I realize
the intention to be to disclose to me the splendid inevitability of the triumph
of evolution. Swept up into these vortices of glorious majesty, I know at once
that the supreme freedom is to attain the unattainable, to be free to accomplish
even miracles. But how can the unattainable be reached? Surely there is a
contradiction? No; for the unattainable is only unattainable in time; there
remains eternity, and to eternity all things are possible.
It is
indeed necessary for mankind to be impressed by a sense of limitation, or time
would not achieve its lesson-purpose. Madness lies on the road of those who
would discard limitations of which they have not learned the truths; their
growth is within such limitations. Yet there is a fuller growth which
transcends these, a growth which all may achieve who are learning to unite
their smaller wills with the Will of God, wanderers returned to the true home
after experiencing the lessons of innumerable illusory homes. Thus is a freedom
achieved which, by its essential omnipotence, enables all limitation to be
transcended, for who shall say to God: “Thou shalt not”? And are we not all
Gods in the becoming? But only as we have learned to will as God wills can this
supreme apotheosis of freedom be placed in our hands. Even in the outer world
that which is unattainable to some is attainable to others. It is the same at
all stages. But upon Mount Everest, upon its blinding summit, I know that even
the most glorious picture I can conceive in the highest aspects of my being,
utterly unattainable as I know it to be for an almost infinite period, is yet
but a shadow of a still more glorious shadow, splendour upon splendour beyond
count.
I have paid
this visit to these mighty ones that I may have something by way of a physical
illustration of the otherwise indescribable marvels of the Nirvanic
consciousness. It is desired that I should bring as accurate a memory as
possible down into the waking consciousness, so that I may grow a little wiser
in Their Service. I must have, for the work which is and will be mine, an
ever-present sense of Nirvana, to inspire, to strengthen, to guide.
This
infiltration of Nirvanic consciousness is necessary in order that, living in
the world, I may keep free from its shackles - most of which I should begin for
ever to cast aside. It is a necessary stage in preparation for the last great
journey in the human kingdom, the journey to Adeptship, a long, lonely, yet
glorious road. The power of Nirvana is placed in my hands that I may have the
strength, the courage, the wisdom to tread my way to this final human goal. I
shall need all these, as I clearly perceive, for I am almost appalled as I
learn what remains to be done. But after this experience, I know I can achieve,
however unattainable the goal may seem, for the very Himalayas themselves are a
living witness to the certainty of the glories that await all life.
I notice
that one of the most vital lessons this experience teaches lies in the
startling contrast it causes to emerge between the unreal and the Real. On
Everest’s summit I have been bathed in the Real. It is almost shattering to the
lower bodies to endeavour to hold this Real within them. I can barely do it
fresh from the experience, though later on I may be able to bring the Himalayan
spirit into my daily life. I clearly see how infinitely true it is that one
cannot serve both God and Mammon, and by Mammon in this case I mean all of the
lower worlds that I should have outworn.
If the
physical and other bodies are to retain their hold on these higher things, if
there is to be an unbroken channel between the highest and the lowest, care
must be taken to ensure that there shall be no clogging of these channels by
rubbish of any kind, or even by things which, though not rubbish, take up
valuable room, room needed for the greater realities. I must cast away the
clothes I no longer need to wear. I see that I have need to readjust the values
of things, that I must do things which I have not yet done, that I must not now
do certain things which I normally quite naturally, and hitherto quite rightly,
have done.
But this
great experience of the
Mysteries,
with Initiation and expansions of consciousness;* (*“And after six days Jesus taketh
Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain
apart, and was transfigured before them: and his face did shine
as the sun,
and his raiment was white as the light.” Matt., XVII, 1, 2.“And he … went, as
he was wont, to the
“And he
goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came
unto him. And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he
might send them forth to preach …” Mark, III, 13, 14.) and certain parts of the
Himalayas, sacred by tradition and associated with Mighty Beings, objects of
deep veneration and of pilgrimage, have, by reason of their being the abode of
high spiritual Intelligences, certain magnetic properties making them eminently
suitable as places in which yoga of various kinds can be performed.
The
Their
physical grandeur is a noble setting for the soul’s awakening, and it seems to
me that within such regions forces are available upon which to draw for the
development of the newly unfolded consciousness. The Himalayan regions afford
the purest physical reflection of those inner grandeurs which in so many other
regions can find but gross distortions. Everywhere is interaction, and
experiments conducted in these surroundings, no matter on what plane, are the
more fruitful for the play upon them of Himalayan magnificence. In almost every
country in the world these massive archetypes have their humbler counterparts,
where may occur some of the lesser gropings of the soul.
The lesser
unities may well be sensed in the lesser ranges and in such sanctuaries of
Peace, on plain and hill, as are still immune from the polluting encroachments
of mankind. It is still possible, even near towns and cities, to experience
initiations into wider consciousness; and wherever hills and mountains are,
there some of the deeper mysteries of Life may be explored. But the
But I must
return from these glories to the point from which I had to diverge-the
clarification of my individual nature. I see, as I have never seen before, the
qualifications for the road which I have to travel as one marked out for the
pathway of the Staff.* (*See Appendix D.) Less clearly, yet quite definitely
too, I perceive the nature of the qualifications for other roads. It is as if
there were set before me at this fourth great stage a
stupendous
choice of pathways. I may not travel on a specific pathway until I have looked
upon all pathways. A Great One leads me, as in a picture gallery, along them
all by turn. I see their beauties and their splendours, their difficulties and
their loneliness. I wonder whether I could describe their respective
landscapes.
Now choose!
There should be no hesitation, no doubt, no uncertainty, for has not the choice
been made at the very beginning of my being? Yes; but at this supreme moment I
must ring true to myself, or the conscious choice may have to wait awhile. And
as I choose unerringly the only road for me, just for the moment the road
itself fades out of sight, and there is disclosed to me the splendour to which
it leads. I gaze at myself as I shall be, sooner or later. I gaze at myself,
born, baptised, transfigured, crucified, resurrected, ascended. I know
the glory
of the service of the Staff; and I am immeasurably content and at peace. Long
ages may pass ere I reach this splendour. Yet it is to come, and beyond it
doubtless lie yet other splendours. More than enough the splendour I dimly
sense in remembrance.
With the
future thus unveiled for an unforgettable moment, sharply there comes to me the
nature of the equipment for the journey; first, desirelessness; second,
impersonality; third, truth. Above all others, those who aspire to service in
the Staff must be supremely free from attachment, and this is one of the
hardest of the qualifications. A member of the Staff belongs to no work, and
to all work;
to no place, and to all places; to no person, and to all. He desires that which
for the time is given him to do; but behind this desire is desirelessness. He
dedicates himself to duty, yet to no specific duty. A piece of work is given to
him. He does it eagerly. But once it is finished, or he is taken away from it,
he concerns himself no longer with it. He can never be so wrapped up in a
particular piece of work that it obsesses him. He is a free
lance, a
jack of many trades. He is a King’s messenger, to be sent here and there in the
world and out of it, as the Will of the King may determine. He can never say:
“This is my work.” He can only say: “This is just now my work.” He is an
adaptable person, though probably not an expert. He has a chamelion-like
capacity
for adjusting himself to his surroundings, be these people or places, angels or
men, this world or any other world.
The
universe is his home. He knows no other. In his world of great desirelessness
he nevertheless wills strongly to do the duty of the moment; thus he passes
from desire to desire in a life of uttermost dispassion.
Then
impersonality. The work he does is not his work. It is more than likely to be
that of some one else, for whom, for the time being, he deputizes. The specific
work of the Staff seems to be co-ordination. If I am asked what my life’s work
is, my reply is that I do not know, nor do I care. I can only say what my work
is now; that is enough for me. Other officers may be able to answer in terms of
nation, race, or world. They may be consecrated to specific purposes, but
members of the Staff seem to be more in the nature of liaison officers, on
general co-ordination duty, with emergency activity as required. It becomes of
the highest importance that members of the Staff should hold themselves
definitely aloof from identification with any particular duty. They must be
ready to drop a piece of work without an instant’s regret, for it is just as
much their duty to drop work as to undertake it. This demands a high development
of impersonality, all the more difficult to achieve,perhaps, since for so long
a time we have been concerned with growth through personality.
At all
costs, impersonality; not cold impersonality, but burning impersonality.Then,
truth. Naturally, truth, as also the other two qualities I have already
mentioned, is needed on all pathways. But members of the Staff must be
specially trained to recognize and follow truth no matter what the forms. They
have to do more with universal truth than with specific truth. They must hold
fast to the essence of truth, so as to be able to express it and perceive it
through any form. I know this sounds applicable to all departments, and so in a
way it is. Yet the Staff have a distinctive relation to truth, which I am here
striving to express.
I perceive
these three qualifications, with their very important corollary, adaptability,
to demand from me constant attention. I must develop them ruthlessly, the
sooner to be able to present myself as qualified for office.
Immersion
in these Himalayan range-gradations stimulates in me the sense of living in
three distinct categories of consciousness in my ordinary every day life in the
outer world. It is as if I had to live in three stages, or in three dimensions
of consciousness simultaneously, with a fourth dimension beyond my present
contact, yet subject to awareness if not to sensation. The first category is
that of individuality-the consciousness prevalent in the outer world; the
Himalayan plains. The second category is that of unity - the consciousness of
those upon whose horizon the. Sun of brotherhood is dawning; the intermediate
ranges. The third category is that of universality, or
relatively
pure Being - the consciousness of those upon whose horizon the Sun of Oneness
is dawning; the mighty summits.
In the
first category the average individual lives and moves and has his being. He is
limited by his causal body, and dwells for the most part in the lower mental
and astral bodies. He is intent upon goodness for his own sake. In the second
category we have the dawning of the Buddhic consciousness, a beginning to live
on the Buddhic plane. The sense of Buddhi may come, often does come, before the
first of the Great Initiations, but as far as I am aware only after this great
Step is it possible normally to dwell therein. Before the first great Step the
Buddhic spark remains intermittent; after it the spark tends to grow constant
and to expand into a blinding light. At this stage the individual
is intent
upon the good of others. He begins to cease to think about his own goodness,
for that is definitely established, or will take care of itself; he cannot be
other than what we call good. At least that is as it should be - as in all
decency it ought to be; and for the credit of mankind it generally is.
But alas!
even at this stage humanity is weak; “Great Ones fall back even from the very
threshold”; and we have had sad examples of downfall caused by conceit and
ambition. In some such cases the defaulter recognizes his mistake, and begins
humbly to work towards reinstatement; in others the effort is postponed until
some future life. But always the fallen Initiate must eventually come back,
however terrible may be the cost in suffering and delay.
At this stage
he is preoccupied with the welfare of others, that he may fan in them to
brighter flame the spark of their Divinity. In the first stage, the individual
aspires to live according to the outer law. He is satisfied with revelation,
whether general or specific and individual, and shapes his conduct in
accordance therewith. This is goodness. Even where revelation has ceased
to satisfy,
and the demand comes for knowledge, it is less for service than for the sake of
knowledge. But in the second stage, revelation has definitely ceased to
satisfy, and the demand comes for Truth, and for experience, less for its own
sake than for the power it gives to serve. This, I conceive, is more than
goodness. It is the dawning of identification with the Real, as distinguished
from that recognition of the Real which marks the later periods of the first
stage; as conformity to the conventional marks its yet earlier periods. In the
third stage while experience continues it begins to be transcended. There is no
question of experiencing - all is a matter of being; while service has become
natural.
I wonder
whether I shall be at all comprehensible if I say that there is a subtle
distinction between experience and being. Experience demands subject and
object. Being is the unified sublimation of both. Experience may all the time
be taking place, but being may also be “taking place” - the phrase is, of
course,
unfortunate
- when the individual is free of the realms of being, a freeman of these
Heavenly cities. In one sense, truly, all
experience is being, and all being is experience, but there is a
difference, a qualitative difference, a difference in fineness. Experience is
being on a lower level of manifestation.
To return
to our three categories, in the first stage, service is to the smaller self,
and is very short-sighted and clumsy. As time passes, it becomes more
intelligent and far-seeing, and the demands of this smaller self are seen to
depend for their satisfaction upon harmonization with the demands of other
small
selves. As the second stage is entered, the happiness of the smaller self is
seen to depend upon the service of others; and sacrifice grows more and more
complete.
In the
third stage there is an apotheosis of sacrifice in a marvellous
self-realization, which for the time seems complete, yet in course of time is
realized to be short of completion. Will it ever be complete? It is enough that
it satisfies and inspires. To reach a passing satiety-point is a pro tanto
completion, and more satisfying even than completion, for it foreshadows the
immanence
of a still deeper satisfaction, a still more wonderful, however fleeting,
completion. It is a completion that leads on, that becomes as it were a point
which shall expand again towards, fulfilling itself in, a mighty circumference.
The brightest light is but the shadow of a still greater brilliance.
I have said
that I feel I have to live in all three stages. I must not lose the stage
before on entry into the stage beyond. The former must merge into the latter,
for I must live to a twofold purpose - that there may be unity between me and
those at that particular stage, and that God may fulfil in me His own Divinity.
Nothing may be lost, nothing thrown away. There is nothing with which
we have
done utterly and for ever. There is nothing which is not the Life of God. I
must be remembering these three stages, and must live in them all for service.
I must be able to understand completely. More than ever before must I be one
with all that is. No longer may I feel repulsion, or feel shocked. I must
understand. The more I know of the Plan the more must I realize how all fits into
the Plan. So, beginning to live from the third stage, I must still be intensely
alive in the other two, not fettered by them, but helping to lead others
through them. To sense the marvels of Nirvanic consciousness is not to grow
aloof from one’s fellow-men, but to gain power to serve them and all other
kingdoms more wisely and effectively.
I want to
dwell at greater length upon the third stage - the stage of the dawning of the
Sun of Being. I have already described Nirvanic consciousness, which is
included within this stage, as Light, with our Lord the Sun as the Universal
Heart of Light as well as the physical Heart in a specific place. Yet if you dwelt
mainly on the Light-idea, so that it dominated your conception, you would have
only a very negative conception of Nirvanic consciousness, a very physical and
limited conception. I use the word Light less to express the blinding glory
(though this is marvellous enough) than to express an almost miraculous process
of readjustment, an emergence of new values, of new Light upon the Path. Every
expansion of consciousness involves a readjustment, at first overwhelmingly
wonderful, stupendous, but later realized to need slow, steady, careful
development - a renewal of every single life-constituent in terms of the
readjustment, so that the latter may be fulfilled and the way become ready for
a further advance, a wider expansion of consciousness welling up from the
unfathomable depths of Reality.
The opening
of the doors of Buddhi into the Nirvanic consciousness is like the shaking of a
kaleidoscope.The existing life-picture, and even the tiniest element
contributing to its making, disappear, and a new life-picture is formed,
perceived to be a partial apotheosis of its predecessor, another stage towards
a picture still more perfect.
I perceive
this Himalayan experience to be in the nature of a kind of magnetic bath, or
readjustment process. Immersion in the Himalayan atmosphere - not merely the
physical but also other atmospheres-is a baptism into Reality which can take
place only in the
obtaining
there. This baptism is not only a descent of power but a harmonization of
vehicles to the end that intercommunication may more readily take place. The
physical body lying asleep at the Manor, Sydney, Australia, is linked
magnetically with Himalayan conditions, and becomes itself the plains of a
microcosmic
Himalayan range, of which one of the peaks of consciousness is the Nirvanic. It
is as if I had ascended a great mountain in this range of my Being, one of the
lesser peaks no doubt, yet of mighty stature, towering far above all other
summits I have so far gained. I perceive
me, but the
summit on which I stand to-day was itself
The very
physical body now knows a new relationship with the subtler vehicles, has
undergone a marked change, because communications have been made with
consciousness-territory hitherto unexplored and out of reach. This densest body
may be
likened to the plains at the base of the
but the lowest
stages of a great landscape, drawing their life from heights above, some
beginning to be known, others only surmised, some unknown. Still further recede
the mists, clearing away, vanishing, and disclosing step by step loftier and
loftier summits until the whole Himalayan range stands revealed. The
plains
beneath are no longer a world in themselves, no longer a world with a range of
hills beyond, no longer a part of a great landscape, but the base of a world
towering into the sky, a base depending for its life upon that which comes from
above.
These
plains are but the feet of the
So is it
with my body. It is but the base of my being. Elsewhere is my heart. Elsewhere
is the Sun of my being. As I have ascended the
physical
body, or have I retired to my
And yet,
from another point of view, this very Himalayan experience or baptism enables
me to live more truly even on the lower ranges, even on the plains. A
correlation has taken place. The plains and the lesser ranges have been
co-ordinated with the towering summits. The world of my being has been welded,
united, into a mighty whole. I live everywhere in infinitely fuller
measure,
though my heart is in the
I know them
to be such, for I have seen the Substances they reflect, or at least the truer
reflections. To those who see naught beyond the reflections, these are the
substance and they live in them as such. But those of us who have travelled
upward, inward, know them for what they are.
I can never
forget the lesson of the
For me they
are a sacred range, portraying in rock, in earth, in grass, in shrubs, in
flowers, in trees, in every part of both fauna and flora, as in a sculptured
masterpiece, the reality (and, within limits, the totality) of my being. Have I
knocked at the door of the great Himalayan Brotherhood, a Brotherhood linked
far more definitely to the very
Macrocosmically,
I have but stepped on to their plains, their
Their life
runs through my life. My life is absorbed in theirs. Surely am I linked with
their spiritual counterparts; and it seems to me that the physical
it, and
indeed through all other bodies in which sleep has given way to wakefulness.
CHAPTER V
SOME
REFLECTIONS
... the
city that is built
To Music,
therefore never built at all,
And
therefore: built for ever.
TENNYSON
(Gareth and Lynette).
I THINK I
am justified in my surmise that in some definite way entry into Nirvanic
consciousness modifies every lower vehicle from the Buddhic downwards; so that
the very physical body itself is changed, and will become more so as time
passes. It has, I imagine; been the same with all previous expansions of
consciousness, for form is dependent upon consciousness. Outer forms are
reflections, shadows, of inner realities. To us, density suggests permanence,
durability, reality.
From the
inner standpoint, the greater the density the less the permanence, the less the
durability, the less the reality. I feel my very physical body changed
consequent upon this entry into a new realm of being, but I do not know how far
others perceive the change, if change there be. I suppose a clairvoyant would
perceive the readjustment. Life in all its details, on all planes, becomes much
more wonderful, stupendous, majestic beyond conception, for even the little
things are perceived to be contributing to great ends. “Not a sparrow falls to
the ground” has a new significance, for it is wonderfully true of the whole of
life.
As for
myself, I cannot walk in the garden„ through the Australian bush on my way to
work in town, without perceiving everything around me in terms of the Light I
know. The growing grass, the trees swaying in the breeze, the birds singing in
the air and flying from tree to tree, the insects crawling on the ground, the
very earth I tread in all its varied forms of rock and
mould, the water
trickling down the hill-side, the very air I breathe: all is imprisoned splendour,
sacred to every sense I possess. I am more in tune than ever before with the
Purpose of Life. I see God working out His Purpose in all around me;
and all
around me is shining Light, restless, ordered growth-movement. Colour, form,
place, storm, sound, stillness, time - all are growth, because Light ever shines.
It is the nature of Light to shine - a fact which down here people sometimes
express in the phrase, the import of which is little apprehended - God
is Love.
God shines, for He is Light and Love Ineffable.
May I
repeat once more that Nirvana is everywhere? We do not need to go, we only need
to perceive. Heaven lies about us in our infancy, in the infancy of our evolution,
but we are not alive to it. A Master may pass us in the street, embodied Heaven
may pass us by, and we shall go on our way unheeding, perhaps uninfluenced, or
hardly influenced. The truth may be uttered to our very ears, yet we may remain
deaf to the utterance. If we have not heard Nirvana it is simply because our
sense of hearing is yet too crude.
If we have not
seen Nirvana it is simply because our sight is yet too dim. Nirvana lies about
us. Do we stop to consider what weaknesses in us, what lack of growth, veil
from us the Vision Splendid? Nirvana is in the very air we breathe, in the very
sights we see, in the most trifling circumstances of our daily lives. So, too,
is Buddhi.
So near,
and yet apparently so far. Is it not worth while to strive to refine our senses
that these glories may become unfolded to our sight, to our hearing? How? There
is but one way, a way most simply put in At the Feet of the Master, embodying
the words of a Great Teacher as taken down by a pupil. Begin to live the
precepts therein set forth, it is enough to begin, and soon we shall know these
Heavens. Let there be none who, knowing of the way, are too foolish, too lazy,
to tread it.
I have said
elsewhere that to preserve my balance in the midst of the new and blinding
splendours I had to know that there was more beyond even these. I am now
beginning to perceive that equally must I remember the existence of the less.
Only thus shall a true balance be preserved. I must not ignore time because I
know something of Eternity. I must not ignore the darkness because I know
something of the Light. I must not ignore diversity because I know something of
the Unity. I must not ignore man because I have learned something of God. I
cannot, and do not, perceive the significance of Eternity, of Light,
of Unity,
of God, save as I work in their respective shadows of Time, of Darkness, of Diversity,
of Man and of all that leads up to Man.
Not that I
feel more bound to specific growth. Were I treading the Pathway leading to the
office of Manu, or of Bodhisattva, or of Mahachohan, I should, I imagine, be
coming infinitely closer to Races or to Faiths, to this world to which these
Great Ones so specially belong. But because I belong to the Staff, I am called
to an apprenticeship to more general functions. The opening of the Nirvanic
consciousness seems to bring me closer both to the great Lord of our world
Himself and to our Lord the Sun, the Lord of the Universe.
Hitherto I
have had to live in the world because I have grown in and through it. Now I
seem to belong to this world only because, for the time being, I am sent here.
Members of the Staff may be sent anywhere, to function on another plane, to
serve in any world. Glorious is the service of those who are messengers of our
Lord the Sun, members of His Staff. I am but the humblest apprentice in the ranks
of that great body, though it may be that for many lives I have been working
towards such apprenticeship. One day, in some far distant future, I shall
become a wanderer through the spaces, a messenger of the Universal Will.
My home
will be the Universe, for I serve my Lord the Sun wheresoever it shall please
Him to send me.
For the
time being I am concerned with the mass, with crowds, with the larger shapings,
but it does not seem to matter whether the mass be human or sub-human, whether
the crowds be men or congregations in the lower kingdoms. I experience a
peculiar joy in the sense of being sent, entirely irrespective of the
objective.
I presume
the future Manu and the future Bodhisattva must grow in attachment to those
with whom in the distant future they will be officially concerned. Already they
are planning their peoples or their, faiths, little though some of them may
remember the fact in their waking consciousness. From the very moment of their
consecration to office their true life’s work may be said to begin.
It is, of
course, the same with us of the Staff we too have our ceremony of consecration.
But our objectives are fleeting objectives, which vary as the need varies. We
fill gaps; we make new pathways; we establish and strengthen communications. We
start activities which their proper rulers will take over and
direct; we
are hurried to danger points. Any world may be our special world for the time;
any plane may be the special plane of our activity; any race or nation may be
our special race or
nation; any
faith may be our 0special faith; any place may be our special place; but only
for the time.
We of the
Staff live in the Will of the Lord, ready for His bidding. As His messengers we
go forth, returning to Him as soon as the message has been delivered, be the
delivery of it a piece of work or an intimation of His Will. There is no great
apotheosis of achievement for us; no mighty consummation.
We may sow
seed, or carry seed to the sower, or till the soil. We have no concern with the
greater harvests. We shall go elsewhere, perhaps, long before fields in which
we have laboured are ready for the reapers. I have said above that we of the
Staff live in the Will of the Lord; but truly all live in the Will of the
Lord. How then
can I express the difference between one kind of living and another? The only
comparison I can make is with an army. There is the Commander-in-Chief. He has
his Generals and his Staff, his officers and men.
All live in
the will of the Commander-in-Chief, for all are carrying out his will. But you
will at once see the difference between the work of the Generals scattered over
the area of the campaign and that of the Staff who go out from headquarters,
convey the orders, carry out the specific duties entrusted to
them, and
0then return. The Staff are the Commander’s personal representatives; the
Generals his agents. In some ways there is less responsibility upon the Staff
than upon the Generals. The Generals are given an objective and possibly a
general plan, but they must work out the scheme themselves. The work of the
Staff is in some ways far more specific, but needs
great
adaptability; a member of the Staff must be able to go anywhere and do, with
reasonable efficiency, anything. Above all, he must live in great detachment
from his work, while wholeheartedly doing it.
A most
interesting revelation lies in the realization of the way in which the great
Company of Servers,* (*See Appendix D.) from ourselves upwards, forms a wonderful
centre of Light - one of the Suns of the world, of which our Lord the Sun is
the heart. The Company of Servers, viewed in the deeper insight afforded me by
this expansion of consciousness, becomes one unity through the ages. I do not
know quite what language to use, but it is as if this Company might be likened
to a film-roll-part in action on the screen, part completed, part yet to come.
At any
particular time, such and such members are active on the physical plane, others
not yet engaged, yet active on other planes - and here is where the film simile
fails, for from one point of view the whole Company is active all the time on
one plane or another, to the common end.
There seems
to be no particular past, present or future. There is as much future in the
Company as present or past. It may be that some have yet to join its ranks. Yet
they are already of the Company from a certain standpoint, and are borne upon
its strength. There is, of course, variation in strength of
functioning,
but the Company of Servers is a type apart, to which Monads seem to be attached
ab initio, however long it may take for the type to be expressed in the outer
consciousness. It is a kind of predestination, the Monad having taken the
resolve.
This centre
of Light-formed, as I have said, by the Company of Servers - is a process of
expansion of world-consciousness. It is a world-chakra, growing in Light-intensity.
It is not, of course, the only centre. There are many others, hidden as well as
outer. Among the former is the true Rosicrucianism; among the
latter the
great centres of Light such as Adyar, 0Sydney, Ommen and Huizen, such as Ojai
and
It is as if
the whole world were passing through some kind of initiation, and the world
gains an added radiance, distinctly perceptible to inner sight.Another fact of
great significance is that to be a pupil of a Master, even to be a member of a
Master’s School of Training, involves a very beautiful partial
identification
with the Master’s Light. From the very moment that an individual is connected
with a Master, His Light to some extent shines through him and in him. At
Sonship the connection is made indissoluble, but even then the extent to which
the connecting “wires” can bear increasing transmission depends upon their
strength and purity. There may be a feeble glow or a radiant brightness.
The Masters
have explained to us that those of us, with whom They have definite and special
links, are in a special measure not only Their representatives in the outer
worlds, but also representatives of our Lord the Sun, consecrated to shine for
Him and in His Brightness in the outer darkness. Surely this is a great and
wonderful privilege for us, bearing a solemn and heart-searching responsibility
all the more stupendous when we know in some slight degree Who and What He is.
As He causes His Light to shine alike upon the just and upon the unjust, the
saint and the sinner, the poor and the rich, the weak and the strong of all
Faiths and Nations, so must the sunshine of our own power, compassion and
understanding reflect His glory upon all. We must be all things to all men. We
must be in the outer worlds a faint reflection of that which makes Nirvana so
glorious a witness to the Love of God. As the Sun is all things to His
universe, so must we little suns be all things to ours.
It is not
what men do to us that matters. It is not what circumstances are to us that
matters. All that matters is what we are to them. Circumstances and people may
frown upon us, but we can only smile. Circumstances and people may persecute
us, ridicule us, despise us. We can but give our goodwill in return.
We must be
all good things to all men. A hard task for those who have been accustomed to
return evil for evil, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a blow for a
blow, an injury for an injury, a frown for a frown. But we have learned
otherwise. We have ceased to have the power to injure. We can no longer hinder,
we can but help and serve; for this is all we care to do. The
taste for
satisfying the lower nature at the expense of others has departed from us. We
can no longer feel hurt. We can no longer feel annoyed. We can no longer feel
shocked.
We are
concerned with what we can do for others, not with what others do to us - that
is their business. Let those who know something of the great Hierarchy strive
to understand more clearly what that Hierarchy is, and of Whom it is composed.
Let each member of the Society meditate upon these greater
Suns in the
firmament of the world, unifying himself to the utmost of his power with Their
Radiance. Let each member feel this Radiance surging through him to the outer
world, lifting him into a divine and clear-cut, over-flowing ecstasy as it
floods his being.
Let us
learn to reflect, as occasion demands, the varied glories of the Seven Rays.
The members of Their Staff of workers must be able, no matter to what Ray they
may individually belong, to become channels for any colour in the great
Spectrum of the Rays. We must sense the respective variations of these Rays on
the theme of the Light-Splendid and in the thrill of our response realize how
glowing must be the varied life which we should radiate into the world.
But may I
say here that it is utterly immaterial to what Ray we belong? From one
standpoint each of us, everything, belongs to all the Rays. As for the dominant
Ray, the less we bother about it the better. I have noticed that most people
who talk about their Rays are very little on any Ray. While we speculate about
ourselves, we remain small, for we are the centre of our circles. When we forget
ourselves and are lost in the work, then we shall cease to speculate and wonder,
for we shall know. Leave yourselves alone and devote yourselves to others.
I notice as
a fact of very considerable importance that each individual is a reflection,
however feeble, of the line to which he belongs, or on which he happens to be
working. Every teacher, whoever and wherever he may be, simply because he is a
teacher, becomes in some degree an image of Those Who serve the Teaching Ray,
though too often this image is distorted and barely recognizable, sometimes
even worse than a distortion. As every Christian priest is a humble
representative of the Christ, so is every teacher a humble representative of
one of the Great Heads of the Teaching Department of the world. This privilege
is his because of his office, and apart from all question of his worthiness. To
be a teacher is to be a representative of the Great Teachers. The
responsibility cannot be escaped any more than the privilege.
The same
principle holds good in all departments. Those who rule, the statesmen, the
politicians, all engaged in statecraft, are humble representatives - worthy or
unworthy - of the Great Rulers. They may desecrate and degrade the office; yet
the office remains, however besmirched. The same principle holds good in all
sub-divisions of departments. All this is in compliance with, in expression of,
the great Unity of all Life.
One thus
becomes able to see the Real in every one, however much the unreal may
interpose. One perceives the Truth despite the camouflage. Every teacher, by
virtue of his office, is a Christ in miniature; but how little most of them realize
their possibilities and responsibilities! Many teachers are careless and
perfunctory,
many are incredibly cruel; yet upon each of them, as a teacher, the Christ-Light
sheds its glory, however blankly unaware of this privilege he may be, however
little the 0glory may shine through, be the windows of his soul open or closed.
He is part, for the time being at all events, of the heavenly Teacher, the
embodiment of the Teaching Principle in life.
Applying
this fact within a more circumscribed area, we realize that those who are
members of a Church dedicated to some special Teacher are part of His body
corporate, and thus partake of His essential nature. For example, those who are
in communion, through the dedication of their church, with St. Alban, are
thereby linked to him, become members of his family and may draw upon his life.
He is the
father of that Church-family. It becomes very much worth while, therefore, to
acquire all available authentic information about St. Alban, his lives, his line
of work, his special characteristics, and so on. As members of his Church it
becomes easier for us to contact him, and to develop in our own natures the
glorious qualities existing in his. There is very much more in the dedication
of a Church to a Saint than appears at first sight. There is also very much
more than appears at first sight in becoming a teacher or a politician, in
taking an office of whatever kind which involves responsibility to the outer
world.
And not
only is the link made with an Elder Brother, it is also made with His angels,
and with all other grades attached to the same department. The fact that we
belong to this Earth links us in a wonderful degree with the Earth-Life, makes
us representatives of the Earth-Spirit, of the Earth-consciousness. It would be
well if we related ourselves more definitely to the larger life around us, so
that we might become more effective instruments, less obstructive channels.
Have you ever meditated on the life-force you draw from our very globe itself,
from its various constituent elements of earth, air, fire, water, and so forth?
Interrelationship, interaction, everywhere. Our very existence modifies the
world, and qualifies it according to our natures, just as we ourselves are
creatures of the Earth, its children.
CHAPTER VI
THE
AWAKENING OF NIRVANA
Day!
Faster and
more fast
O’er
night’s brim, day boils at last
Boils pure
gold o’er the cloud-cup’s brim,
Where
spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a
froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap
in the solid grey
Of the
Eastern cloud, an hour away:
But forth
one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the
whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose
reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered
in bounds, grew gold, then over-flowed the world.
BROWNING
Trying to
describe what I must call down here the Nirvanic body, the only word that comes
to me in substitution for “body” is radiance. One might describe the Buddhic
body as a Star raying forth its glories. But transition to Nirvana seems to
spread my Star out so that there is neither centre nor circumference,
but only
dazzling radiance. If I could look upon this brilliance from some para-Nirvanic
region I should be able to discern its limitation, not so much a spatial
restriction, as a limitation in the radiance-scheme and the radiance-intensity.
This lustre
of mine, indescribably glorious though it is, is obviously only in the
becoming, Wand when I compare it with the radiance of my seniors I perceive,
first, that in it the Nirvanic Light is only in embryonic co-ordination, in
what I may call rough outline; and second, that the very Light itself, dazzling
though it be, lacks the scintillation which time and growth alone can give. I
notice that Those who are Masters in these Nirvanic regions, and have fulfilled
its seven great fields or planes, shine with the glories of still greater
splendours, their Nirvanic radiances being suffused, interpenetrated, with
higher effulgences which I can sense but shall take long ages to achieve.
In some
ways, from the standpoint of the lower planes, the word transcendence is more
appropriate even than radiance, for it indicates the going beyond every single
limitation worn by the planes beneath. Time, space, form - these are
transcended. They have ceased to manifest, though remaining in potentiality, or
I could not
assume them as I descend; as I pass outwards. I am well aware that such
transcendence suggests an annihilation of all that on the lower planes seems to
make life real - the ego, the personality, the individuality. If these are
gone, what remains? Is Nirvana, after all, the annihilation which some
philosophers have thought it to be?
My answer
is that all these things, however substantial they may appear down here,
however much they may seem to be our ultimate foundation, are themselves but
reflections of a nobler substans, themselves rest on deeper foundations still.
Individualized Divinity exists in Nirvana, and doubtless in para-Nirvana too,
even though its reflections as time, space, .form and as the lower
individualities we know as ego, personality and individuality, are unmanifest,
potential. We have to learn that individuality does not necessarily demand
description in terms of time and space and form as we know these in the outer
worlds.
There is individuality in other terms, in terms of Nirvanic time, Nirvanic
space, Nirvanic form - the archetypes of lower time, lower space, lower form.
I find
myself tempted, as I experience more, to speculate that individuality, the
condition to which we cling so furiously in the lower regions, becomes far less
precious and vital as we pass beyond the more Mayavic planes. There is
something that matters far more than George Arundale, a something of which
George
Arundale at his very best is but a feeble reflection.
Inevitably,
we personify. Even Theosophists personify. Many of us probably think of the
Logos Himself as some King or Person. We cannot bring ourselves to think of the
disappearance of individuality, for we then come face to face, because our
experience
stops short, with annihilation, and evolution will then have been in vain.
So far as I
am able to judge, much disappears which in our lower bodies we would fain cling
to, just as it is a wrench to lose the causal body as we enter the Buddhic plane.
But the loss of this body troubles us not at all on the Buddhic plane, and the
loss of the Buddhic body troubles us not at all on the Nirvanic plane. Why?
Because we approach more and more closely to the Root-Seed of all bodies, which
is none of them, but out of which each body proceeds as the Root-Seed sends
downwards its shoots of Life. Already, at the Buddhic level the Monad for the
first time since individualization from the animal kingdom occupies, at all
events for a moment, one of its dwellings. At the Nirvanic
level the
tenancy of the lower bodies begins to become more permanent, until at last the
Monad and its lower vehicles are one.
Before
this, the Ego himself has, of course, led the way in occupation, shedding at
last what to many has seemed a strange indifference. But the Monad Himself
replaces His temporary substitutes as these higher regions are ascended, and
takes the place of all that hitherto has seemed so utterly indispensable.
George Arundale at his best is but a shadow of that which sent George Arundale
forth. George Arundale may come or go. He ceases to matter; and I am learning,
as I make Nirvana my home, to treat George Arundale even at his best as but a
means to an end, a tool which has had its day, may still have its day, but can
quite well cease to be at any time.
This is an
amplification of my earlier experiences in Nirvana, but I am by no means sure
if I have made myself intelligible. In any case there is no loss, but always
gain. The ladder remains even though I cease to use it. We do not kick away the
rungs by which we have ascended. And as the lower planes are to the subtler
planes above, so is the Nirvanic plane to the planes above it. It must surely
be the densest region of the series of regions that stretch beyond it. Even I
can perceive that the lowest sub-plane of Nirvana is dense (inappropriate as
the adjective seems in reference to Light) as compared with the higher
sub-planes. I can only repeat that individualized Divinity exists as definitely
in Nirvana
as, indeed more definitely in Nirvana than, it does down here. When we
transcend our time, our form, we do not subtract; we add.
It is as if
an individual living in a small cottage were to become the king of his country.
While the cottage remains his world, kingship would seem a limitation. He would
be lost in it. But when he is ready for kingship, when he has ceased to be his
cottage and only uses it, then he loses nothing by becoming king, even though
the cottage-time, the cottage-space and the
cottage-form
may have been transcended. He can even live in the cottage if he so desires, at
all events from time to time, but he is no longer limited by it. Has he lost
his individuality by becoming a king? The difference between the kingly
individuality and the cottage individuality is as the difference between
individuality in Nirvana and individuality below. Becoming king he has added to
himself,1
however much the cottage may have been subtracted. To the cottager there is a
subtraction; to the king there is addition.
Let us
follow for a moment this simile of the king. Consider the difference between
the king and the cottage - the greater power of the king, his greater
splendour, his wider vision, his deeper understanding. The king lives in a time
and space and form different from those of the cottager. He can do far more in
his time.
His time is fuller, more potent. His area of movement is far wider. He contacts
so much of which the cottager remains necessarily ignorant. His form is so
different from that of the cottager. He has many forms, he has to be many
things to many people, he has many functions in his State, all depending upon
his
kingship. Many things he does which the cottager does. He eats, drinks, sleeps,
works. But he does all these things differently, and to greater ends.
The
cottager may live to eat, but the true king eats to live. The king lives in
another world, though both he and the cottager may be in the same world. One
set of values and standards for the king; another set, even with regard to the
same things, for the cottager. The things precious to the cottager may have 1
little
value to the king, just as the things which the king cherishes may mean nothing
to the cottager. The cottager looks upon the world with a cottager’s eyes. The
king looks upon the world with the eyes of a king. The cottager, as the poets
so often tell us, would not exchange his lot with that of kings, because he
would not be happy in the wider sphere - he knows but limited
happiness.
But the king - the true king - would have little hesitation in exchanging his
lot with that of the cottager, because he could be as kingly in the cottage as
in the palace, as kingly in the cottage-state as in the Nation-State over which
he rules. The greater can limit itself far more easily than the less can
expand. The king can be kingly anywhere, and that is all that matters to him.
He depends upon himself. The cottager depends upon his world.
It is this
transition from dependence upon outer things to dependence upon the kingliness
within that marks the upward growth. From living in a world, I become a world.
And some day I shall transcend even this.
I should
like at this point to emphasize the fact that on entering Nirvana we absorb it
far more than Nirvana absorbs us. It might be thought that, once bathed in the
glories 1of Nirvana, an individual would practically become its slave, leaving
it with difficulty, effecting a veritable annihilation of the lower worlds so
far as regards any joy of living in them. It might be thought
that he would
become Nirvana-absorbed, ever longing for its bliss, never happy until and
unless immersed in it. My own experience is different. It may, of course, be
that as I become more familiar with Nirvana I shall become more absorbed in
it.* (*As a matter of fact I do find that I am becoming more and
more
absorbed in Nirvana, but this is just the same as saying that I am becoming
more and more absorbed in life, not by any means only life in this world but
equally life in all worlds, life in all planets and suns and stars. I am more
alive in all worlds, as much in the physical world as in any other.) Yet from
the very beginning of contact with Nirvanic consciousness there has been an
overwhelming eagerness to convey something of its reality to the worlds in which
I have grown so long. To contact Nirvana is like a debtor suddenly finding
himself with unexpected means to liquidate some of his debts to his creditors.
We owe much
to the outer world. We have lived in it for ages. We have grown in it. However
much we transcend it we still remain its debtors.
God Himself
is paying his debts of long ago in the Divinity-infused systems and universes
1of which we are part. Is it irreverent to say that through these very payments
He Himself grows, as we grow through ours? Indeed, it is only as
we are
eager to pay that the wherewithal comes to us for payment. I could not contact
Buddhi save as I am seen to be realizing my true relationships in the lower
worlds.
I could not
transcend Buddhi save as I am seen to be dedicating the power of Buddhi, as I
have already been dedicating the powers below. No transcendence of the lower is
possible save as it becomes consecrated again by us to the ends to which God
consecrated it aforetime. We must remember His consecration of His Life to a
Divine unfoldment or apotheosis. We must transubstantiate, even as He is ever
transubstantiating: which, put in simple language, means that we must live in
terms of Brotherhood. Brotherhood must be substituted for the smaller self.
My longing,
therefore, is to share Nirvana, not to cut myself for ever off from external
surroundings, but to carry Nirvana everywhere, no matter where. I could not
dare to enter Nirvana otherwise, or I truly believe I should indeed experience
some form of annihilation. Its Light would burn me up. Only can I
enter
Nirvana as I am ready to recognize Nirvana for that which Nirvana truly is, and
as Nirvana is ready to recognize in me a neophyte who has performed an act of
consummation on the lower planes and who, therefore, has won the right to
further power which he may be trusted to use as so far he has used all power
entrusted to him.
There must
be in me the dawning of the essential Nature of Nirvana, which is not annihilation,
but an infinitely deeper radiance, an infinitely deeper wisdom, power, love.
Hence; given such dawning, safely may I enter, for I shall be entering only to
live more abundantly.Nirvana has been born in me. It is a condition of
consciousness. I cannot express Nirvana in aught that is less than Nirvana; but
I can suggest it in the denser matter beneath, I can re-mould forms into closer
approximation to its formless majesty. I can remember Nirvana, and I can live
my daily life as unto Nirvana, pointing to Nirvana. And this is what I must do,
for I can only know Nirvana myself as I lead others towards it. But when I say
I must lead others to it, I ought to make it once more clear that Nirvana is
already in them.
As I have
already said, Nirvana is not somewhere in space. It is a state of our
consciousness, of the consciousness in every individual. What I have set forth
in these pages is waiting to be set forth, either in similar or in other terms,
by all. Time is, of course, needed. The seed does not become the bud at
once. But
it is only time that is needed. A short time for the wise, a long time for the
ignorant; a short time for those in whom the sense of the Unity of Life is
growing strong, a long time for those who have still to learn many lessons in the
outer world.
Let none,
however, imagine that in any sense perfection is needed for entry into Nirvana.
It is not a state of perfection. I am able to reach its lowest stages even
though there are still many fetters which bind me to the human kingdom. It is a
state of being, and all states of being, since they are limitations of the One,
must necessarily be imperfect, partial. That it is a state nearer
perfection
than all lower conditions of consciousness is, of course, obvious.
That there
is greater unfoldment in it is true. Nirvana is a condition of indescribable
bliss and power. But it is by no means the ultimate, and he who reaches it has
not long left the preparatory school of life.
At the
first of the Great Initiations he finally completed the earlier stages, and now
at the fourth great step he is equipped, with the aid of the powers of the
second and third steps, for more serious service, for real leadership in the
outer world. He enters Nirvana with fetters still about him - still with certain
limitations and weaknesses, incompletions. Side by side, if I may use
the
expression, there dwell together the Nirvanic consciousness and all the other
modes of consciousness of his being. But the lower modes tend to merge in the
higher mode, for his attention is towards the Light. He ceases to be the slave
of these lower modes, for he takes up his abode in the higher. No longer
masters,
these lower ranges become servants, and so higher and higher does the gradually
liberated individual climb, sub-plane after sub-plane, in the
CHAPTER VII
I felt
through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness.
HENRY
VAUGHAN
I seem to
have seen as in a flash a picture of the future of our Theosophical Society. In my higher bodies
I am sure I know not only its general future but many of the details. But I
find it extraordinarily difficult to hold the picture in the waking
consciousness. I presume the reason for this is that the picture I
have seen
is the expression of the Will of God, of the Logos, in this particular
connection, is a flash of the Lightning-standing-still, and almost defies
translation through a brain unaccustomed to such transmission. The Nirvanic
wave-length is almost too subtle for my brain machine, and most is lost in the
process of
transmission.
I see the Society in terms of the
Eternal Now as a certain Light-quality, being independent of the existence of the Society since the Society is only the Light in
a particular mode of manifestation, an incarnation of this Light. the Society is the expression
of a great Light movement - with no beginning so far
as I could
see, and no end. I see this movement as I see the light-houses of Sydney
Harbour, now shining in the outer world, now not shining; and you will realize
my difficulty in holding the picture in the physical consciousness inasmuch as
the various periods of manifestation of the Theosophical movement in the outer
world are visualized as one sees the flashings of a light-house which sends out
periodic beams of light. I see many such flashes, presumably occurring at the
close of each century, temporarily illuminating the darkened world; and between
each a period of slowly lessening darkness. Thus the first impression down here
is darkness - light - darkness - light – darkness - light, with the darkness
wonderfully, though very gradually, shading into the dawning of a Day of the
Lord, upon the threshold of which stands the world at the present time.
Can I dissect this flash,
analyse it? Only very generally, with my feeble powers. I seem to see the Theosophical
Society move more and more in the direction of concentrating
its efforts upon the insistence of goodwill in every department of life. The
first Object remains the vital Object. The second and third Objects remain an
integral part of the Society’s official
principles, but
the second
Object seems to have to a certain extent fulfilled itself, while the third
forms the special objective of the
The Esoteric School of Theosophy is, of course,
in fact the heart of the Society, for it is the link
between the Society and the
Great White Lodge, but it seems to become a more homogeneous activity even than
at present, having its separate head and organization, though working in
closest harmony with the Society itself. The
Esoteric School of Theosophy
is the school for discipleship, while the Theosophical
Society has become far more part of the outer world in the
sense that its members are engaged in active work in every field of life, some
working in one way, others in other ways, perhaps opposed ways - but all
maintaining
in splendid comradeship the binding Unity above the most conflicting
diversities.
Members of the Society are noted for their
enlightened citizenship, and their utterances are heard with respect, because
it is known that they are both selfless and wise. They are the world’s
insurance against wars and quarrels of all kinds. Every member, wherever he may
be, is an accredited ambassador from the Prince of Peace to his surroundings,
and has the respect
due to a
wise elder. The more members of the Society begin to take an
active part in the world’s affairs, the more are people attracted to its
membership who themselves are active; with the result that the Society becomes a picked
body of idealistic, practical, efficient pioneers who get things done because
they
really mean
business.
Through the
efforts of members many superstitions die, though some die a lingering death.
The superstitions of meat-eating, and wine and spirit-drinking die. The
superstition of racial superiority dies. The superstition of class or sect
irreconcilability dies. And the new policy is a policy of intensifying capacity
rather than of levelling differences, it being held that the differences will
harmonize themselves if capacity is encouraged and directed to unselfish ends.
Little by
little the whole world commits itself to brotherhood, and the Theosophical
Society, still existing, becomes a great world-wide
organization supplying every brotherhood movement, every Nation, every Faith,
with its leaders and most stalwart protagonists. The common membership of them
all within the Theosophical Society is the world’s guarantee against disharmony
and conflicting aims.
I do not
see most of us in all this. We have done our work. We belong ever to minorities
and to beginnings, to experiments, to forlorn hopes, to unexplored forests, to
uncharted seas. We have made these things possible, and this is what we had to
do. Some of us are in the Great Community. Others are engaged in other duties
in this and in other worlds. Thus other people have taken our places in the Theosophical
Society, or at least the places of many of us; and the Society at this period
represents the world’s acknowledged best. I think some former Presidents are in
turn Presidents of the Society again, thus
preserving the
hierarchical
and apostolic succession, but the majority of the members are people who to-day
are not quite ready to join.
The
difficulty in seeing all this lies in the fact that the whole impression is one
single impact, and this impact has to be dissected. For example, I seem to contact
an impression of the Presidents of the Society from the beginning
up to
the period
I am describing. But I can only get quite vague impressions as to who they are.
There seems to be a kind of President-Man, just as we speak of the Heavenly
I see the Society as the Light-Nucleus
of the forces radiating from it to energize Brotherhood-activity throughout the
world and on many planes. The Society is a direct channel for the Power of the
Great White Lodge, in many ways the most direct channel, but the Power of the
Lodge flows through the Society into many
brotherhood movements. the Society is the heart of
them all, and the inspirer of most, whether they recognize the fact or not.
I see in
the picture our Society leading the way to Brotherhood more and more directly. the Society begins to become an
acknowledged 2power in politics, in religion, in education, in industry, in
social life generally. More' and more, members of the Theosophical
Society take practical and active part in the world’s
affairs, and as time passes some of them occupy prominent and responsible
positions.
The Society stands behind
Brotherhood in all phases of life, and while it is not committed to any special
form of activity or belief, and there are members belonging to various kinds of
organizations and modes of thought, still the common membership causes a strong
comradeship even amidst diverse and superficially antagonistic activity, so
that members of the Society are always able to
bring together opposing factions when the opposition becomes injurious to the
community as a whole.
Lodges of the Theosophical
Society tend to become Community Centres, self-contained, on
the outskirts of towns, but with centres of, activity within the towns.* (*See
Appendix E for a more detailed description.) In this way, the various Lodges
become practical examples of Brotherhood, which the world
admires,
thus causing a great increase in membership. The members begin to become the Society’s best
advertisement - which all are not to-day - and the outer world, for this very
reason, gravitates towards hygienic and humane living. As I have already
written, meat-eating, “sport” of the kind in vogue
to-day,
vivisection, industrial quarrelling, religious antagonisms,
international
disputes-all tend to disappear, partly because of the direct activity of
members of the Society, partly because of
the indirect example of community living, and partly because the Society becomes a very
potent network of Brotherhood, out of which the world is at last unable to
escape. The members of the Society become efficient
sentinels against anarchy, revolution and all other forms of destructive
unrest.
I see the Society being led into
closer contact with the outer world, and fine egos born within its ranks,
attracted thereto by the immense possibilities which membership of the Society offers. Membership
of the Society becomes much more
valuable and valued than ever before. It confers a distinct cachet, and egos with
a purpose realize that both educationally and as regards a starting-point for
the delivery of their message, to grow up within the Society’s influence is a
very great asset. There seems to be almost a rush to be born of members of the Society, especially with
the wonderful ideal of Motherhood which the Society does so much to foster.
I see
subsidiary activities very virile, very vigorous, definitely subsidiary in the
sense of paying reverent homage to the Mother-movement, yet sturdily
independent at the same time, and contributing to world-progress a vitality all
their own. Interestingly enough, I see all these things in terms of colour and
sound.Liberalizing
and unifying movements are at work in every religion, through the
instrumentality of the Theosophical
Society; and I see other movements in other Faiths taking their
place side by side with the Liberal Catholic Church and the Hindu movement -
both very powerful organisations - within a great League of Religions, an
activity which takes the place of the World-Religion, for which the world was
found, and still remains, not ready.
CHAPTER
VIII
THE
IMMANENCE OF LIGHT
DE
SENANCOUR.
It is an
interesting experiment to look out of the window upon the scene without and
gradually to withdraw from each object seen the various associations with it on
different planes. Things are, apart from that which 3they appear to be.
Every
object I perceive has a being different from my conception of it. It is all I
think it to be, or it maybe less than I think it to be, in so far as I attribute
to it that which in reality it does not possess (to this extent I am very truly
misunderstanding it); but it is also far more, for it represents a principle of
life, a law of evolution, the nature of which, at my particular level, I can
only very partially grasp.
As I look
out of my window upon
depends
upon everything else, and can only truly grow as this interdependence is
recognized and lived? I perceive everything as helping to fulfil everything, as
contributing towards the purposefulness of everything.
The vessel
on the sea helps the sea to grow and the sea helps the vessel to grow. The
houses dotted upon the slopes help the land on which they are builded, just as
the land helps the houses. The tiniest pebble resting upon the beach is
necessary to the beach, is necessary to the mighty sea which seems to treat it
so haughtily, so cavalierly, so contemptuously. How could the earth grow
without its earthworms, its vegetation, the creatures that live upon it? How
could all these grow save with the co-operation of the earth? I perceive
entities everywhere, living entities, with more or less consciousness. The
ships, the houses, the trees and shrubs and flowers, the very pebbles - all are
entities. The whole harbour is one great being, yet various parts of the
harbour are beings too.
I see all
in these terms, each entity with its own small life, yet enfolded in the one
Life Universal, a part of the one Great Whole, each dependent upon all the
rest. I see each helping to fulfil the others. But at this word “fulfil” I stop,
and I notice that these various things do not by any means always fulfil each
other, though they ought to. Sometimes they profane and degrade each other, as,
for example, when an ugly building is put up, when the open spaces are
desecrated by hideous erections of any kind or by the loathsome litter of man’s
careless selfishness.
Whenever
and wherever one part lives ruthlessly at the expense of another, then there is
no fulfilment, but rather a debasement in which all, by very reason of the
enfolding unity, must needs share. I find that I begin to grow sensitive to
these defilements. Apart from the fact that they defile and degrade me, they
also jar me and sadden me, for I know how glorious a thing is that mother-Unity
to which they are so unfilial.
Now all
this is consequent upon the withdrawal of all lower associations and the
substitution of Buddhi, a veritable transubstantiation. But I think I can go a
step further and view my landscape in terms of Nirvanic consciousness. At the
Buddhic level it is the marvellous interrelation that strikes me. Let me
blot out
this sense of interrelation and seek still further within. I make what is to me
a most interesting discovery. Expecting to perceive everything in terms of
light, I find that everything resolves itself into power-units. I perceive the
power in everything, and am almost appalled by it. I hardly notice the
forms.
These do not seem to matter at all. They are trivial compared with the ensouling power. And then I suddenly begin to notice
that this power is imprisoned Light.
Here I must
use a phrase which I hope is intelligible - it is the only phrase I can find
Light unconscious is veiled in matter that it may become Light self-conscious; and
the power I so strongly perceive is the irresistible potentiality of the Light
self-conscious veiled as Light unconscious. Power and Light are, therefore, one
and the same thing; but the
transubstantiation from Buddhic to Nirvanic consciousness seemed to
emphasize Light as Power, perhaps
because the first thing I noticed was the splendour of that Light which is slowly
but surely transcending its imprisonment in all things. I saw victory
everywhere, everywhere the Light unconscious growing into self-consciousness in
those various stages of intensification which we call kingdoms of nature.
Perceiving
these rays of Light-Power in all things, I notice a great harmony-in-the-becoming.
At the Buddhic level of interpretation I should have described this harmony in
terms of interrelation, each object essentially fitting in to every other. At
the Nirvanic level of interpretation, I describe this harmony in terms of
all-pervading Light-Sound, so that the object loses its objectivity and shares
in a universal subjectivity. At the Buddhic
level
objectivity remains. At the Nirvanic level objectivity disappears, and archetype
takes its place. At all levels of interpretation one notices, of course, the
growing harmony - not yet without marring discords, I fear.
But at the
Buddhic and Nirvanic levels, the harmonies are infinitely deeper - in the one
case the underlying unity being disclosed, while in the other the power that makes
for unity is opened to our gaze. Below the Buddhic level diversity is more
apparent
than unity, but it is through living amidst that diversity that perception and
realization of unity becomes possible.
We cannot
afford to do without diversity, for diversity, if we only knew it, is the most
wonderful testimony to the unimaginable splendours of the unity. And happy are
those whose vision is keen enough to enable them to perceive the unity
notwithstanding the distractions of diversity. He who has reached the Buddhic
or Nirvanic quality of consciousness can never lose the unity, be the
diversities what they may. I feel able to say, then, that as I look out of my
window I perceive imprisoned within every single object in every kingdom of
nature the unity of Buddhi, the power of Nirvana, however embryonic and
unconscious. And I know that the very imprisonment itself is the gift of God
that the unity may some day realize its inherent power to burst all bonds. The
One Life, with all constituent elements, pervades all things and there is no
region, however lofty, but has its reflection in all things.
Let me add
here a few words regarding Light-Power. Curiously enough, while I notice
Light-Power in all things and a unity of Being enfolding them, each specific
object seems like a puff of power within a vast cloud of power. The word “Ray”
hardly seems adequate to express the facts, for “Ray” suggests
travelling,
while in Nirvana there is essentially Being. Objects seem to be cloud-bursts
(the word “cloud” is of course unfortunate) within a mighty cloud-burst which
is the act of manifestation - a microcosmic puff within a macrocosmic puff. To
put my thought in another way, all objects looked at from
the
Nirvanic level seem to be explosions, microcosmic explosions within a macrocosmic
explosion - explosions which give the sense of pulsations. We might even go one
step further and regard objects as innumerable beats of the Universal Heart. I
wonder whether you are at all following my line of thought? It is so difficult
to express, but I am endeavouring to reconcile
individuality
with universality.
I perceive,
of course, individuality, but individuality is a mode of universality; true
enough, yet not the whole truth. There is nothing which is not Divine. We tread
Divinity when we tread the earth. Whatever we touch, whatever we see, whatever
we hear, whatever we feel - all is Divinity. My landscape, therefore, is
renewed in the new Light. Every object of which it is composed reveals a
hitherto hidden Divinity, and hence has new and richer values. These objects,
the ships, the little boats, the ferry-steamers, the buildings, the lamp-posts,
the shops and the objects for sale in them, the trees and flowers, the
furniture in the rooms - all are now instinct with new meaning, and therefore
with new purpose, with new inter-relationships, with a new message, with a new
appeal, with a new comradeship. In each there is much more relativity yet no
less individuality than before, and, what is more, I seem able more definitely
to discern the extent to which each reproduces or distorts its archetype, for
there is nothing without archetype.
It may be
that in terms of eternity there is no distortion; but in terms of time there
often is, and we have the task of readjusting the distortions which are noticeable
from the point of view of the time-world. Hence I am now more able to judge
what is out of harmony and what is harmonious. Each object is a
personalization
of Light-Sound, the personalization being the translation of Light-Sound in our
lower worlds. Each object is a sun in humblest miniature, a tiny star, a world,
a universe. Each object is a microscopic harmony.
But each object,
too, may have its elements of darkness and of discord, in which its true light
and sound-values are thwarted. It is interesting to me to listen to and observe
objects and to endeavour to sense their respective Sound and Light-formulae,
their various vital notes and mystic chords. I am just at the
beginning
of this, and can at present say no more.
I realize
that the Nirvana I am beginning to know at the fringe, is itself not merely a
reflection of para-Nirvana, whatever para-Nirvana may be, but also a reflection
of a cosmic Nirvana, of which it is the direct representation; that this very
Nirvana is the Reincarnation of the Nirvana realized by our Lord the Sun on
His own upward Path in a period prior to the being of our
system. I
realize that every plane has its cosmic archetype or counterpart.
I should
like at this point to advance the theory that countless ages ago our Lord the
Sun travelled more or less the same pathway that evolution is treading to-day.
Step by step He ascended, bond after bond was burst asunder, until the
spark
became the Fire, the heart of which is that physical orb we call the Sun.
And as the
ascent was made the sum total of the experiences on each plane was, as it were,
memorized in terms of potentiality, so that as He grew He built into His Being
the seeds of a Universe like unto the Universe of which He was then a growing
fragment. He became Life self-conscious, but was composed of Life in
innumerable
layers below self-consciousness. I, George Arundale, am partially self-conscious,
but I am composed of life - of microcosmic universes and worlds - more or less
unconscious. The process of growth is a process of
internalization,
of in-breathing.
The process
of fulfilment is a process of externalization, of out-breathing. It is this
function which our Lord the Sun is performing, so far as this universe is
concerned, and the out-breathing, the externalization, consists in fanning into
flame the innumerable sparks built into Himself during the course of His own
evolution aeons, myriads of aeons, ago. Our Lord the Sun is doubtless also
internalizing, but of this I know nothing. We, too, Suns in the becoming, are
building into ourselves the material of which some day we shall be Suns, upon
which some day we shall shine as the Sun shines upon us all to-day. Where we
are, He has been. Where He is, we shall be.
Every plane
is thus an externalization of a potentiality which itself is the gathered fruit
of experience and consummation. Our own contacts - in whatever manner - with
the various planes of nature are not merely for our personal growth, but that
in a future beyond time there may be in us the potentialities
of a
Universe, that as our Lord the Sun is to His, to all His kingdoms, so may we
become to ours. Having become centres, radiances, transcendences, having breathed
in, after the great out-breathing, there will take place once more an out-breathing
to circumferences, or in other words, a manifestation. As our Lord the Sun
breathes, in mighty life-giving breaths, so shall we.
Such seems
to be the law of all being, at least of all which we can conceive, for to us
being is pulsation. It may be that there is being destitute of this quality,
but this does not seem to be the case in the schemes we know. Though we
naturally postulate un-manifestation as an apotheosis of in-breathing and call
it pure
being,
still, ourselves manifest, we cannot conceive of the unmanifest without the
potentiality, the seed, of manifestation.
We
therefore postulate great in- and out-breathing, and while the attainment of
self-conscious Divinity may be the apotheosis of in-breathing we look for a
succeeding out-breathing, as night
follows
day.
Having in
my own nature begun a transubstantiation of consciousness, the Nirvanic
consciousness slowly beginning now to be my positive substans instead of
negative as hitherto, I proceed to follow up the process by an endeavour in the
direction of effecting a similar transubstantiation in regard to the outer
world. I say “an endeavour,” for it is just the halting and feeble beginning of
a wonderful transformation leading in the distant future to the consciousness
of the Adept. First, I obtain a general impression of the world viewed
Nirvanically,
and immediately all ugliness disappears - the pathway merges in the goal,
processes are perceived in terms of their results. I idealise, and therefore
realize.4As a general statement, I may say that Nirvana is a consummation, an
apotheosis, an archetype, of world conditions. It sounds
strange,
perhaps, to bring into juxtaposition the words “consummation” and “archetype,”
yet Nirvana is both. It is both seed and flower - seed in all things, flower in
a few, flower in all things some day.
In the
outer world I am living amid innumerable conditions, circumstances and events.
I invest this outer world with Nirvana - somehow I seem able to do this - and I
perceive the Real. The real-in-the-becoming, which is the outer world, has
become the Real, for I have touched it with the magic of the Eternal Now
which is
the Time of Nirvana. Immediately I perceive a new significance to the phrase
“God is Love.” He is infinitely more than Love. He is ourselves. And every
circumstance of the world, in every kingdom and on every plane, is a fulfilling
of God, however we define this word, an unfoldment of Himself, of His
Nature. We
are of His very Substance, and the Holy Eucharist, whether in Christianity or
in any other Faith, is a veritable remembrance of this supreme Truth, a
sounding of its ineffable Note amidst the discords of growth and becoming.
I
substitute God positive for God relatively negative, and the world stands self-explained
and justified. I have found God in everything. Nothing is there which is
Godless, nothing which is not Godlike, may I say “Godfull”? I can conceive an
entirely different system of evolution in the course of which growth
takes place
without friction, without the swinging process, if I may so call it, between
the innumerable pairs of opposites - good and evil, right and wrong, and so
forth. But I realize that the methods and processes enjoined for our own particular
evolution are perfectly adapted to such ends as I am able to grasp.
Whether
they are the shortest possible cut to these ends I do not know. One presumes
that what is best has been chosen, and it is futile, not to say presumptuous,
to speculate further. May I at least say that Life is essentially lazy, takes
the line of least resistance, never does with trouble what can be done with
ease, the most elaborate complications being in all cases the simplest
available
means to reach the desired end? Life is marvellous, but it is more than
marvellous, it is simple; and you and I grow near to Life, approach God, as we
substitute simplicity for the confusion, fuss, and elaborateness of that modern
artificiality which is called civilisation.
When I am
able to say, not merely as a pious belief or hope or yearning, but as an
experience, that God is Love, I have effected a transubstantiation, that is to
say, I have emphasized Reality.
The world
thus becomes far more real in every circumstance of its being. Essentially, of
course, all is real, for all is God.
But there
are, if I may say so, gradations of God, from the unconscious to the self-conscious.
The transubstantiation I effect is to substitute comparative self-consciousness
for unconsciousness, or, to put the process another way, to
assert the
self-conscious in the unconscious. I realize here how useless words and phrases
are, for in the Light of Nirvana there seems to be no difference between the
two.
But if I
have to try to explain out here, I can only say I assert the Real in the midst
of the unreal, or I know the unreal as the Real.Hence, Nirvana interprets; in
the dark places shines its Light. Elsewhere I have written of the new values
Nirvana gives to things, of the readjustment Nirvana effects. Let me here put
this fact in another way. I am beginning to live in a new world which is 4nothing
more than the old world “realized”. I am beginning to “realize” everything, so
that nothing seems out of place. Everything seems inevitable - gloriously
inevitable. I have used that phrase before with regard to the future, but it is
equally true of the present.
We cannot
do without a single circumstance of it.I feel that this must sound very strange
in view of the terrible condition in which the world finds itself to-day. Yet
nothing is terrible unless we linger when we should proceed. Nothing is terrible
until we cling to it long after it has served its purpose. Nothing is wrong
until we have outgrown it. Evil is but a worn-out garment we still wear; and it
is worth while to remember that what one has done with, and should cast off,
may well be a new suit of clothes for another. In world-terms, Truth grows,
however much there may be Truth absolute and eternal; and we must grow with
Truth. Truth unfolds; and we must unfold with Truth. We cannot, must not, wait.
We must not be sluggards. To stagnate is to decay, and the only really terrible
thing in the world is the decay which is stopping still, for that is the
beginning of falling back. Other decay of a noble kind, there is, which is but
the reverent putting aside of that which has served its purpose. It is the
former which is dangerous; against it the whole world must be on guard, lest it
repeat the bitter experience of the past.
In the
light of the Nirvanic consciousness I perceive, as I have said, the Real in all
things. The changing world has become a world changed; and I know that nowhere
is any waiting inevitable. There is nothing so hardened that it can no
longer
move. Strange as the statement may sound, the Great War itself helped to loosen the hardnesses, though
I am not prepared to say that they could not possibly have been relieved in any
other way. In any case, the very Coming of the World-Teacher is proof that the
world has the ears to hear Him. Does not His moving among mankind effect a
transubstantiation for the whole world? A marvellous tangible Real will thus be
substituted for the infinitely lesser Reals with which the world has for so
long had to be contented. He takes their place. The very writing of this phrase
thrills me, for it embodies the wonderful fact that He re-enters into an
intimate relationship with us He comes down among us, entering into our little
world, taking His place in us, substituting Himself for our own higher selves,
which is the same thing as saying that He raises us far beyond our normal
selves, or that He purifies our higher selves
and draws
the lower into accord with the higher. In the Light of Nirvana, I see how all
this is brought about, for He is embodied Nirvana, a Nirvana which the world
shall be allowed to see and hear and know. Nirvana becomes tangible!
For all
things I perceive the Nirvanic counterpart, but this perception has more meaning
to-day than it has had for many centuries. The world is about to enter upon a
new spring-time. Already I perceive the tiny shoots of Buddhi forcing their way
through the denser layers of the lower planes; and, looking forward into the
far distance, I see how these little shoots shall become buds, finally blossoming
into the Buddhic flower. We must water these shoots by treading the Path of
Righteousness, or they will decay back into unconsciousness.
Nirvana
shows me, as I have never before seen, the potentialities within the actualities
of these worlds of ours. I know what the world can do. But the world must not
wait. It must move, and all men and women of goodwill must help it to move.
Utopia is waiting to enter, but the world must open its doors; and I am
utterly
clear that there is nothing in the world which is an insuperable barrier to
this opening. I seem to observe the world as from a great height. Its needs are
very great. It cries aloud for help-the cry that the Lord has heard and answers
with the words: “I come.” I see good promise for the future, if only the
world’s
leaders will lead it from the pursuit of separateness, whether individual, or
class, or nation, or sect, or race, to the pursuit of Unity and Understanding.
Nirvana is
not yet for the world, but for many the Sun of Buddhi should not be so very far
below the horizon, and already the roseate colours of its dawning should begin
to dispel the night of separateness. Have you ever stood upon a mountain
watching before dawn for the rise upon the world of our Lord the Sun?
Have you
stood awestruck at the miracle of a world of darkness being transmuted into a
world of softest colour? Have you marvelled at the glory disclosed in every
part of the landscape by the magic touch of the Sun’s rays?
Have you
noticed how beautiful is the re-awakening of everything into life different? Have
you watched the glorious innocence and yearning of all that is, in its dawning?
The great English mystic, Thomas Traherne, gives beautiful
expression
to the dawning of childhood on the physical plane; almost similar words might
be used for childhood on any other plane, for the first awakening of higher
consciousness. Traherne tells us:
Certainly
Adam in
at my
entrance into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys.
My
knowledge was Divine … My very ignorance was advantageous. I seemed as one
brought into the Estate of Innocence. All things were spotless and pure and
glorious; yea, and infinitely mine, and joyful and precious. I knew not that
there were
any sins, or complaints or laws. I dreamed not of poverties, contentions or
vices. All tears and quarrels were hidden from mine eyes.
Everything
was at rest, free and immortal. I knew nothing of sickness or death or rents or
exaction, either for tribute or bread. In the absence of these I was entertained
like an Angel with the works of God in their splendour and glory, I
saw all the
peace of
World, and
see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold?
The corn
was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever
sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting
to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold; the
gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first
through one of the gates
transported
and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and
almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things.
The Men! O
what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged men seem! Immortal
Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling Angels, and the maids strange
seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and
playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die. But
all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places. Eternity was
manifest in the Light of the Day, and something infinite behind everything
appeared; which talked with my expectation and moved my desire.
The city
seemed to stand in
mine; and I
the only spectator and enjoyer of it … So that with much ado I was corrupted,
and made to learn the dirty devices of this world. Which now I unlearn, and become,
as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the
Is it not
at the dawn that we perceive the beauty even in the things that otherwise we
should call ugly?
So have I
stood upon the
This brings
me to a further perception of the Theosophical
Society as one of these mighty stirrings which the Saviours
alone can give. I see the Theosophical
Society as the living witness of that Buddhic consciousness
which the world has yet to know, but towards which, in part consciously, yet
for the most part
unconsciously,
it yearns. The Society is, as it were, the
touchstone and nucleus of Buddhi in the outer world, reflecting Buddhi or Brotherhood,
pointing the way to Brotherhood in its three great Objects, awakening
Brotherhood in the world in innumerable forms, subsidiary to the supreme
archetype as disclosed in the first Object. Those who are beginning to be ready
for Buddhi inevitably turn towards the Society as its
physical-plane symbol and expression. Their faces are turned towards the
dawning; in the Theosophical Society they find its
Herald, and they add their voices to the Voice of the Dawn
calling the
world to awaken to a newer day.
I perceive the Society itself to be an
Himalayan range, with its peopled plains in the outer world, with the lesser
hills of the Esoteric School, and with the ascending peaks and ranges of
discipleship culminating in those lofty Supermen Who constitute its inner Light
and Life. I see what the Society has to become -
a channel
for Buddhi, for the Buddhic consciousness to the outer world. I see that while
the true standard of righteous living is elsewhere than among mankind, yet the Theosophical
Society reflects that standard, and that our movement is
intended to become a world within the world - a world from out the future, dwelling in the present as a living
example of a partly realized ideal.
The Theosophical
Society must
become a World-State in miniature, and its members citizens thereof. That which
we exhort the world to do we must ourselves be doing. In every field of life
our Buddhic consciousness must be growing active. We must stand for Brotherhood
in daily life, in religion, in politics, in industry, in education, in
international relations. I have sought to convey a glimpse of what this means
in “The Australian Section: A Vision” (See Appendix E), for that which I have
written there of
But example
founded on these precepts is far more valuable, for it is better to see Theosophy than to hear it,
as it is better to live it than to see it. If we could only live our Theosophy in the world,
accustoming the world to suffer it gladly, the time might come for the world to
be ready to suffer gladly our Masters to live Their Theosophy in the world.
But to a world yet in the twilight the sunshine can come safely only by
degrees. Let the Theosophical
Society be the dawn heralding that glorious day when in the
very outer world itself the mighty Circle of Brotherhood shall be complete.
Within the Society there must be no
such problems as those which disfigure the world. Within the Society-State there must be
comradeship in all things, be the diversities of custom, opinion or outlook
what they may.
The Theosophical
Society is greater
than its members, for is not the shadow less than the substance, the sunshine less than the Sun
Never for an instant may we forget that our primary allegiance is to the Society itself apart both
from any of its members or from any of the beliefs which they may hold. We must
learn to recognize that no identification by the ignorant, of certain specific
doctrines with the Society as a whole, makes
such identification a fact. It is as if some people passed before a great
mansion and, seeing through an open window a room with a green carpet, green
furniture, green wall-paper and green decorations generally, declared that the
whole house was entirely green. In the mansion of the Society are many rooms,
each with its own colour, but all within the house and belonging to one
community, though some members of the community live in one room and others in
another.
the Society is a great
receiving-station for Brotherhood from the inner worlds, transmitting it now
specifically in the shape of definite Truths, now generally as vitalizing
force. Through the latter Brotherhood-spirit in mankind is stimulated and finds
expression according to individual temperament and place
in
evolution. All are welcome to membership in whom Brotherhood is stirring, no
matter what form it takes. The Society stands for Brotherhood
unqualified, encouraging all movements, all individuals, sincerely dedicated to
Brotherhood,
be their
objectives what they may. It is doubtless possible to define Brotherhood. Each
individual should be able to define it more or less satisfactorily to himself;
and on every plane of consciousness there is a definition appropriate to the
plane, as I have suggested in my definitions of Buddhic and Nirvanic
consciousness. But the Society offers no
definition. It
asks from
each his acts of Brotherhood, leaving him to define it as he will, and
as he can.
I have had
to write this, because it seems to follow from my Nirvanic meditation upon the Society. Standing, as the Society stands, for Buddhi
in the outer world, it is, as it were, a kind of half-way house, between
Nirvana (and all that is beyond Nirvana), between the ideal such as we can
grasp (and all that
may lie
beyond out grasping), and these planes of nature upon which normally dwells the
outer world. The half-way house must by no means become an obstacle to the
passage of the Sunlight of Nirvana to the plains of the outer world beneath,
even though in travelling through the denser medium the rays must needs grow
less intense. We must never forget the fact that the Society is but this
half-way house, is merely a channel for that of which Brotherhood itself is a
modification, for there is more than Brotherhood before us, though we may have
yet to attain Brotherhood. Thus only can we hope to keep unsullied our great
ideal.
I notice
particularly that the problems of our outer life are non-existent in Nirvana.
Nirvana may have its own problems; it has certainly none of ours. I do not know
whether I am able to distinguish between a problem looked at in the light of
Buddhi and looked at in the light of Nirvana. In either case, every
circumstance
that contributed to the making of the problem becomes resolved or transmuted.
It ceases to be a problem, for the problem-constituting elements have
disappeared. These elements are the products of the separative forces, of
ignorance,
and can find no place in the higher worlds. The selfishness which is the root
cause of them all has burst its bonds, having no further cause for being. The
world needs to be full of problems upon which we may exercise God’s gift of
choice, discrimination. But less and less do we need to choose
deliberately
as choice through experience becomes automatic, instinctive, or, let us say,
intuitive.
In Buddhi
we reach the Unity. In Nirvana we are the Light which is the heart of Unity,
the essence of its being. The world thus becomes in many ways a far simpler and
easier place in which to live. The solutions of the problems are so obvious,
however hard it may be for the world as a whole to accept them; and not only
are they obvious, but simple, easy to bring about, provided we are big enough
to grasp them firmly. Therein 6lies the difficulty, of course. All that leads
to Light is right. All that leads to darkness is wrong.
It is no
longer a question of creed or colour, or race, or nationality. All is perceived
in terms of greater or lesser Light. “Let there be Light,” we echo. “More
Light!” we exclaim, with Goethe. The growing consciousness of Nirvana
intensifies the Light of our being - the very world itself is the brighter for
the entry
of one of its children into Nirvana - and darkness of whatever kind grows
increasingly unnatural. We rule out black even down to its apparently most
insignificant expressions, as for example in the case of ink or dress, and we
only use it faute de mieux, under protest. There is nothing black either in
Nirvana or
in Buddhi. Life is much simpler than it appears. Complexity is the muddle of
ignorance. The more we know the simpler life becomes. Nothing is difficult to
do if we want to do it. It is not difficult to do even if we have to do it
alone, against the crowd, provided we want to do it. Where there is the will
there is the way.
It is
interesting to look at a special problem, let us say, the industrial problem.
What is the solution? Obviously, comradeship, complete fellowship between the
two classes of workmen, whom down here we call employers and employed - rather
distorting terminology since the employed employ the employers as much as the
employers employ the employed. In these higher regions there is this
fellowship. Nothing else could exist. In the lower worlds the difficulty is to
obtain it. In the higher worlds it is impossible to avoid it. The solution of
the industrial problem lies in the two sections working together as one, as
they will have to work sooner or later. That is easier said than done, we are
told.
Yet it
ought to be done as easily as said, for it is the final truth. With brotherhood
on both sides it would be an accomplished fact. With brotherhood on neither
side it becomes impossible. No compulsion from without will ever bring it
about; no legislation or arbitration of any kind. All these are compromises,
bargainings, between truth and falsehood, and cannot last. There must be the
urge from within.
CHAPTER IX
A FURTHER
READJUSTMENT
Looking
down upon myself from the viewpoint of Nirvanic consciousness, I am most
interested to perceive my first impression to be that of watching a dynamo churning
out power, but with only part of the machinery at work. I see enormous
potentialities
still to be unfolded, only certain powers being actually in operation, and even
these only partially. I am amazed at the possibilities - I should rather say at
the certainties - of the future, but I think I am even more amazed at the fact
that I am an integral part of our Lord the Sun Himself. I notice, I think, an
unbroken line of connection between the Sun and myself, as
between the
Sun and all things. This connection is to all intents and purposes a physical
connection, for although the connection is a Light connection, yet that very
Light is composed of particles, and it exercises quite appreciable physical
modification upon my physical body as well as upon my other bodies. Light has
weight, mass, momentum. I am therefore a nucleus of force within larger nuclei
of forces, within a Heavenly Man, within the Sun Himself, even as He is a
nucleus of force within a still larger system. From one point of view,
therefore the whole system of which the Sun is the heart is a solid body with
every part as closely connected and inter-related as the various parts of our
physical bodies.
Hence, I am
a solar system in miniature, with a central sun, with planets, with all the
appurtenances - in embryonic miniature - of the solar system as we know them.
Do I reproduce in myself the movements of a solar system? Do parts of me
revolve round a central part of me? Does the central part of me revolve? At all
events the whole of me revolves, for at least I revolve with the world of which
I am part. But if I do not mistake, there are these various revolutions. I seem
to see myself as a coordinated mass of intricately revolving worlds, reminding me
of numbers of Catharine-wheels in a fireworks display. I seem to see the
various
great centres (chakras) revolving in co-ordinate motion round a central heart
which does not seem to be the heart-chakra but a chakra invisible, perhaps the
Monad, if we can at all call the Monad a centre. If it does not sound flippant,
I should like to say that I see myself as a kind of glorified fireworks, part
of still more glorified fireworks, with the Universe as a supreme display of
fireworks on an unimaginable scale. But these fireworks are continuous, and do
not splutter out.
What
astonishes me more than anything else is the potentiality, marvellous beyond
words, of even the minutest fragment of myself. I gaze upon the heavens with their
myriad constellations, and I see all these reflected in each and every atom of
my being.
There is
enough potentiality in each and every atom to
build all I
see around me. An atom, universe as it is with its central nucleus round which
revolve its constituent planets, is an epitomized universe, containing within
itself every single element needed for the development of every plane and all
kingdoms of nature. This may sound an absurd exaggeration, yet it is true -
obviously true - for every atom is imprisoned Sun-Life, that
Life which
brought our Universe, with all its wonderful complexities, into being.
Look into
the Heavens and perceive God’s glories. Gaze at yourself and it is as if you were
looking at a reflection of these vastnesses. Indeed you are looking at their
reflection. There is as much an astronomy of the human body as there is an
astronomy of the stars, and from the Nirvanic level of consciousness
it is
clearly possible to perceive the essential identity between the astronomy of
the microcosm - myself - and that of the macrocosm - the heavens. I certainly
perceive Nirvana-potentiality in every single atom of my being, and I perceive
the fact that the centre of my system is awakening into Nirvanic potentiality,
so that the atoms of my own being maybe clearly distinguished from those of one
who is not developed to this extent. Further, the emanations from me, my
radiations, my pulsations, my “puffs” shall I say, acquire perceptibly
added
brilliance on this account, as they did at all lower stages of expansion of
consciousness. Pursuing this fact to its logical conclusion, every good thought,
good feeling, good word, good action - goodness being, of course, a relative term
- adds its own brilliance both to the individual as a whole and to his
radiations. The whole world is the brighter (perceptibly so to consciousness
at the
necessary level of sensitiveness) for the tiniest goodness, that is to say for
the tiniest increasingly positive harmonization, in any part of the lesser
will, with the Will Universal.
I perceive
that the awakening of Nirvanic consciousness at the centre means a raising of
the level of consciousness in every part of my being. Every part takes a step
upward, or inward, in consciousness. There is begun a new refinement in each
body and in every part of each body; and not only is this true, it is also true
that the whole world makes an appreciable advance in consciousness-expansion,
and there is more Light, more Unity, in its smallest component atom. Obviously
this must be so, in view of the intimate inter-relation between every part, of
the identity of all life amidst the innumerable diversities of its appearance.
Hence a service to any part of the world, however microscopic, is a service to
the whole world, and vice versa. This truth applies equally, of course, to
disservice.
I seem to
perceive a new meaning for the phrase: “Mind your own business.” I have a whole
universe to look after, in which I am the humble representative of our Lord the
Sun. I have as much as I can do to look after this world of mine, especially
when I remember how potently it affects all other worlds around me.
It may be
that it is my duty to assist for a time one or more worlds in my vicinity, in
which case I must mind their business a little, but with the very greatest
respect, since I can know so little of these other worlds, so much less than I
know of my own - and how little I know of my own! My main, but in no sense selfish,
preoccupation, therefore, must be with my world, with its purity and brilliance, so that it
may become a joy in itself, and
therefore a joy to other worlds.
The new
conception of life - of my own life, and of all other life - that I gain through
the perception of myself not only as a
world but as a universe of worlds, forms, indeed, a most fascinating avenue of investigation. I do not
think I at all understood the impressive significance of the relation between the
microcosm “I” and the macrocosm without until I looked upon both in terms of
Nirvanic consciousness. This significance discloses itself in two outstanding directions.
First, the glory. Second, the responsibility. As for the first, I hope I have
been able to convey something at least of the glory of Nirvana even in the
halting descriptions I have ventured to give in the preceding pages. With
regard to
the responsibility, this comes to me in the realization that as the Sun is the
Glory of His Universe so must I learn to be the glory of mine. Indeed, I am a
Sun in microscopic miniature. I am the Sun of my being. I am the humble
representative of our Lord the Sun. I look up towards Him. I see a little of
that which He is to all the worlds. And I see that as He is supremely to His
Universe,
so must I be supremely to mine. We are all His Suns, with universes to look
after and gradually to develop, as He has so gloriously developed His. The universe
without is the embodied promise of fulfilment for all smaller universes which
form its being. I look up towards the Sun, and visibly before my eyes shines,
as from the future, the supreme and inevitable glorification of myself.
The Sun is
multiplying Himself in us. And do I not know that beyond our glorious Sun there
are Suns more glorious still? What limit is there, then, to man’s unfoldment?
He has ascended from the infinitely small; he shall ascend to the infinitely
great. The Heavens about us stand guarantee and witness. Every law astronomy
postulates with regard to the Universe as a whole runs equally in every part.
There is not a. single function in the larger Universe which has not a
counterpart in the smaller. And when we read of the way in which a Universe
comes into being, let us remember that we have a description - utterly
inadequate,
of course - of some Great Being-become-God entering upon the mighty Sacrifice,
itself from another standpoint the beginning of a new expansion of His Being,
of guiding to self-conscious Divinity all parts of His Nature which fall short
of His complete Self-consciousness, no matter at what stage of lesser
consciousness they may be. God multiplies Himself by every part of Himself and
the result is God self-conscious in every part. Every seed becomes a perfect,
eternal Flower; as well as a petal of a Flower yet mightier.
The simile
comes to me of the oak and its acorns. God is as the oak, and every part of Him
is an acorn. As each acorn grows, so does the oak grow; and some acorns are at
one stage of growth, others at other stages. There is an oak-acorn universe,
and as one series of acorns transcends the purely acorn stage, another
series
takes its place. Thus, there is an endless series of growings at all stages,
and the oak-father himself grows as his externalized life grows, for however
much acorns may fall here and there, be blown hither and thither by the winds,
the one life unites parents and children, and the growth of each reacts upon
all the rest. And by and by certain acorns grow into oaks, and themselves give
forth acorns. The oak becomes a forest. Our Lord the Sun becomes a forest of
Suns.
This is the
oak’s fulfilment of himself. This is Gods fulfilment of Himself. This is our
fulfilment of ourselves. The oak has his seasons for acorn-bearing. Has God His
seasons, too? Or with God is the process of manifestation continuous, an
endless stream of life issuing from His Being?Nirvana seems to be drawing so
near to me, or perhaps my centre is so definitely, however slowly, shifting to
the Nirvanic plane, that I find myself more and more relating every phase and
feature of the outer world to its Nirvanic archetype or counterpart. I have
come to the conclusion that there is nothing in this world, or out of it for
that matter, which is not in some degree a reflection of Nirvana. The outer
world is after all Nirvana objectified, Nirvana densified, the shadow of
Nirvana. Every plane below is the reflection of the plane - of all planes -
above.
The
objectification, the densification, the shadow, the reflection, may be a
distortion, but only, I think, as I have suggested elsewhere, when it has
fulfilled its purpose. There is no absolute distortion, only relative
distortion, and by the word “distortion,” therefore, I must mean a form
inadequate to the level of unfoldment attained by the particular life which may
be in question.
That which
is inadequate is wrong. That which is adequate, or perhaps more than adequate,
is right. As I write this, I wonder if there are any things in the outer worlds
which are fundamentally wrong, or if at the worst they are inevitable, given
certain conditions which themselves, it may be, ought not to exist. Take, for
example, a liquor shop.
On first
consideration, I am inclined to decide emphatically that a liquor shop is fundamentally
wrong. But then I ask myself whether a liquor shop may not be the only place,
under existing circumstances, in which certain people can forget that which
they ought never to have needed to know. Life is very grey for many people.
From time to time they must needs forget its greyness, if they cannot alter it.
The public
house temporarily solves, in a ghastly manner, the problems of life for many
people. And to this extent liquor shops may have once been “right”. But need
they be right any longer? Ought they to be right any longer? We are still at a
very low level of evolution if they are still right. For my own part I
think they
are supremely wrong. Woe unto those of us by whom this offence comes!
But until
we are able to provide something better to take its place, the public house
remains. Do I hurt my readers’ feelings, or shock them, when I say that the
public house does represent a pitiful attempt of man to reflect that glorious
self-realization after which each one of us yearns in his heart? Shame
upon us
that we should suffer so hideous a distortion to dwell in our midst; far more
shame upon us who tolerate it than upon those who are driven to it.
This brings
me to the point I want to make. Each one of us must constantly strive to live
according to his own highest standards, and not according to conventional
standards which represent less than the highest, at least so far as regards
those to whom Theosophical teachings appeal. The need for this is borne in upon
me very strongly at a time when standards which have hitherto sufficed me must
no longer suffice. The conventions of my old world are not the conventions of
the new, and I must change accordingly. Is it not true to say that the
conventions of the pre-war world are not the conventions of the post-war world,
or ought not to be, and that the world needs to change
accordingly?
So it is with me. The pre-Nirvanic world is utterly different from the Nirvanic
world, and there is hardly a detail of life which does not need readjustment,
because everything is revealed in a new Light - literally in a new Light.
I am
immensely struck by the extraordinary difference in the values of words. The
dictionary is a new book to me, for every word in it has - I was going to say a
new meaning, but certainly a new power. Words are power-universes, power-atoms,
and they are exploded by being uttered. The power in them is released and goes
on its errand. Have certain words evil errands, and other good errands? In some
is there the power that makes for righteousness, while in others there is power
that makes for relative unrighteousness? I have yet to examine the question. In
the meantime I am almost appalled at the power of language and at the gravity
of careless usage of words. Until we know what we
do, may be
we shall be forgiven; but when we begin to know what we do, there is no
justification for a forgiveness which means either that because the will behind
the utterance is so little potent, therefore the result is more or less
negligible, or that counter-balancing forces are introduced to neutralize
the effect.
In the one case there is forgiveness from within, in the other forgiveness from
without.
For the
time being I am occupied in watching the jars made both by my own utterances
and by what I hear from the lips of those around me. Certain words jar me
terribly. I must be careful to avoid them. I wonder why they have not disturbed
me before. But the fact that I can be thus hurt by myself I take to be
a good
sign. It means that from time to time I am able to live outside my lower self,
and to compare the larger with the smaller and it also means that I can understand,
as a matter of pure personal remembrance, how other people are not affected by
that which only a short while ago seemed by no means discordant to
me; nor
must I expect them to be shaken, or be impatient of their not being upset,
simply because I happen now to be agitated by something which has hitherto not
shocked rile at all. I see clearly that there is little use in reaching
Nirvanic consciousness unless such attainment stimulates at-one-went. True
attainment, in whatever sphere or department of life, is deeper at-one-ment,
and reality of achievement may be measured by increased
strength of
unification. That which definitely promotes union is accomplishment, that which
does not is not true gain at all, whatever the outer world may call it.
Not only
does this new Nirvanic element profoundly modify my appreciation of language, but equally my appreciation of everything
else, of people, of landscape, of cities, of animals, of business, of
pleasures. The new element of Nirvanic consciousness enters into all things, or
I should rather say is
suddenly
perceived in all things as well as in myself, and the effect is of looking upon
a world one has never seen before. As I have already suggested, the languages I
know are new languages, for the words now possess hitherto unperceived
connotations and relationships.
So do
books. I do not think the modification of consciousness is anywhere more marked
at present in any case than in books. I went the other day into one of our
largest bookshops, and I found myself amidst a weird babel of sounds. Every
volume was vocal. In each book was its author speaking his message - in some
cases powerfully, clearly, upliftingly; in
other cases, at the other extreme, vaguely, purposelessly, vulgarly,
perhaps, often sordidly, or sometimes with a well-chiselled form distressingly
empty of purpose. Each work was a sound-scheme, often a jarring sound-scheme,
but sometimes a beautiful symphony.
Each book,
too, was a light-scheme, a dull light-scheme, a lurid light-scheme, a bright,
clear light-scheme, now and then a gorgeous light-scheme. I was not able to
follow up this discovery, but I knew that books are alive, that some are in the
savage state, and thence there is graded ascent in evolution to
God-books,
such as the Scriptures, and others less than these, yet great. I cannot pursue
further this fascinating theme, but it will be realized that books are now no
longer mere tomes, they are living beings, for which their creators have
serious responsibility, which speak and shed their influence
around
them. A book in a room is a factor with which we have to reckon; a library is a
potent force.
One of the
most awe-inspiring effects flowing from the awakening of Nirvanic consciousness
has been in connection with the celebration of Holy Eucharist.
When I had the
honour of celebrating this great Sacrament in the Church of St. Alban, Sydney,
for the first time after beginning to make my voyages of discovery in the
realms of Light, I found that an extraordinary change had taken place. In any
case the ceremony is most impressive, but I have never
before been
so conscious of its power, and I endeavoured to trace this newly-awakened
consciousness to its source. It seemed to me that this marvellous Sacrament is
taking place at all times on all planes. When we celebrate it down here we are
merely for the time being bringing ourselves into conscious relationship with
its eternal processes, becoming mere unobstructed channels for its expression
in and through ourselves.
Clearly, I
think, the act of celebration on the physical plane is a distinct gathering
together of the essential forces of the. Holy Eucharist, so that they affect in
special measure the surroundings in the midst of which the ceremony takes
place.
But I also
saw that the Holy Eucharist is the expression of a Law of evolving Life. Hence
Eucharistic processes are ever at work, as are the processes of all other great
Sacraments. Sacraments are sacrifices, expressions of the eternal and
continuous sacrifice of God. We ourselves, and all that lives, are embodied
acts of
God's sacrifice, and the Eucharist is a mode of the growth of all things. I was
wonderfully conscious of this at every moment of the celebration. In the first
place, I was clearly conscious of expressing, evoking, manipulating, the
Eucharistic power on a plane other than the physical, so that the physical
words and actions seemed to be but the echoes of the real sounds, and I
performed the actual physical movements as in a dream.
At the
words, “May the Lord purify me that I may worthily perform His Service,” it was
as if the purification took the form of a translation of myself elsewhere, into
Nirvanic consciousness in fact, and at that level making a special channel for
the Eucharistic Light to descend into the matter of the
physical
plane through every intermediate plane, so as to effect everywhere a special
concentration of already existing Eucharistic activity. I noticed how every
physical act from the beginning to the end helped in the preparation of the physical
plane for the reception of the mighty forces stirring so gloriously
elsewhere.
I heard at one level the gradual weaving together of beautiful notes into a
marvellous symphony of sound reaching a stupendous apotheosis at the act of
transubstantiation of the Bread and Wine, an apotheosis reproduced in each one
of us in the act of Communion and, equally beautifully but
differently,
in the two great Benedictions at the close.
At a higher
level, the Nirvanic, there began an indescribable interplay of Light, with
penetrating flashes of glorious radiance at each of the great stages. I do not
know whether I was simultaneously conscious on several planes, or whether it
was a case of rapid passing from one to another. Be this as it may, on the
physical plane every word uttered, every act performed, every step taken,
seemed alive with power, with great outflowing pulsations of forces surging in
all directions.
As for
myself, so far as regards the physical plane, I was in a dream, the centre of
my waking consciousness having transferred itself elsewhere. But this dream-condition
was by no means a state of diminished physical-plane effectiveness. On the
contrary, I knew I was far more effective than normally by
very reason
of the dream-condition, which was a sign of the minimization of the static
interference of the physical body due to the density of its composition.
The
physical body had been sublimated to its utmost measure in order the more easily
to transmit the forces generated on higher planes, and the dream-condition was
the result of a very conscious working from within rather than from without.
The physical body was but the river’s mouth opening on the sea of outer life.
Far away were those mighty mountain-torrents which made the river and sent it
forth to the sea.
I wonder if
I can at all make clear the effect of the retirement of the centre of
consciousness from an outer to an inner plane. I presume that the effect of every
Initiation is not merely an expansion of the circumference of consciousness,
but also a very definite modification in the centre of consciousness, which
appears to be in the nature of a retirement to an inner region, because, after
each Step, one finds oneself from one point of view
living in a
new field of consciousness more than in the old. This new field is a subtler
field, a more archetypal field, and the apparent withdrawal inwards of the
centre of consciousness is due to the fact that the old world of consciousness
has lost some of its supreme and exclusive significance. No longer is it able
to exact the lion’s share of attention. It must take its place among other
worlds, a place suitable to its station in life. No longer is it able to occupy
the whole of the foreground of the picture. Other worlds very properly claim
their place, and the old world must make room for them.
The taking
of the first of the Great Initiations synchronizes with the beginning of the
retirement of the centre of consciousness to the Buddhic plane - the plane of
Unity. This process becomes intensified in the course of the Second and Third
Initiations, and it seems as if the centre of consciousness should be firmly
established in Buddhi by the time the fruits of that stage are
being
gathered. Then, at the fourth of the Great Initiations, the centre of consciousness
tends to move still further inwards, and begins to make a home on the Nirvanic
plane, a process which should be complete at the threshold of the fifth of the
Great Initiations.
In the
light of my own experience, it is certainly accurate to speak of a withdrawal
or retirement of the centre of consciousness, if we look at what has happened
from one aspect only. I feel able to say quite definitely that Nirvana is now
my true home, though I have only just taken possession of my new estate and
have yet to explore it. But I am living in Nirvana, whatever excursions I may
take into the regions without. I shall often be visiting my old homes, but I shall
no longer be living in any of them except quite temporarily, and in any case
even when I do live in them I am living “from” this newer home. I may regularly
visit the scenes of my “childhood,” of my various “childhoods,” but they will
have ceased to be as “real” as once they were. Hence, occupying this new home,
all outer worlds are, from one point of view, dreamlands. Still following this
point of view, to return to the physical plane is to go through a series of
fallings asleep. I fall asleep from the Nirvanic to the Buddhic plane.
I fall
asleep from the Buddhic to the mental plane, from the mental to the emotional,
from the emotional to the physical plane. In one sense, therefore, I may be
said to fall fast asleep on this outermost plane, however much in ordinary
parlance I am supposed to wake up.
But this by
itself would be a very inaccurate description of the facts. True, all outer
worlds are worlds of shadows compared with the inner worlds. To me the Nirvanic
world is the supremely real world, though to Those at higher levels even the
Nirvanic splendours must be but as shadows of something still greater.
This
physical world is in many ways far more of a dreamland than ever it has been
before. I have discovered a new contrast. I had already known the contrast
between the Buddhic and the physical worlds.
Now I am
beginning to know that between the Nirvanic and the physical world, and the
greater brightness necessarily intensifies the shadows. Yet, in fact, even the
outermost world is a world of reality. The densest matter is no less Divinity
than the most refined, the distinction being but in degree of
self-consciousness.
The outer
world may be a dreamland, a world of shadows, yet it is God’s dream, God’s
shadow; and God’s dreams come true. From this point of view, therefore, dreamland
becomes a very real land, in which we must be happy to work, even though we
live elsewhere, because we have the glorious task of making the dream-world
come true. We look out from our Nirvanic window upon the world without. We see
how infinitely less beautiful it all is than the home in which we live. But we
see, too, how beautiful it might become. So we leave our Nirvanic home, taking
its memories with us, and in the light of these memories we strive to fashion
the Real out of that dream of the Real which, for
convenience
sake, we call the unreal. When we say:
From the
unreal lead us to the Real,
From
darkness lead us to Light,
From death
lead us to Immortality,
we are in
truth saying:
From the
unconscious lead us to the Self-Conscious,
From the
dream lead us to the True,
From the
beginning lead us to the End.
The unreal
is the promise of the Real.
Darkness is
the shadow of Light. Death is the gateway to Immortality. In the unreal help me
to find the Real. In the darkness help me to find the Light. In death enable me
to perceive Immortality.
It is but
natural, especially at the earlier stages of Nirvanic realization, that the
outer worlds should be emphasized in their dream-aspect rather than in their
real aspect. For the time being the dream-world may seem more of a dream-world
than ever. And there may be some excuse for yearning for Nirvana as one moves
about in the midst of the physical plane. A child may well be forgiven for
being all eagerness about the wonderful new discovery he has made, and for a
certain temporary listlessness with regard to more habitual surroundings.
But we live
under the great law of readjustment, and it should not take us long to come to
the conclusion that in this very dream-world we have the joyous task of making
it come true. We begin to understand that our very realization of Nirvana
depends upon our work in the dream-world.
I suppose
it is possible to realize Nirvana without actually working on the physical
plane, but it is not possible to realize it without working somewhere; and it
does not matter where we work. Why not, then, help to pay the debt we owe to
the physical plane and all there is in it? As I write these words, I am
reminded of
the fact that in the charming conception of Father Christmas bringing gifts to
little children we have one of the most beautiful of truths. Every Saviour of
the world is a Father Christmas, His hands laden with good things for His
world. Every good man holds the same position to his world.
Every one of
us who has taken a step nearer to truth must become a benefactor laden with
truth. More than ever must I, too, because of the new gifts bestowed upon me,
become a more enthusiastic distributor of my world. The world is like the
little child wondering what Christmas will bring, even hoping, perhaps, for
this or that, dreaming of all the wonderful things which will be by its bedside
when it wakes in the morning. Sometimes there may be disappointment.
Sometimes
what is good, rather than what is desired, may be brought. Sometimes we receive
what we desire in order that we may learn the lesson that what we wish is not
always what is good. Sometimes we receive what is wanted because our wish is
right. Let our wishes be always for the good and the true, that this
dream-world of ours may come true, may reflect as perfectly as may be the
higher worlds of which it is the physical body. We must live in dreams that
they may come true, for the dream is the seed of the Real, as the Real is the
future of the seed in an Eternal Now.
CHAPTER X
LATER
THOUGHTS
I look’d
And, in the
likeness of a river, saw
Light
flowing, from whose amber-seeming waves
Flash’d up
effulgence, as they glided on
‘Twist
banks, on either side, painted with spring,
Incredible
how fair: and, from the tide,
There ever
and anon, outstarting, flew
Sparkles
instinct with life; and in the flowers
Did set
them like to rubies chased in gold:
Then, as if
drunk with odours, plunged again
Into the
wondrous flood; from which, as one
Re-enter’d,
still another rose. “The thirst
Of
knowledge high, whereby thou art inflamed,
To search
the meaning of what here thou seest,
The more it
warms thee, pleases me the more.
But first
behoves thee of this water drink,
Or e’er
that longing be allay’d.” So spake
The day-star
of mine eyes: Then thus subjoine’d:
“This
stream; and these, forth issuing from its gulf,
And diving
back, a living topaz each,
With all
this laughter on its bloomy shores,
Are but a
preface, shadowy of the truth 8
They emblem:
not that, in themselves, the things
Are crude;
but on thy part is the defect,
For that
thy views not yet aspire so high.”
Never did
babe, that had outslept his wont,
Rush, with
such eager straining to the milk,
As I toward
the water; bending me,
To make the
better mirrors of mine eyes
In the
refining wave: and as the eaves
Of mine
eye-lids did drink of it, forthwith
Seem’d it
unto me turne’d from length to round.
Then as a
troop of maskers, when they put
Their
vizors off, look other than before;
The
counterfeited semblance thrown aside
So into
greater jubilee were changed
Those
flowers and sparkles; and distinct I saw,
Before me,
either court of heaven display’d.
O prime
enlightener! though who gavest me strength
On the high
triumph of thy realm to gaze;
Grant
virtue now to utter what I kenn’d.
There is in
heaven a light, whose goodly shine
Makes the
Creator visible to all
Created,
that in seeing Him alone
Have peace;
and in a circle spreads so far,
That the
circumference were too loose a zone
To girdle
in the sun. All is one beam,
Reflected
from the summit of the first,
That moves,
which being hence and vigour takes.
And as some
cliff, that from the bottom eyes
His image
mirror’d in the crystal flood
As if to
admire his brave appareling
Of verdure and
of flowers; so, round about,
Eyeing the
light, on more than million thrones,
Stood,
eminent, whatever from our earth
Has to the
skies return’d. How wide the leaves,
Extended to
their utmost, of this rose,
Whose
lowest step embosoms such a space
Of ample
radiance! Yet, nor amplitude
Nor height
impeded, but my view with ease
Took in the
full dimensions of that joy.
Near or
remote, what there avails, where God
Immediate
rules, and Nature, awed, suspends
Her sway?
Into the yellow of the rose
Perennial,
which, in bright expansiveness,
Lays forth
its gradual blooming, redolent
Of praise
to the never-wintering sun,
As one, who
fain would speak yet holds his peace,
Beatrice
led me; and, “Behold,” she said,
“This fair
assemblage; stoles of snowy white,
How numberless!
The city, where we dwell,
Behold how
vast; and these our seats so throng’d,
Few now are
wanting here.
DANTE:
NATURALLY,
I am continually brooding on, or may I say “in,” Nirvana. My comparatively busy
life leaves plenty of room for such brooding, since to live in Nirvana is less
to add to one’s occupations and more to follow the daily round from a new
centre. I am learning to “Nirvanize” my life, which means that
I am endeavouring
to enter into the Nirvanic spirit in everything, and so gradually to achieve a
new mode of Being.
The
dominant reflection inevitably centres round the Advent of the Lord. That He
has come I know, not merely because I have been told but because the whole
world is visibly and audibly changed. A new richness of colour has been infused
into it, a new melody permeates it, because the Lord of Nirvana, the Lord of
Bliss, meditates upon His world, is engaged in the wondrous Yoga of physical
incarnation so that He lives among His younger brethren as He has not lived for
more than 2,000 years.
Not a single living thing is without a newer, a truer value, whatever be the kingdom