Again
there is the cyclic movement of time through morning, mid-day, and evening,
returning to dawn again; through spring, summer, and winter, coming back to
spring once more; the cycle of human life in youth, maturity, and old age,
returning one day, after a rest-time for the immortal spirit in the inner
worlds, to youth again in a never-ceasing spiral advance; "history repeating
itself," but always upon a higher level.
This
wonderful evolutionary scheme was beautifully summarized by the late Sir Oliver
Lodge in the closing words of an address to the British Association."The
universe," he said, "is the ever-growing garment of a transcendent
God." Behind all action is a Doer, seen or unseen; behind all forms a
Life seeking expression. Not untruly did the Greeks people nature with invisible
Intelligences, while Maimonides, the Spanish-Jewish philosopher, wrote: "Natural
forces and angels are identical," and the Bundakish states: "Every
single flower is appropriate to an angel." All forms, all creatures,
are epiphanies of God. The late Dr.Rudolph Steiner taught a system of meditation
upon a flower which can lead to great heights of illumination. To the natural
man these things seem foolishness, "because they can only be spiritually
discerned."
The
most wonderful storehouse of symbology in the whole macrocosm or universe
is the microcosm, man himself. Have we not all as children sometimes wondered
why we have two eyes and a mouth, two ears and a nose, five fingers, et cetera?
They all represent, and are therefore in touch with, very deep underlying
forces in the universe. This is pre-eminently true of the sex organs, for
the represent in man the highest powers in the cosmos, the creative powers.
DUALITY
IN NATURE
Occultism
tells us that man and woman together represent the twin creative forces of
the universe, positive and negative, centrifugal and centripetal, life in
manifestation and life hidden. On the whole, man is positive, manifesting
outwardly; woman is negative, receptive. But no man is entirely masculine
and no woman wholly feminine. Medical science tells us that every man, physically,
has female attributes undeveloped within him, and every woman has quiescent
and undeveloped male characteristics. Sometimes when a sexual organ is removed
the secondary characteristics begin to develop, as witness the feminity of
the emasculated male, and the growth of masculine characteristics occurring
sometimes in women when ovaries have been removed. There is also a period
in foetal life when it is a question which sex will finally predominate. While
one is paramount and visible, the other is always in the background, somewhat
like the little man and woman who come out alternately on the weather gauge
familiar to our childhood.
This
is because no soul is absolutely man or woman, but the quintessence of both.
Although after death we still wear the appearance of man or woman, it is only
on this physical plane of being that sex organs are operative. The soul, being
really beyond sex differentiation, on coming into incarnation puts on a body,
or "coat of skin," sometimes on one side of life and sometimes on
the other, in order to acquire a full development of all qualities. The duties
and experiences of each sex are different, yet complementary. A man's life
tends to develop decision and energy; a woman's patience and tenderness. Yet
the most highly developed members of both sexes possess also the highest attributes
of the other. What noble man is deficient in patience and tenderness, or what
noble woman lacks energy and strength? These were learned through many lives
on both sides of life, for it is easier to evolve complementary characteristics
in complementary bodies. Here lies the true meaning of the words of the Christ
that in heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.
The
general rule for incarnation is to run through a series of lives on one side
of life, and then to change to the other for a series of lives. This change
of sex in successive incarnations explains well-known phenomena, the little
boy who furtively wants to play with dolls and the little girl who is a veritable
tomboy. They have just changed sex; they must get used again to the other
vehicle and this sometimes takes more than one life. Men and woman are not
rivals, but co-operators, being entirely different in nature and outlook.
To forbid one sex to use its peculiar powers and view point in the life of
the nation is like permanently closing one eye and expecting to see as well
as with both.
As
Lord Tennyson rightly wrote
"For woman is not undeveloped man,
But diverse ...
The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free."
There was a time, long ages ago, when man, scarcely human as we know now,
was one-sexed. He then propagated the race by methods still surviving in the
vegetable kingdom. There will come a time, untold ages hence, when again the
two sexes will merge. How then will he propagate the race? By a power already
beginning to show forth, kriyashakti, the force of concentrated thought and
will, creating upon the physical plane as we all create now upon the mental
plane. Bodies in those days will be "mind-born".
COSMIC
FORCES IN SEX DIFFERENTIATION
Man
is not only a physical body. Closely knit and interpenetrating it, are other
vehicles of consciousness composed of the subtler matter of surrounding, interpenetrating
planes. Through these inner and outer bodies of man play forces which come
down from the higher, subtler planes of being.
The
eternal thing in matter is its ceaseless motion, the rhythmic ebb and flow
of life. The most tremendous rhythm of all is the manifestation and apparent
disappearance of the universe itself, called in the Indian scriptures: "Days
and Nights of Brahma." The "nights" periods of non-manifestation,
are caused by the final equalizing of all forces. The same thing can be seen
in a little electrical experiment. Magnetize two needles; one-half of each
needle will be positive and the other half negative. If floated on a basin
of water, the positive pole of one needle will attract the negative pole of
the other. Meeting, the electricity disappears not because it has cease to
exist, but because being equilibrated, it becomes non-manifest.
When
a "day" dawns, the first principle to come into action is the Third
Person of the Hindu Trinity, Brahman, the Divine Mind. "Brahma meditated
and the worlds sprang into being." If God had not "thought"
us into being, we should never have been. The same things is true of our little
worlds. Before we act, we think and therefore mentally create. During pralaya,
or non-manifestation, spirit and matter, life and form, have become one as
indeed they fundamentally always are. But during a "day" they draw
apart and multiplication commences. This can be seen in the life of a cell.
It has one nucleus, but, when it is going to produce another cell two poles
appear with a line between and presently there are two cells. "The One
becomes Two." Here lies the real meaning of the old myth of the Virgin
Birth, attached to nearly all world-saviours. In ancient writings spirit is
spoken of as male, and matter as female, Mother-matter, in fact. In the undifferentiated
state mare, the sea or noumenon of matter, is quiescent, one with
life or spirit. When manifestation once more appears, this perfect equilibrium
is disturbed. The first thrill or wave-length of the Divine Mind spreads through
shoreless space. "The spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
From that contact with virgin matter the Cosmic Son of God, the universe,
was born.
The
same miracle is repeated between man and woman. From their contact a "son
of man" is born. The physical creative powers in man reflect the tremendous
creative powers of Deity. Hence their extraordinary sanctity in the eyes of
simpler world of old. Because they are the highest physical powers in man
their degradation produces terrible results. "Deus inversus demon est."
What
for want of a better term we may call the positive force of the universe flows
through the bodies of men, mostly along the lines of the bony and muscular
systems. Thus, we quite naturally consider the glory of a man to be his strength.
But through the bodies of women the opposite force flows, mostly using the
glandular and nervous system, and so we instinctively know that the glory
of a woman is her grace. The attractive pull towards one another is clearly
to be understood. The positive male principle forever seeks the more negative
female principle, that both may be fulfilled and at rest.In a happy and successful
marriage two effects are evident: one is the joy of creation, the other the
sense of great rest. All creation is joy, not only physical creation, but
the same power expressed mentally or spiritually. Archimedes, on his discovery
of a scientific principle, rushed into the street, shouting with joy: "Eureka,
I have found it'" When God created the heavens and the earth all the
sons of God shouted for joy, say the scriptures.
In
the inner principles of man, constituting his subconscious or subjective self,the
relation between the two sexes is reversed. On the emotional level woman is
positive and man negative. Thus, the undeveloped woman is a mass of emotional
contradictions, very possessive in her affections and when overstrained inclined
to become hysterical. On the mental level the position is again reversed;
man is positive, woman negative. The undeveloped man is inclined to be selfish
and hard, a total unbeliever in anything not observed of the senses; the developed
man has large and lucid powers of reasoning, and general has a more impersonal
outlook and greater creative powers of mind than a woman. By nature men are
more naturally fitted to "take the lead". In business organizations
they are usually less personal and vindictive than women. Hence women nearly
always prefer a man employer. But emotionally man is easily led. There is
quite a touching element in a man's unspoiled love for a woman. He is so likely
to worship, to look up to his goddess, to think her incapable of wrong. On
the intuitive, spiritual levels woman again becomes predominant. The developed
woman shines with intuitive wisdom and unselfish love. She has often a greater
capacity for utter self-sacrifice than has a man. A woman in love is a natural
devotee. Surrender and service are to her the supreme joy. Indeed, it may
be said that to love and to be loved is the primal necessity of every woman's
life. Byron knew this well, for he wrote:
"Love
is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence."
The
fact to be observed here is that the opposite,yet complementary factors involved
in sex differentiation make them highly necessary and helpful to each other.
Quite apart form any question of physical congress, the active intercourse
of thought and action between the sexes is highly beneficial to both. The
friendship of a man helps a woman to define her thoughts; the friendship of
a woman inspires and warms a man's imagination. Therefore, we find that so
many great men have had either a great wife or a great mother while other
gifted men have fallen short of what they might have achieved, had they been
blessed with this kind of association.
The
prevalent practice of sending little boys of eight or ten away from home to
boarding schools where they are in the care of inexperienced young masters,
is to be deprecated. A great Oxford coach wrote that of the hundreds of young
men who had passed through his hands, most would never reach their full development
because they were emotionally starved. The young need the influence of older
people, grandfathers and grandmothers, uncles and aunts. They need to be part
of the creative influences of ordinary life, to take part in the life of the
workaday world around them, not to be herded in a more or less monastic establishment
with other emotional starved boys and masters. Is it surprising that so many
never become fully mature beings and are thereafter deficient in imagination
and creative energy?
THE
EXAGGERATED FACTOR
The
world-wide prevalence of sex problems comes from the exaggeration of one factor
in it, physical gratification. When physical gratification is the only, or
the predominant, factor in a sex relationship it is passion and not love.It
is as well to make a clear mental distinction between the two, for either
can exist without the other, but where passion is exalted, purified and lit
by love, physical union can take on a very beautiful and inspired meaning.
While it gives the greatest physical pleasure known to man, it can also provide
a channel for very exquisite and exalted emotion. Because the creative forces
of the universe play through the oppositely polarized bodies of men and women
there is an attraction between the two not equaled by any other for it is
complemental and fulfilling, and therefore immensely satisfying. The beneficial
effects of the inter-play of invisible magnetism already described becomes
in the marital act greatly heightened, often breaking down mental barriers
and enlarging the whole outlook of the participants. A happy and beautiful
marital embrace can lead to what may only be described as a mystical experience,
passing ever more deeply into an interior consciousness, so that the lovers
become to each other as a door to God. This is known in India as a special
form of yoga, called sahaja, leading to moksha, or liberation, through and
by means of a certain attitude and relation possible to be established between
lovers. This has nothing to do, say the sages, with the cult of pleasure.
It is the realization of the One by the path of non-pursuit in love.
"All love greatens and glorifies
Till God's aglow to the loving eyes
In that which was mere earth before."
Robert
Browning
This well-nigh perfect experience is extremely rare, as it demands such high
and idealistic thinking on the part of the lovers, and such tremendous and
true love. A great Egyptian Adept once wrote "Know, O Brother mine, that
where a truly spiritual love seeks to consolidate itself doubly by a pure,
permanent union of the two, in its earthly sense, it commits no sin, no crime
in the eyes of the great Ain-Soph, for it is but the divine repetition of
the Male and Female Principles - the microscosmal reflection of the first
condition of Creation. On such a union angels may well smile! But they are
rare, Brother mine, ... Man's atma may remain pure and as highly spiritual
while it is united with its material body; why should not two souls in two
bodies remain as pure and uncontaminated not-withstanding the earthly, passing
union of the latter two."
In
the vast majority such a consummation is never reached. Far too often passion
is unlit by love, far too often the husband regards the use of his wife's
person as a physical convenience, and his right, eagerly and inconsiderately
sought after and indulged in with very disastrous results. There is a somewhat
similar process in the matter of alimentation. The organs of taste are intended
to heighten the enjoyment of eating, bringing into play the salivary glands
and thus causing the best possible use of necessary food. When this is abused
and gluttony results nature takes a very terrible reprisal. It is a thousand
times more true of the sexual act. In the animal kingdom there are mating
seasons and at all other times the mating urge is quiescent. Man, by virtue
of his powers of memory and anticipation, has enormously heightened out of
all natural order the sex impulse in himself. He is vulnerable to such impulses
at all times.
The
result is appalling. Let me quote The Secret Doctrine by H.P.Blavatsky:
"The creative powers in man were the gift of Divine Wisdom, not the result
of sin .. Nor was the Curse of Karma called down upon them for seeking natural
union, as al the mindless animal-world does in its proper season; but, for
abusing the creative power, for desecrating the divine gift, and wasting the
life-essence for no purpose except bestial personal gratification . In the
beginning, conception was as easy for woman as it was for all the animal creation.
Nature had never intended that woman should bring forth her young "in
sorrow"... For the seed of woman, or lust, bruised the head of the seed
of the fruit of wisdom and knowledge, by turning the holy mystery of procreation
into animal gratification; hence gradually changing physiologically, morally,
physically and mentally, the whole nature of the Fourth Race of mankind, until,
from being the healthy king of animal creation in the Third Race, man became,
in the Fifth, our Race, a helpless, scrofulous being and has now become the
wealthiest heir on the Globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases,the
most consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals' ... This is the
real Curse from the physiological standpoint ... The intellectual evolution,
in its progress hand-in-hand with the physical, has certainly been a curse
instead of a blessing - a gift quickened by the 'Lords of Wisdom' who have
poured on the human Manas the fresh dew of their own Spirit and Essence."
( Opus cited, 3rd revised edition, Volume II, pages 428-429)
This
was personified by the Greeks in the myth of Prometheus who brought the "fire"
from heaven. H.P.Blavatsky continues:
"Prometheus
answers:
Yea,
and besides 'twas I that gave them fire.
Chorus: Have now these short-lived creatures flame-eyed fire?
Prom: Ay, and by it full many arts will learn."
"But
with the arts, the 'fire' received has turned into the greatest curse; the
animal element, and consciousness of its possession, has changed periodical
instinct into chronic animalism and sensuality. It is this which hangs over
humanity like a heavy funeral pall ... The animal world, having simple instincts
to guide it, has its seasons of pro-creation, and the sexes become neutralized
during the rest of the year. Therefore the free animal knows sickness but
once in all its life - before it dies."(Ibid, page 430)
Th
experience of some unsophisticated native peoples bears out Madame Blavatsky's
statement as to woman not being intended to bear children in pain and sorrow,
for an African savage will in her native state, bear a child by the side of
a path and get up immediately afterward so to join the march of the tribe.
That which is said of the true cause of man's hereditary and constitutional
diseases is borne out by science, especially by the extraordinary discovery
of Dr. Abrams of San Francisco, the "electronic reactions." The
first wave-length that a practitioner of this system will look for is what
is called "diminished resistance." This is a polite euphemism for
a hereditary syphilitic taint. The vast majority of people have it in their
blood streams, the nations most free of it being the Scandinavian and the
Irish. If present, it provides a fruitful breeding-ground for all other diseases.
All scrofulous diseases originally took their rise from the abuse of the sex
function. In the above quotation Madame Blavatsky is referring to the period
six and a half million years ago when nascent man, hardly man as we know him
now, was subjected to a special stimulus of his thinking principle by certain
great ones from another planet. They are generally spoken of in occult literature
as the "Lords of the Flame" who endowed man with the "fire"
of mind.
The
unnatural economic character of our social system tends to multiply this evil.
In a healthy, happy, co-operative world men and women would marry young and
give birth to children during the years of their youthful vigour. The children
of middle-age are not so well circumstanced. This was well provided for in
the ancient system of India, which prescribed four periods to a man's life.
First, that of his student days, during which he lived as a brahmacharya,
without sex life. Then came the years of married life, in which he begot children
as a duty to the state. After that, the third period when both he and his
wife surrendered the sex life to seek religious ideals. The fourth period
was not undertaken by all, for it involved the going out alone as a penniless
mendicant, with no other ideal or hope but to find God. Even this could no
undertaken without the consent of the wife.
The
natural result of our haphazard system is to be seen in the prevalence of
sex-suppression and all that that means to psychological health, and in the
number of outcast races which are the outcome of illicit relationships. Sad
also is it to relate that in many cases a healthy native race becomes infected
with sexual disease by its white conquerors. In their native state many primitive
peoples have excellent eugenic laws, and no native boy is left in the pitiful
ignorance of many a white boy picks up misguiding and irreverent information
from school-fellows as ignorant as himself.
A
wonderful story was written sometime ago by a Central African chief, who as
a little boy lived inside a stockage in a vast jungle. Venturesome as little
boys will be, one day he and his play-fellows started to explore the surrounding
country. They came to the sea which they had never seen before. Carried out
to sea, many of them were seized by sharks, but the chief's little son was
picked up by a passing ship and taken by the captain to Scotland. There he
grew up with his Scotch foster brother and years later went back to his people
and ruled them as chief. He describes in his book the ignorance and shame
of sexual facts of his Scotch foster brother who had no one to consult, such
subjects being taboo. In his native country, he writes, all little boys would
have been fully instructed by the chiefs.
SEX
ABERRATIONS
There
are commoner than is usually supposed. By far the commonest is autoerotism.
Medical opinion is divided on the question of its harmfulness and it would
seem that in many cases its evil effect has been exaggerated. Children sometimes
instinctively discover its practice. A little girl of six was found continually
practising it. The agony of her mother was untold; although loving and kind
by nature, she had recourse to severe punishment which obviously was not the
right method of dealing with this unconsciously erotic behaviour of a little
child. Regarding the subject of whipping, doctors and psychologists deprecate
this form of punishment because of its frequent and undesirable reactions
on the sexual nature of the child. Grown people sometimes discover the practice
of autoerotism in response to an intolerable urge. A woman of thirty habitually
practised it "because it stopped the feeling of awful loneliness."
Many people do not realize that this is a common and dreadful symptom of sex
starvation.
Then
there is the question of these curious individuals who can fall in love only
with their own sex. Numbers of these are know to every physician and psychologist.
One young man, discovering that he love only his own sex, was in search of
a cure. He was referred to a book written by a pervert, who claimed that standing
as he did midway between the two sexes he could help and understand both,
and that he had spiritually dedicated his life to such service. Where this
tendency is genuine and innate, it is probably a karmic inheritance from other
lives in ancient Greece, and Rome, where homo-sexual relationships were fostered.
There
is also another explanation of this phenomenon. It has already been mentioned
that we do not always return in a body of the same sex. It sometimes takes
a life or two to become accustomed to the change. It may be that some of these
abnormal cases are people not yet accustomed to the newly changed sex.
The
problem of vice in public schools and prisons should not be surprising. Anyone
with imagination can picture the barren, un-emotional life of many boarding
schools; the same is still more true of prisons, full of lusty, unevolved
men away from their wives and sweethearts. Life in army generates similar
problems. Picture the conditions of any great army and the fate of woman in
conquered territories.
SUBLIMATION
Is
there any cure for sex irregularities and excesses? No cure is instantaneous.
The real solution lies in the gradual raising and education of human thought
on this subject. There are two aspects of it, physical and psychological,
and of the two the latter is by far the more important and potent.
On
the physical side, certain factors tend to accentuate or diminish the physical
sexual urge. Food exercises a grater influence in this respect than is generally
understood. Both meat-eating and alcohol-drinking are contributing factors
to undue sexual excitement. Meat, especially when taken in excess, adds to
the potency of all the aggressive, passionate impulses. The Japanese are a
rice-eating people, but the Japanese army was fed meat. "Otherwise,"
as a Japanese officer put it, "we should not get enough fight out of
them." The undue consumption of alcohol has a similar effect as the Salvation
Army has discovered. In a lesser degree, excessive smoking has the same results.
This is evidence that pure diet and moderation in eating and drinking habits
are aids in restricting excessive sexuality . Exercise is helpful also, while
soft beds, hot baths and a self-indulgent life are all contributory causes
to the evil . A merchant ship's captain once told how he learned to control
his sex urges. Like all sailors he had perforce to go for long intervals without
the sight or touch of a woman. So he determined upon a daily regime of forty-five
minutes hard exercise and found that this proved successful for him.
The
Psychological factors is more profound and here we touch upon some very occult
facts. We read a good deal these days about sublimation, but most of it seems
to be vague or of little practical value. Sublimation is possible, but is
origin and rationale are not understood. The truth is this: in all the universe
there is only one life and it is eternally creative. It flows through all
planes of matter and all phases of being. The Hindus call it prana. Acting
through our mental structure it stimulates discovery, mental enquiry, creative
thought. The "joy of creation" here is the joy of discovery and
invention. This is why intellectual people often have less sexual urge than
many others. With them the creative force has taken another direction. Emotionally
the life stream shows as admiration, love, ecstasy. Physically it exhibits
as vitality, especially in the creative sex function. The answer clearly lies
here. Increase the flow of the creative power on other levels of being, and
the pull upon the physical plane will become less.
It
is difficult to do this in our utilitarian, mechanistic age, where men have
become machines instead of creative artists. There was a time ages ago when
even in the making of household articles the worker could be an artist in
his work. Now, in the factory system, a man makes a small part of an article
and watches a tyrannical machine, so that he also becomes a machine, with
no outlet for his creative, artistic abilities.
Free,
intellectual enquiry and study, controlled living and daily exercise are all
contributing factors toward sex control, but the greatest of all lies in the
emotional nature, and in its higher counterparts, the spiritual and intuitional
principles. Modern man has lost his free, natural play of feeling, He suffers
from endless "suppressions," and these date back in most cases to
early childhood.
No so long ago education consisted chiefly in stuffing endless facts into
a child's head, or inflicting on him an intolerable burden of memory work.
Hence the natural spontaneity of a child's brain was often ruined forever.
Today education is being improved. It still lays too much emphasis on memory
work.To be able to pass examinations does not mean that one will deal practically
and sensibly with life's problems. Now we hear a great deal about the development
of the physical body. This began largely with World War I, when England discovered
that she was a C3 nation. The dictators then took up the cry for strength
and health, but its meaning was sinister. The race must be healthy and strong
to provide cannon-fodder and defeat other nations' Still this health movement
is a step ahead of the starvation diet and hideous monotony of the schools
described by Charles Dickens.
The
greatest factor, however, is left unthought of an undeveloped: the emotional
nature. More than bread, more than knowledge, a man's life depends upon the
free, healthy growth of his love and desire nature. The very word "emotion"
shows its meaning, the motive force behind life. It is necessary for man to
love, to admire, to appreciate, to generously share, to co-operate. Otherwise
he cannot live a happy and useful life. These qualities are the play of the
creative life in his emotional self, and if they are free and beautifully
grown, man has the finest sublimating force in creating. The poets are well
aware of this. So often the poets teach us better than they know, better than
the philosophers. Wordsworth wrote:
"We
live by admiration, hope and love,
And even as these ar well and wisely placed,
In dignity of being we ascend."
Many
people have forgotten how to exercise and express their emotions. They feel
that they do not love anything or anybody and that no one loves them. Suppressed
in normal avenues, the emotional nature takes revenge by expressing itself
in undesirable ways. If we have taught our children to love truly and to admire
generously they will have little trouble with their sex nature in their later
years.
Connected
occultly with the emotional nature is the spiritual man, working on what is
called the aspirational and intuitional level. Thee is a subtle connection
between the two, hence the enduring bond between religion and sex. It lies
in the fact that the creative impulse on the physical plane is the lower pole
of that mystical, creative force which finally brings a soul into "union
with God." Religion can be and is a potent means of sublimation. Quite
instinctively, therefore, do sex-starved women turn to religious ecstasy and
the worship of priests. In spite of common ridicule on this subject they are
unconsciously sublimating the sex impulse. The upper pole of physical love
is worship, adoration. Indeed, no sex-love is perfect that does not include
the element of worship. It is common to laugh at the adoring, self-giving
of adolescent "calf-love", but it may be that only then, at that
one pure awakening of his mind and heart, does a boy know the real meaning
of the universe. Love, worship, adoration, appreciation: these are the real
solvents. Many a married couple,joined by a sensual attraction only, can never
forgive each other for being deprived of love and so that most dreadful thing
of all, a deadly marital hatred, sets in.
THE
QUALITY OF LOVE
Is
love an "art" and can it be learned? From one standpoint we have
really nothing else to learn. But love, true love, self-forgetting, generous,
divine, is the product of slow growth and takes many incarnations to develop.
It is both a science and an art, the eternal right and left hand of every
potency. Science and religion, which latter is but the "artistic"
approach to life, are not opposed to each other. The one but complements the
other. The way of science is from below upwards, by patient, selfless investigation.
The way of art is from above downwards, illuminating and inspiring the mind
and heat with the shining down-flow of divine intuition. Each explains the
other, but perhaps the divine flights of art pierce further into the supernal
light than does the patient, steady tread of science, for, as George Sand
put it: "The mind seeks, but it is the heart which finds."
Just
as there is an art of worship to be learned in ever finer and nobler ways,so
is there an art of love to be learned in even higher and nobler ways of loving.
A great lover is an artist indeed, and has won by sacrifice and sorrow this
divine capacity. Like the poet, he is born and not made, and he is not so
common a phenomenon as many people would suppose. Happy is the man who has
this capacity; let him ask no other blessedness for within him is the "Light
of the World." There is an old proverb which says that it is love which
makes the world go around. Without love, indeed, which is the creative force
of Deity in our souls, all things would cease to be. Descartes said: "I
think therefore I am." Let us put it thus: " I love therefore I
am." For he who does not love is already dead.
A
relationship in life is a class in the school of love, teaching an angle of
loving. To reap its full power we must not let the vice of selfish possession
grip us. Jealousy is commonly supposed to be a sign of love, but it is only
a proof of self-love It is "natural" but we may grow out of the
natural into the supernatural. In an ancient Tibetan scripture seven forms
of love are enumerated,four belonging to the gods and three to men. The lowest
of the three human form is mere physical attraction, shared also by atoms
and molecules. This exhausts itself as soon as satisfied. A higher form may
be called psychic; it is on a reciprocal basis: I will love you if you love
me, and you owe me something for loving you. This form holds within itself
the seed of its own death.The third form already borders on the ways of the
gods and is a little difficult for men to achieve and so must generally be
learned. This is to so love the beloved that we desire only his highest good
and in his own terms. Such love is immortal and the ages cannot quench it.
There is a tale of a devoted Indian wife who approached the Lord Buddha when
He was upon earth to ask Him how she might be sure that she would be her beloved
husband in all future lives upon earth.The Blessed One replied that if she
could be unfailingly faithful, tender and forgiving, she would bind his heart
to hear for al lives to come.
Love
in its highest sense is purified of egotism and many a heartbreak, many a
loss, is to teach the soul this supreme secret. Immortal love is as the sun,
shining upon the world because he is light, and asking nothing back. Possessiveness
is an unexpurgated impurity, and so the heavenly bliss of true love cannot
yet come, for only to the "pure in heart" opens the Divine Vision
in all its wonder.
When
sex is ennobled by love,it is purified, exalted; and can, as said before,
become indeed a doorway to God, to the King in His beauty. How rare, how wonderful,how
fine, must be the lovers to whom this comes' Yet it can come.
"Oh!
world as Gods has made it, all is beauty,
And knowing this is love, and love is duty,
What further may be sought for or declared?"
Robert
Browning
Just to love another as a source of personal satisfaction is what Madame Blavatsky
called " égoisme à deux." Such love cannot endure.
The vibratory wave between the two loves must be closed, making a triangle.
Love between man and woman has a curious quality; for itself alone it cannot
live. It must be consecrated to and hallowed by a Higher than itself.
"I could not love thee, dear, so much
Lov'd I not honour more."
Richard Lovelace
So
God,the Ideal, must complete the triangle, the Other-worldly One to Whom the
lovers owe obeisance. Or, in the other direction the blinding link may be
a child, for he, when he comes, is the Christ Child, the King, whose father
and mother are but his guardians, his supreme servants of state.
DIVORCE
Should
we, or should we not, divorce a partner with whom we no longer live at peace?
This is a very vexed question. On the one hand there is the view that divorce
should be had for the asking and on the other, the standpoint of the Roman
Catholic Church which allows no divorce. Divorce has reached such heights
in some countries that stability of the nation as well as of the family is
seriously threatened. Even Soviet Russia, at first very free with divorces,
now strives to prevent them whenever possible. Probably the religious view
of the Church against divorce arises from the words of the Christ: "Those
who God had joined together, let no man put asunder" Does occultism bear
this out?
To
a certain extent it does. The inner significance and psychic effect of the
religious ceremony of marriage does produce an alteration in the psychic radiations
of both partner, which in some cases persists after death. Does this mean
that divorce should never be allowed? Probably not, but it is evident that
the terrible prevalence of divorce in the modern world is really founded upon
a serious lack in character and training and upon too hasty marriage. Marriage,
particularly with the young, is so often an impulsive,glamorous act, lasting
but a short time when put into contact with the sober facts of married life.
Oliver Goldsmith opens his famous Vicar of Wakefield with the words:
"I chose my wife as she did her wedding dress, for qualities that would
wear well." How often the bemused young man is ruled by his untrained
emotions and the equally bemused young woman has probably been nurtured on
a diet of romantic and sentimental absurdities and is expecting, as so many
young women do, a fairy prince on his knees continually before her. The tired
mother; the inadequate housekeeper; the unshaven, prosaic husband who very
soon takes his beloved wife "for granted," often bring early disillusionment.
Our
young people should be trained for marriage which is the great business of
most people's lives. The modern girl's ignorance of all that can conduce to
a happy home is appalling. She should never grow into adult life unequipped
in the arts of housekeeping, cooking, nursing, and nutrition, nor uneducated
regarding a sane and balanced view of sex, and its real meaning. She should
know that the happy and proper conduct of a home is her higher privilege,
for therein lies not only her own happiness, but that of her husband and children
and the whole future of the race.
Most
men desire a "home" In his heart of hearts a man is simpler than
a woman. He wants a woman of his own to come back from the working world,
he wants a home and children for whom he can live and work. A happy, contented
husband does not generally seek adventures elsewhere. But it is the children
who suffer most from divorce. There is the poor little boy so unhappily confused
with a succession of "daddies". There is the little girl of twelve
who was so shocked at her beloved father's divorce from her mother that she
developed a bad case of diabetes. Women must realize that home-making is the
most sublime and lovely of all the arts, demanding qualities sensitive, unselfish,
enduring beyond all other avenues of service. There can no hard and fast laws
in these matters. That a husband or wife should be tied for life to a lunatic,
or to a sadistic or brutal, selfish partner, is unthinkable. But these are
few and far between among the general causes for divorce.
CELIBACY
Does
occultism look with favour upon the growing practice of birth-control. Certainly
not. In the present state of our world it may sometimes be necessary to curtail
the number of children, but the true limitation of a family should come from
self-control. To use other means, especially for escaping the results of promiscuous
sexual intercourse, brings great karmic penalties. Indeed, it may be said
that all intercourse between the sexes,legitimate or otherwise, is productive
of complicated karmic results.
Is
celibacy to be recommend? There is a natural celibacy which occurs in the
occultist or saint who has perfectly transmuted the creative urge to higher
levels. When the creative powers are turned away from the physical level they
increase intellectual perception and spiritual powers. Then, to clairvoyant
vision, the pranic light flows upward through the spinal canal and radiates
out above the head, instead of flowing downward to the sexual organs. This
process cannot be hastened with impunity; it is the result of long and patient
directing of thought and emotion towards divine and impersonal ends. As a
great occultist once said: "The force which brings about the junction
of two bodies here on earth, enormously sublimated and uplifted, brings about
the union of the soul with God."
THE
CLIMACTERICS
The
are two periods in human life when profound physical and psychological changes
take place: at the dawn of sexual life and at its close. It is not wise, when
the age of puberty approaches, to overwork girls in school. It is a time of
special adjustment and injury done then may affect the whole later life. They
need great understanding and kindness, great tolerance and love to help them
through experiences that are baffling to themselves. Such queer things can
happen to them; they may experience sudden rushes of power which may be found
to be endowed with a kind of compulsive magnetism whereby others can be influenced.
Do we realize that sex magnetism is the source of all attraction in us, physical,
artistic, creative? Then, too, psychical effects may occur, such as seeing
whirling colours,passing into queer dream states when nothing seems real.The
need for the interest of a strong, wise, kind, older person is paramount in
those days. With boys, too, watchful care and tender love should guard the
citadel of a boy's integrity. Above all, parents should win the confidence
of their children, not by asking for it, but by being worthy of it, for the
young need the assurance of security, care and love to prevent the psychological
problems of later life.
At
the other end of this cycle there is the disappearance of the pro-creational
capacity. In highly evolved races, and especially among women who have lived
celibate lives, the menopause or "change of life" as it is called
sets in earlier. It seems to occur later in women who have borne many children.
One cannot help feeling sorry for women when the difficulties of this change
overtake them,for here again, queer psychological symptoms sometimes occur.
During these two major changes in life those who are passing through them
should be surrounded by the greatest sympathy and understanding and with the
older women whose child-bearing days are drawing to a close, even more tender
care is needed and the cessation of undesired marital union.
Does
a man have a similar experience? In a more subjective way, yes. A very well-know
sign of the climacteric in men is their sudden development of interest in
younger women. Many a sober, respectable husband does foolish things at an
advanced age.This is really the final flicker of the sex urge in man. To him
youth and sex are often synonymous, so he must persuade himself that he is
still young, still capable of exciting interest in the other sex.
Both
the young and old need shelter and care. The intervening ages can stand on
their own feet and fight their own battles. What is more heart-rending than
the horrible "homes" in which some poor, old people are condemned
to live and die. Two things hurt whenever they are seen: youth without hope
and old age without peace.
CHAPTER
II
THE INNER DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN
"Children
should above all be taught self-reliance, love for all men, altruism, mutual
charity, and more than anything else, to think and reason for themselves.We
should reduce the purely mechanical work of the memory of an absolute minimum
and devote the time to the development and training of the inner senses, faculties,
and latent capacities. .... We should aim at creating free men and women,
free intellectually, free morally, unprejudiced in all respects, and above
all things, unselfish."
H.P.Blavatsky
THE
RETURN TO INCARNATION
What
shall be our relationship to children? First let us realize that the child
does not "belong" to us, nor is he a "clean slate" on
which parents and teachers may write what they will. He brings with him his
own character and the qualities and capacities he has developed in other lives.
If he seems to "inherit" certain characteristics from his parents
or other physical ancestors, it is due to the type of matter, more readily
or otherwise expressing certain attributes,which his parents have provided,
and also to the enormous formative influence of the environment in early years.
There
are three forces operating to bring a soul to a certain place in life. First
there is the general evolutionary trend, which unhindered, would automatically
bring each soul into the best circumstances for his further advance in evolution.
But this force, the true "Will of God," bringing all things to their
ultimate fulfilment and beatitude, is often hindered by two other powers:
the personal karma set up by the individual's deeds in past lives and the
unbreakable bonds formed with other souls in that past.
When
the hour is ripe the soul, after a long rest-time of fulfilment and peace
in the inner worlds during which he has been assimilating the lessons of his
last life's experiences and transmuting them into soul powers, returns to
earth for yet another day in the great school of life. He comes back a day
older, a little more experienced, with a little more of his innate faculties
of mind and heart unfolded. This is the way he "grows" from life
to life in eternity, and there will come a time when he will surely be made
perfect:
"Here
sits he shaping wings to fly,
The type of perfect in his mind,
In nature can he nowhere find."
Tennyson
Is
the soul conscious of its return? Only the highly developed. The ego on his
own plane is awake and aware, but on these lower planes is largely unconscious
and has to find again another body for expression and experience. The return
to earth is similar to the withdrawal from it. At the last moments of earth-life
the passing soul sees, as in a vision, the whole of his past life, travelling
backward from age to childhood. There is a very real reason for this. It is
as if the spiritual man, quitting the arena of life, turns and sees the whole
of that past day of life, where he succeeded and where he failed.Then, the
withdrawal complete, he sinks for a short time into a peaceful sleep, during
which his psychic body is adjusted to a separate existence on the psychic
plane. When he awakes he finds around him those who he loves who have preceded
him to the after-death world.
Life
on the other side, increasingly happier and more subtle, is really a process
of psychic assimilation. Generally, nothing new is initiated there, but the
ego lives through a long concatenation of events arising from his innermost
consciousness. In the end his psychic body drops away from him, leaving him
for a while in contact with the blissful spheres of the spiritual words. It
is when this process is complete that he turns again earthwards. Tanha, the
thirst for sentient existence, again arises in him much as physical hunger
arises when digestion is complete.
This
attention turned outward, toward the worlds of objective experience, again
causes psychic matter similar to that of his last psychic body, to gather
around him. It is not yet organized. Life will do that organizing as he lives,
but it comes with the skandhas,or seeds of good and evil tendencies carried
over from past lives. These begin to flower and to colour the auric radiations
(which in a little child are pure white) as they come under the influence
of the same qualities in action in the outer world. How wonderful it would
be if little children never heard or saw anything ugly, rough or wicked. Then
the good and beautiful in them would flower first,and thus acquire a preponderating
influence throughout life. The first seven years of a child's life are in
many ways the most important of all, for during that brief time the axes of
future growth, physical and psychological, are determined and fixed. Was it
not one of the Popes who said: "Give me a child until he is seven years
old and all the world may do what they will with afterwards"?
The
physical body is so pre-eminently the vehicle of karma that it is built for
a man by the angelic orders. Nationality, parentage and environment are karmic
inheritances form past lives. Deep in the inner worlds, at every moment of
life, we write the record for our own future. This eternal, inner plane, where
everything that has ever happened is still happening, is called by the Hindus
the Gupta Vidya, or hidden record, and by the Christian Bible, "The Book
of Life." "Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect;
and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned,
when as yet there was none of them." (Psalms 139, verse 16)
It
is fairly easy to see how this is done. Everything is really a matter of wave-length
or vibration. As we act, as we speak, as we think, we set going an ever-widening
circle of vibration. The voice makes rhythmic wavelengths on the air, thought
makes rhythmic wavelengths, called by Patanjali,the India sage, vrittis, on
a still subtler form of matter. These all set up synchronous, though vastly
subtler and quicker, wavelengths in the surrounding and permeating planes
of ever subtler matter. Thus every action, word, motive and thought, resounds
from sphere to sphere and finally records itself on that subtlest form of
matter called by the Hindus the akasha, and by the philosophers, the Eternal
Now.
THE
"BOOK OF LIFE"
That
living, moving "Book" is governed and guarded by mighty Intelligences,
in Hinduism the Lipika or recorders, in Christianity, generically speaking,
the "recording angel" who keeps the "Book of Life." From
these self-written records these great Intelligences plan the leading outline
of a man's life, what nation he shall enter, what family he should join, and
the major, inescapable events of the coming life. The Muslim scriptures say:
"The fate of every man is hung around his neck at birth."
This
is the real horoscope, known to the ancient Chaldeans, but not yet fully recovered
by the modern astrologer. We must not picture any kind of kismet, or pre-determined
fate, in the karma of life. It is always a moving, flowing current, capable
of being altered or re-directed at any moment though this is generally done
only by the developed man. Ancient Indians describe three main types of karma.
First the "ready-money" form, little events flowing from little
causes, generated day by day as we live. Then the events coming from past
lives, showing as unexpected major happenings. Lastly the "piled-up"
form, awaiting suitable expression from the long past. Most men live upon
the surface, but a man who ceases to do this, albeit unconsciously, and begins
to live upon a deeper level, sometimes releases this form of karma, and this
may bring apparent added trouble and disaster just when he is doing his best.
Thus the good seem to suffer and the wicked to flourish like "the green
bay tree," because nature does not ask child-souls to learn lessons too
hard for them as yet. "God will not suffer you to be tempted above what
ye are able." (I.Cor. X, verse 13). But one day the more difficult lessons
will come and the heavier payment be exacted. "Be sure your sins will
find you out." (Num. 32- verse 23).
Down
tier upon tier through descending subtle intelligences comes the plan of a
man's life, till at last it reaches the hands of a little angelic being whose
mission it is to build the coming body within the mother, taking the materials
form both the father and the mother and occasionally a very little from other
people in the household. Many a mother has described how she felt invisible
influences around her during her pregnancy.
The
soul comes to a certain nationality because life in its ranks will round out
and develop specific characteristics.He comes to certain parents because he
has links with them from past lives. We should never talk about the expected
"little stranger," for it never is a stranger. It is always someone
we have known in the past and in most cases have loved. Knowledge of this
truth would help to mitigate a prevalent evil, possessive motherhood. The
child does not "belong" to us, we did not create him. He came to
our care, while his body is still young and immature, because in the past
we knew and loved him.
The
child is influenced before birth through the mother. Hence the desirability
of conditions of peace and happiness for all expectant mothers. The ancient
Greeks placed beautiful statues before the expectant mother that her child
might be moulded on beautiful lines. Is it to be wondered at that so many
stunted, ill-formed bodies are born in in our great slums?
THE
FIRST SEPTENATE: PHYSICAL
Invisible
angels, devas, or shining ones, as the East calls them, accompany the phenomenon
of birth as also of death. Very lovely these special angels are. When the
child is born his physical body is laid bare to the influences of the surrounding
physical world, but his inner principles are still shrouded. Indeed, he is
"born" in successive layers, during seven-year periods until grown.
During
the first seven-year period the child is becoming acquainted with the physical
world and is therefore, as Maria Montessori teaches
us, greatly attracted by colour and form; desiring to touch, to handle and
to taste. Mothers should not be surprised if a little child has no sense of
morality, is childishly selfish; he is recapitulating the past evolution of
the race. Just as before birth, the foetus briefly runs through the vast periods
of man's physical evolution, being at one time like a fish and later covered
with fur like an animal, so after birth the child runs through the past psychological
evolution of the race. A small child is in one way but a little animal, sweet
and charming as he often is, and the chief thing that matters for him is that
he should feel secure, acquire good physical habits and live in affectionate
peace. Indeed, a loving atmosphere is essential for little children - the
feathers that line the human nest, necessary even for their physical growth.
A child who has not been loved and petted by his mother is handicapped for
all his life. Now it can be understood why there is such a high percentage
of deaths in orphanages, and doctors now recommend kind and suitable foster
mothers for little orphans.
"Mother-love"
should be calm and deep, wise and understanding, not excitable, passionate
nor possessive. Mothers do not realize the harm they do their children by
undue emotionalism. Peace, affectionate, secure peace, is requisite for every
little child. Nor should a small child be continually asked to reason or to
give demonstrations of feeling. Both of these will in time, but to hasten
them unduly often blights what might have been a lovely power. How often is
the baby exhorted to sit up and take notice; that this effort is unnatural
is shown in the infant's unusually bright eyes; the baby should sleep away
its early years and it should be loved silently. Worse still is the common,
motherly habit of dragging emotional and unnatural feeling from children.
"You do love mother, don't you? You don't want to hurt mother, do you?"
It is a strain on a little child's heart and mind to put these problems to
it.
On
the other hand, many a lovely burgeoning blossom in a child's aura is blighted,
sometimes blasted for life, by harsh, violent treatment. Beating often produces
unnatural sexual excitation, and psychological warring produces in after years
a twisted and thwarted soul. Indeed, the terrors of childhood are so many
and varied that one sometimes wonders how most people are able to be as nice
as they are.
Too
much baby talk is not advisable for children and as early as possible they
should be taught to take part in the world's work, at least in that part of
it centered in and around the home. Few people realize how terribly bored
many children are, especially the children of the rich. Poorer children at
least join in the business of life, running errands, watching baby for mother,
et cetera, but the poor, little rich boy or girl has nothing valid to do;
he is supposed to play all day and is surrounded with expensive toys which
leave no room for the exercise of his creative imagination. Older children
need to feel not only that they "belong", but that they also are
necessary adjuncts in the welfare and work of their small world. All children
should be treated with gentleness and respect. Their bodies may be small and
weak, but the ego behind is not, and may be older in evolution than his parents.
Most adults can remember their helpless rage at the way older people treated
them, calling them "naughty" (a term never understood by the child),
and one wonders how a child would grow up who was treated from the very beginning
with scrupulous consideration and respect.
During
these first seven years a child learns by unconsciously imbibing from his
surroundings and from the people in them. Hence the paramount important of
example. We say: Children are such imitators," and so they are; their
little auras reflect as in a mirror the passing moods of their elders.
PSYCHIC
CHILDREN
Up
to the age of approximately seven, the immortal ego is more or less overshadowing
his new vehicle rather than actually being enclosed within it. He is put,
unconsciously to himself, into touch with his new body by the angelic hosts
at that moment before birth called "quickening". To inner vision
that influence looks like an ever-increasing wedge of light in the brain.
Hence some children are "psychic," living in awareness of both physical
and psychic worlds at once. It should not be supposed that the child is necessarily
untruthful if he talks about something that adults cannot see. Many sensitive
children see the fairy world with its "little people" who are just
beyond normal human visibility, but not beyond the psychic vision of the child.
The fairies are the natural guardians of trees and flowers and the lower insects,
and while generally of an elementary intelligence, are very imitative and
sportive and sometimes are aware of children, see them and respond accordingly.
Many times a child will have an invisible playmate who may be a fairy or a
child who has passed from physical life; many a deceased mother comforts and
plays with her children when they have left their bodies through the gateway
of sleep. Who does not remember the lovely tale by Father R.H.Benson about
the lonely little boy with whom Our Lady played each night. Rightly should
we tell stories to little children and teach them poems; the haunting beauty
aroused in their imaginations will stay with them all during life.
THE
SECOND SEPTENATE: EMOTIONAL
At
about the age of seven, when the second teeth begin to come, a very wonderful
phenomenon takes place which can be observed by discerning parents and teachers.
Almost suddenly the child appears a little different, perhaps not quite so
angelic and charming. Up to this moment the guardian angel who built his body
has also watched over him since birth. The angel is now departing and the
child's own divine ego is taking charge. In the case of a great genius this
sometimes occurs much sooner. Quite logically, therefore, the Greek Church
does not hold a child responsible for "mortal sin" before the age
of seven years.
During
the second septenate, from seven to fourteen, the emotional sheath of consciousness
is laid bare to the impacts of the world. Hence, fourteen, the average age
of puberty, is called the sentimental age. Until seven, the outer physical
world moulds the course of the new life; afterward the inner sense and values
begin to unfold. Therefore, at this age teaching can be given by imagery and
parable and the spiritual viewpoint can be assimilated. As it is the emotional
nature which now flowers and develops, love, appreciation and mercy can best
be inculcated during the early teen years. This is the age when children should
be taught to care for pets, rather than during the earlier septenate. For
the immature mind, much memory work can be exacted; it does not matter that
the child does not understand fully what he learns for that will dawn on him
later.
Nearing
the age of fourteen in both boys and girls, the sex nature awakes. In some
children and in some climates this change begins at a still earlier age. It
is often accompanied by a great disturbance of the nervous system, more especially
in girls. Examinations and mental strain are to be deprecated for girls of
that age; too often schoolteachers and even mothers do not realize what this
great change means to a girl's whole nature. Explanation of menstruation should
be delicate and loving, and the child should be made to understand that it
is nature's way of preserving the power to create a new body without loss
or injury to herself in the future. Avoid the apprehension and dismay which
may follow unwise instruction regarding this natural change. Boys have not
this outward evidence of the arrival of puberty, yet something similar takes
place in their constitution. In both sexes this a period of nervous and emotional
instability and either may be seized with queer depressions and frightening
ideas. This is the age when religion and art are potent means toward directing,
and even sublimating, the creative life in the youth.
Children
are almost always curious about their own origin. Should this be explained
to them? Of course it should be, lovingly, gently, but sincerely and frankly,
by the parents. Shrinking from this responsibility may have disastrous results
as when the information is gained from ignorant nurse-maids or evil-minded
school-mates. The facts of life can be explained so beautifully and simply
that thereafter no evil thought regarding this function can touch the child.
THE
THIRD SEPTENATE: MENTAL
During
the third septenate, from fourteen to twenty-one years, the mind begins to
unfold. At this time the society of elders is of immense importance. Perhaps
we have gone too far in our glorification of youth as such; youth needs the
steady influence of age, as age needs the glowing inspiration of youth. Co-education
is advisable and segregation of the sexes is unnatural; for boys to see only
boys like themselves, or callow young masters, brings about a curious lack
of development noticeable in later years. A child should have the companionship
of members of the opposite sex of his own age, as well as frequent society
of, and conversation with, adults. He should come into touch as much as possible
with the world's workers of all stations; let him help the gardener, the cook,
the plumber; in his adult life he will be the richer in understanding, in
wisdom and in soul.
OUR
ATTITUDE TOWARD CHILDREN
Parents
should be philosophic about children, not taking their little peccadillos
too seriously nor yet expecting them to be good little "yes-men".
Many mothers are too serious about their children who often thrive better
with a good-natured, wholesome nurse. They should be glad if they have strong-willed
child, vital and energetic, for he is more likely to accomplish something
worthwhile later on than the colourless automation who is less 'trouble' during
childhood. Children should be not coddle too much; the little child's ego
finds joy and growth in trying to do things for himself, however stumblingly.
Within reason, they should be allowed to make decisions and to choose their
own clothes, for as one wise mother said, when questioned about allowing her
son of ten choose his own suit at the tailor's: "Dear me, he has to paddle
his own canoe in life and the sooner he begins the better." How much
better this than to find men of fifty still tied to their mother's apron strings.
Children's
confidence can be gained, not by asking for it, but by their discovering that
their parents will always listen sympathetically and without condemnation
because they sincerely desire to help, not to dominate. Happy are the parents
whose children love and reverence them. Love and reverence are not the inborn
right of parents but must be won. Parents should not expect to be "pals"
to the boy or girl; age can never be quite that to youth, nor does youth want
it that way. Youth wants the comforter, the teacher, the guide, ready to sympathize,
ready to help, serene and understanding always. How much finer this relationship
than that of a "pal". How lovely is youth, yet old age can be very
lovely, too; the one is the complement of the other. The birth of a soul into
incarnation is a long process, and is not reached completely for many years
after the birth of the body. Here, again, how wonderful is the intuition of
a poet! These truths are beautifully expressed in Wordworth's
Intimations of Immortality:
"Our
birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, Who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy,
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The youth, who daily further from the East
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the man perceives it die away
And fade into the light of common day."
There
are some in whom the shining ideals of youth never completely die away, and
they are the young at heart, whatever their years. Many a man sneers at the
ideals of his youth and says he is "wiser now," but he is not necessarily
wiser. He has but laid down the sceptre of his own majesty and abdicated the
throne of his own creative and imaginative might. Alas' that men should posses
this power and never use it, this kriyashakti of the gods and men.
CHAPTER
III
THE YOGA OF MOTHERHOOD
"Heaven
lieth at the feet of mothers."
--Mohammed
THE
SACRED NATURE OF CHILDBIRTH
The
ancient Indian law-giver, Manu, ordained for the men of his highest caste,
the Brahmin, a four-hour meditation beginning at dawn daily. When he was asked
what he would ordain for the women, his answer was, "Motherhood is the
Yoga of women." This statement of the great sage is born out by occultism
and modern medicine.
The
famous seer, C.W.Leadbeater, writes that when an ego has had a life as a woman,
the heaven-life following it is often found to be longer than in the case
of a male incarnation. It is easy to see why. What tremendous unselfishness,
tenderness, patience, denial of self, must characterize a true mother. No
wonder she has a long heaven-life to follow!
Many
women fear childbirth. This is largely the result of wrong teaching and foolish
talk. The fear itself contracts the muscles and hinders labour. Dr. Grantly
Read, in his book, Childbirth without Fear, writes: "Childbirth
is a normal and natural function. Its ultimate reward is out of all proportion
to the sacrifices incurred. In the natural law it is the perfection of womanhood
in the great design for the continuity of the species. It is the objective
of the strongest emotional experiences of human nature. Many women have described
their experiences of childbirth as being associated with a spiritual uplifting,
the power of which they have never previously been aware. I have witnessed
this so often, and become so profoundly conscious of the inexplicable transfiguration
of women at the time of their babies' arrival that I have been led, as usual
, to ask: Why this? It is not sentimentality, it is not relief from suffering,
it is not simply the satisfaction of accomplishment. It is bigger than all
these things. Can it be that the creator intended to draw mothers nearest
to Himself at the moment of love's fulfilment? Can it be that it is the natural
reward of those who perfect their ultimate purpose in life?"
The
doctor's experience can be corroborated by many. More than one woman has declared
that the birth of her child, especially the first, produced in them a kind
of ecstasy comparable to the ecstatic consciousness of a saint. To them it
was, and has always remained, as an "initiation." The Yoga of Motherhood
is a very real yoga. It could be said to every true mother, as the Angel said
to the Mother of our Lord: "Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with
thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb."
Occultism
tells us that the process of birth is attended invisibly by certain orders
of nature angels or devas, and that at the head of their ascending hierarchy
stands one who was once the Mother of our Lord here on earth, the Lady Mary,
now become the Mother of the World. all changes in human life are attended
on the psychic plane by lovely angelic forms. Beautiful are the Angels of
Death; still more beautiful are the Angels of Birth.
THE
DIVINE FEMININE
India
knows that one aspect of God is the Divine Woman. So her great Trimurti have
each His wife, or Shakti, without whom He is utterly powerless. He is the
static power, she the dynamic. Thus Brahma, the Creator, has as consort Sarawati,
the Hindu Minerva, who is always depicted with the vina because she is the
goddess of speech and song, while her husband is the god of creative thought.
Vishnu, the god of love, has the Hindu Venus, Lakshmi, the goddess of beauty
and joy. And the great Shiva has the lovely Parvati, the "daughter of
the Himalayas," the Hindu "Our Lady."
Such
lovely types of womanhood are to be seen in India, sometimes among women who
cannot read or write but who know by heart the glorious stanzas of their ancient
and wonderful literature. Nowhere else in all the world does one see such
exquisite grace and beauty as are to be found in the high-caste Indian woman.
A brahmin once said with tears in his eyes: "I am a man of forty, I am
renowned in law courts as a Vakil with a very fierce tongue, yet not one day
have I ever left my home without bowing down to my blessed mother's feet."
India has mother-worship, not wife or woman-worship.
Woman
is not fundamentally meant to fight in the hurly-burly of the world, to compete
in the labour markets, nor to become as nothing but a brain-box. If she only
realized where her great and divine powers lie the world could be saved in
a few generations. Not that women should not be utterly free, and at liberty,
if they so will, to do whatever work in life they choose; but if they had
the right and ancient ideals they would in most cases choose that work which
they alone can do. No man can do it. His power, compared with a woman's is
that of a child. And in their manly hearts they know it, and long unconsciously
for the ideal, wise and gracious woman to worship, to give their hearts to,
and to come to as a haven of peace and love and understanding. For the husband
is after all but a woman's eldest child, and the making of a home does not
consists in rich furniture or appointments, but in the brooding spirit of
love and patience and forgiveness which forms a veritable shrine of safety.
But the one who creates a lovely home is the one who has forgotten herself,
whose whole life is a self-abnegation laid at the feet of others. How much
more lovely this can be than all the successes, social or political, in the
outer world, because it is the service of living, growing souls.
WOMAN'S
SUPREME POWER
Here
is the true yoga of woman. There could not be a better, more beautiful way
of finding God and becoming one with Him. These are the worlds of a great
Indian Adept: "Woman's mission is to become the mother of future occultists,
of those who will be born without sin. On the elevation of woman the world's
redemption and salvation hinge. And not till woman bursts the bonds of her
sexual slavery, to which she has ever been subjected, will the world obtain
an inkling of what she really is, and her proper place in the economy of nature.
The light that will come to the world when it shall discover and really appreciate
this vast problem of sex will be like 'the light that never shone on sea or
land.' Then the world will have a race of Buddhas and Christs."
To
be a good mother is a life-time work and a very hard one. Too often must her
mind be dulled by continual contact with very immature ones; too often must
she grow weary of the unconscious selfishness of all small children. But when
her sons grow to manhood what reward is hers! Her heart is full, ripe, still
growing, for she has helped God fashion immortal souls. The author of the
following lines is unknown, but how true the idea:
"A
partnership with God is Motherhood,
What strength, what purity, what self-control,
What love,what wisdom, should belong to her
Who helps God fashion an immortal soul."
And
to grow old as a woman and a mother, how lovely! A wisdom shines from such
a face the wisdom of the heart. Not only her own children seek comfort there,
but all the lonely, the bewildered, the lost. "Mater Consolatrix"
is the lovelist title of Our Lady and of all women. An Irish poet, Joseph
Campbell, has put this into very beautiful verse:
"As
a white candle,
In a holy place,
So is the purity
Of an aged face.
As the spent radiance
Of a winter sun,
So is a woman
With her travail done."