Theosophy - Some Difficulties of the Inner Life - by Annie Besant- Adyar Pamphlets No 25
Adyar
Pamphlet No. 25
SOME
DIFFICULTIES OF THE INNER LIFE
ΔΔ
by ANNIE BESANT
Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras. India
First printing March 1913, Reprinted November 1919
[Page
1] Every
one who sets himself in earnest to the living of the Inner Life encounters
certain obstacles at the very beginning of the pathway thereto, obstacles
which repeat themselves in the experience of each, having their basis
in the common nature of men. To each wayfarer they seem new and peculiar
to himself, and hence give rise to a feeling of personal discouragement
which undermines the strength needed for their surmounting. If it were
understood that they form part of the common experience of aspirants,
that they are always encountered and constantly over-climbed, it may
be that some cheer would be brought to the cast-down neophyte by the
knowledge. The grasp of a hand in the darkness, the sound of a voice
that says: " Fellow-traveler,
I have trodden where you tread, and the road is practicable" — these
things bring help in the night-time, and such a help-bringer this article
would fain be.
One of these difficulties
was put to me some time ago by a friend and fellow-wayfarer in connection [Page
2] with some counsel given
as to the purification of the body.
He did not in any way traverse the statement
made, but said with much truth and insight
that for most of us the difficulty lay more with the Inner Man than with
his instruments; that for most of us the bodies we had were quite sufficiently
good, or, at the worst, needed a little tuning, but that there was a desperate
need for the improvement of the man himself. For the lack of sweet music,
the musician was more to blame than his instrument, and if he
could be reached and improved, his instrument might pass muster. It was
capable of yielding much better tones than those produced from
it at present, but those tones depended on the fingers that pressed the
keys. Said my friend pithily and somewhat pathetically: I
can
make my body do what I want; the difficulty is that I do not
want.
Here is a difficulty that every serious aspirant feels. The improving of the
man himself is the chief thing that is needed, and the obstacle of his
weakness, his lack of will and of tenacity of purpose, is a far more
obstructive one than can be placed in our way by the body. There are
many methods known to all of us by which we can build up bodies of a
better type if we want to do so, but it is the wanting in which we are
deficient. We have the knowledge, we recognize the expediency of putting
it into practice, but the impulse to do so is lacking. Our root-difficulty lies in
our inner nature; it is inert, the wish to move is [Page 3] absent it is not
that the external obstacles are insurmountable, but that the man himself
lies supine and has no mind to climb over them. This experience is being
continually repeated by us; there seems to be a want of attractiveness
in our ideal; it fails to draw us; we do not wish to realise it, even though we
may have intellectually decided that its realisation is desirable. It stands
before us like food before a man who is not hungry; it is certainly very good
food and he may be glad of it to-morrow, but just now he has no craving
for it, and prefers to lie basking in the sunshine rather than to get up and
take possession of it.
The
problem resolves itself into two questions: Why do I not want that which
I see. as a rational being, is desirable, productive of happiness ? What
can I do to make myself want that which I know to be best for myself and
for the world ? The spiritual teacher who could answer these questions
effectively would do a far greater service to many than one who is only
reiterating constantly the abstract desirability of ideals that we all
acknowledge, and the imperative nature of obligations that we all admit — and
disregard. The machine is here, not wholly ill-made; who can place his
finger on the lever, and make it go ?
The first question
must be answered by such an analysis of self-consciousness as may explain
this puzzling duality, the not desiring that which we yet see to be desirable.
We are wont to say that [Page
4] self-consciousness
is a unit, and yet, when we turn our attention inwards, we see a bewildering
multiplicity of 'I's’ and are stunned by the clamour of
opposing voices, all coming apparently from ourselves. Now
consciousness — and self-consciousness is only consciousness
drawn into a definite centre which receives and sends out — is a unit,
and if it appears in the outer world as many, it is not because it has lost
its unity, but because it presents itself there through different media.
We speak glibly of the vehicles of consciousness, but perhaps do not always
bear in mind what is implied in the phrase. If a current from a galvanic
battery be led through several series of different materials, its appearance
in the outer world will vary with each wire. In a platinum wire it may appear
as light, in an iron one as heat, round a bar of soft iron as magnetic energy,
led into a solution as a power that decomposes and recombines. One single
energy is present, yet many modes of it appear, for the manifestation of
life is always conditioned by its forms, and as consciousness works in the
causal, mental, astral, or physical body, the resulting 'I' presents very
different characteristics. According to the vehicle which, for the time being,
it is vitalising, so will be the conscious 'I'. If it is working in the
astral body, it will be the 'I' of the senses; if in the mental it will be
the 'I' of the intellect. By illusion, blinded by the material that enwraps
it, it identifies itself with the craving of the senses, the reasoning of
the [Page
5] intellect, and cries, I
want, I think.
The nature which is developing the germs of bliss and knowledge is the
eternal Man, and is the root of sensations and thoughts; but these
sensations and thoughts themselves are only the transitory activities in
his outer bodies, set up by the contact of his life with the outer life,
of the Self with the not-self. He makes temporary centers for his life in
one or other of these bodies, lured by the touches from without that awaken
his activity, and working in these he identifies himself with them. As his
evolution proceeds, as he himself develops, he gradually discovers that
these physical, astral, mental centers are his instruments, not himself;
he sees them as parts of the not-self that he has temporarily
attracted into union with himself — as he might take up a pen or
a chisel — he
draws himself away from them, recognizing and using them as the tools they
are, knows himself to be life not form, bliss not desire, knowledge not
thought; and then first is conscious of unity, then alone finds peace.
While the consciousness identifies itself with forms, it appears to be
multiple; when it identifies itself with life it stands forth as one.
The next important fact for us is that, as H.
P. B. pointed out, consciousness, at the present stage of evolution, has its
centre normally in the astral body. Consciousness learns to know by its capacity
of sensation, and sensation belongs to the astral body. We sensate; that is,
we recognise contact with something [Page
6] which
is not ourselves, something which arouses in us pleasure, or pain, or the
neutral point between. The life of sensation is the greater part of the life
of the majority. For those below the average, the life of sensation is the
whole life. For a few advanced beings the life of sensation is transcended.
The vast majority occupy the various stages which stretch between the life
of sensation, of mixed sensation and emotion and thought also in diverse proportions
and the life of emotion and thought in diverse proportions. In the life that
is wholly of sensation there is no multiplicity of ‘I’s’ and
therefore no conflict; in the life that has transcended sensation there is
an Inner Ruler Immortal, and there is no conflict; but in all the ranges between,
there are manifold ‘I’s’ and
between them conflict.
Let
us consider the life of sensation as found in the savage of low development.
There is an ‘I,’ passionate, craving, fierce, grasping, when
aroused to activity. But there is no conflict, save with the world outside his
physical body. With that me may war, but inner war he knows not. He does
what he wants, without questionings beforehand or remorse afterwards; the
actions of the body follow the promptings of desire, and the mind does not
challenge, nor criticize, nor condemn. It merely pictures and records,
storing up materials for future elaboration. Its evolution is forwarded by the
demands made upon it by the ‘I’ of sensations to exert its energies
for the gratification [Page 7] of
that imperious ‘I’ . Its is driven into activity by these
promptings of desire, and begins to work on its store of observations and
remembrances, thus evolving a little reasoning faculty and planning
beforehand for the gratification of its master. In this way it develops
intelligence, but the intelligence is wholly subordinated to desire, moves
under its orders, is the slave of passion. It shows no separate individuality,
but is merely the willing tool of the tyrannous desire ‘I’.
Contest
only begins when, after a long series of experiences, the Eternal Man has
developed sufficient mind to review and balance up, during his life in
the lower mental world, between death and birth, the results of his earthly
activities. He then marks off certain experiences as resulting in more
pain than pleasure, and comes to the conclusion that he will do well to
avoid their repetition; he regards them with repulsion and engraves that
repulsion on his mental tablets, while he similarly engraves attraction on
other experiences that have resulted in more pleasure than pain. When he
returns to earth, he brings this record with him, as an inner tendency of his
mind; and when the desire ’I’ rushes towards an attractive object,
recommencing a course of experiences that have led to suffering, he
interposes a feeble protest, and another ‘I’– consciousness
working as mind – makes it felt and heard, regarding these experiences
with repulsion, and objecting to being [Page
8] dragged
through them. The protest is so weak and the desire so strong, that we can
scarcely speak of a contest; the desire 'I', long enthroned, rushes over
the weakly-protesting rebel, but when the pleasure is over and the painful
results follow, the ignored rebel lifts his voice again in a querulous "I told
you so," and this is the first sting
of remorse. As life succeeds life, the mind asserts more and more, and the
contest between the desire 'I' and the thought 'I' grows fiercer and fiercer,
and the agonised cry of the Christian Mystic: "I find another law in my
members warring against the law of my mind", is repeated in the
experience of every evolving Man. The war grows hotter and hotter as,
during the devachanic life, the decisions of the Man are more and more
strongly impressed on the mind, appearing as innate ideas in the
subsequent birth, and lending strength to the thought ‘I’ which,
withdrawing itself from the passions and emotions, regards them as outside
itself, and repudiates their claim to control it. But the long inheritance
of the past is on the side of the monarch it would discrown, and bitter and
many-fortuned is the war. Consciousness, in its outgoing activities, runs easily
into the worn channels of the habits of many lives; on the other hand, it
is diverted by the efforts of the Man to take control and to turn it into the
channels hewn out by his reflections. His will determines the line of the consciousness-forces
working in his higher vehicles, while habit largely determines the direction
of those [Page 9] working in the desire-body.
The will, guided by the clear-eyed intelligence, points to the lofty ideal
that is seen as a fit object of attainment; the desire-nature does not want
to reach it, is lethargic before it, seeing no beauty that it should desire
it, nay, is often repelled by the austere outlines of its grave and chastened
dignity. The difficulty is that I
do not want. We do not want to do that which, in our higher moments,
we have resolved to do. The lower ' I' is moved by the attraction of the
moment rather than by the recorded results of the past that sway the higher,
and the real difficulty is to make ourselves feel that the lethargic, or
the clamorous, 'I' of the lower nature is not the true ' I'.
How is this difficulty to be overcome ? How is it possible to make that which
we know to be the higher to be the habitual self-conscious ' I' ?
Let no one be discouraged if here it be said that this change is a matter of
growth, and cannot be accomplished in a moment. The human Self cannot,
by a single effort, rise to manhood from childhood, any more than a body
can change from infancy to maturity in a night. If the statement of the law of
growth bring a sense of chill when we regard it as an obstacle in the way of
our wish for sudden perfection, let us remember that the other side of the
statement is that growth is certain, that it cannot be ultimately prevented,
and that if law refuses a miracle, it, on the other hand, gives security.
Moreover, we can quicken [Page 10] growth, we can afford the best possible
conditions for it, and then rely on the law for our result. Let us then consider
the means we can employ for hastening the growth we see to be needed,
for transferring the activity of consciousness from the lower to the higher.
The first thing
to realise is that the desire-nature is not our Self, but an instrument fashioned
by the Self for its own using; and next that it is a most valuable instrument,
and is merely being badly used. Desire, emotion, is the motive power in us,
and stands ever between the thought and the action. Intellect sees, but it
does not move, and a man without desires and emotions would be a mere spectator
of life. The Self must have evolved some of its loftiest powers ere it
can forego the use of the desires and emotions; for aspirants, the question
is how to use them instead of being used by them, how to discipline them,
not how to destroy. We would fain
want to reach the highest, since without this wanting we shall make
no progress at all. We are held back by wanting to unite ourselves with objects
transitory, mean and narrow; cannot we push ourselves forward by wanting
to unite ourselves with the permanent, the noble and the wide? Thus
musing, we see that what we need is to cultivate the emotions, and direct
them in a way that will purify and ennoble the character. The basis of all
emotions on the side of progress is love, and this is the power which he
must cultivate. George Eliot well said: The first condition of human [Page
11] goodness is something to love; the
second, something to reverence. Now
reverence is only love directed to a superior, and the aspirant should seek
one more advanced than himself to whom he can direct his love and reverence.
Happy the man who can find such a one when he seeks, for such finding gives
him the most important condition for turning emotion from a retarding force
into a lifting one, and for gaining the needed power to want that
which he knows to be the best. We cannot love without seeking to please, and
we cannot reverence without taking joy in the approval of the one we revere.
Hence comes a constant stimulus to improve ourselves, to build up character,
to purify the nature, to conquer all in us that is base, to strive after all
that is worthy. We find ourselves quite spontaneously wanting to reach
a high ideal, and the great motive power is sent along the channels hewn out
for it by the mind. There is no way of utilizing the desire-nature more certain
and more effective than the making of such a tie, the reflection in the lower
world of that perfect bond which links the disciple to the Master.
Another useful way of stimulating the desire-nature
as a lifting force, is to seek the company of any who are more advanced in
the spiritual life than we are ourselves. It is not necessary that they should
teach us orally, or indeed talk to us at all. Their very presence is a benediction,
harmonizing, raising, inspiring. To breathe their atmosphere, to [Page
12] be
encircled by their magnetism, to be played on by their thoughts — these
things ennoble us, unconsciously to ourselves. We value words too highly,
and depreciate unduly the subtler silent forces of the Self, which, sweetly
and mightily
ordering all things, create within the turbulent chaos of our personality
the sure bases of peace and truth.
Less potent, but still sure, is the help that may
be gained by reading any book that strikes a noble note of life, whether by
lifting up a great ideal, or presenting an inspiring character for our study.
Such books as the
Bhagavad-Gîtâ, The Voice
of the Silence, Light on the
Path, The Imitation
of Christ, are among the most powerful of such aids to the desire-nature.
We are apt to read too exclusively for knowledge, and lose the moulding
force that lofty thought on great ideals may exercise over our emotions. It
is a useful habit to read every morning a few sentences from some such book
as those named above, and to carry these sentences with us through the
day, thus creating around us an atmosphere that is protective to ourselves
and beneficial to all with whom we come into contact.
Another
absolutely essential thing is daily meditation — a quiet half-hour
in the morning, ere the turmoil of the day begins, during which we deliberately
draw ourselves away from the lower nature, recognize it as an instrument
and not our self, center ourselves in the highest consciousness we can
reach, and feel it as [Page
13] our
real self. " That which is Being, Bliss and
Knowledge, that am I. Life, Love and Light, that am I." For our essential
nature is divine, and the effort to realize it helps its growth and
manifestation. Pure, passionless, peaceful, it is the Star that shines
within and
that Star is our Self. We cannot yet steadily dwell in the Star, but as we
try daily to rise to it, some gleam of its radiance illumines the illusory
' I ' made of the shadows amid which we live. To this ennobling and peace-giving
contemplation of our divine destiny we may fitly rise by worshiping with
the most fervent devotion of which we are capable — if we are fortunate
enough to feel such devotion — the Father of the worlds and the Divine
Man whom we reverence as Master. Resting on that Divine Man as the Helper
and Lover of all who seek to rise — call Him Buddha, Christ, Shrî Krshna,
Master, what we will — we may dare to raise our eyes to the ONE, from
Whom we come, to Whom we go, and in the confidence of realized sonship
murmur: I and the Father are One, I am That
One of the most
distressing of the difficulties which the aspirant has to face, arises from
the ebb and flow of his feelings, the changes in the emotional atmosphere
through which he sees the external world as well as his own character with
its powers and its weaknesses. He finds that his life consists of a series
of ever-varying states of consciousness, of alternating conditions of thought
and feeling. At one [Page
14] time he is vividly alive,
at another quiescently dead; now he is cheerful, then morbid; now
overflowing, then dry; now earnest, then indifferent; now devoted, then
cold; now aspiring, then lethargic. He is constant only in his
changeableness, persistent only in his variety. And the worst of it is that
he is unable to trace these effects to any very definite causes; they come and
go, impermanent, and are as little predicable as the summer winds.
Why was meditation easy, smooth, fruitful, yesterday ? why is it hard, irregular,
barren, today ? Why should that noble idea have fired him with
enthusiasm a week ago, yet leave him chill now ? Why was he full of love
and devotion only a few days since, but finds himself empty now gazing at
his ideal with cold, lack-luster eyes ? The facts are obvious, but the
explanation escapes him; he seems to be at the mercy of chance, to have
slipped out of the realm of law.
It is this very uncertainty which gives the poignancy
to his distress. The understood is always the manageable, and when we have
traced an effect to its cause we have gone far on the way to its control. All
our keenest sufferings have in them this constituent of uncertainty; we are
helpless because we are ignorant. It is the uncertainty of our emotional moods
that terrifies us, for we cannot guard against that which we are unable to
foresee. How then may we reach a place where these moods shall not
plague us, a rock on which we can stand while the waves surge around
us?[Page
15]
The
first step towards the place of balance is taken when we recognize the
fact — though the statement of it may sound a little
brutal — that our moods do not matter. There is no constant relation
between our progress and our feelings; we are not necessarily advancing
when the flow of emotion rejoices us, nor retrograding when its ebb
distresses us. These changing moods are among the lessons that life
brings to us, that we may learn to distinguish between the Self and the not-Self,
and to realize ourselves as the Self. The Self changes not, and that which
changes is not our Self, but is part of the transitory surroundings in which
the Self is clothed and amid which it moves. This wave that sweeps over us
is not the Self, but is only a passing manifestation of the not-Self. Let
it toss and swirl and foam, it is not I. Let consciousness realize this,
if only for a moment, and the force of the wave is spent, and the firm rock
is felt under the feet. Withdrawing from the emotion, we no longer feel it
as part of ourselves, and thus ceasing to pour our life into it as a self-expression,
we break off the connection which enabled it to become a channel of pain. This
withdrawal of consciousness may be much facilitated if, in our quiet times,
we try to understand and to assign to their true causes these distressing emotional
alternations. We shall thus at least get rid of some of the helplessness and
perplexity which, as we have already seen, are due to ignorance.[Page
16]
These alternations of happiness
and depression are primarily manifestations of that law of periodicity,
or law of rhythm, which guides the universe. Night and day alternate in
the physical life of man as do happiness and depression in his emotional
life. As the ebb and flow in the ocean, so are the ebb and flow in human
feelings. There are tides in the human heart as in the affairs of men and
as in the sea. Joy follows sorrow and sorrow follows joy, as surely as
death follows birth and birth death. That this is so is not only a theory
of a law, but it is also a fact to which witness is borne by all who have
gained experience in the spiritual life. In the famous Imitation of
Christ it is said that comfort and sorrow thus
alternate, and " this is nothing new nor strange unto them that have
experience in the way of God; for the great saints and ancient prophets had
often-times experience of such kind of vicissitudes ... If great saints were
so dealt with, we that are weak and poor ought not to despair if we be
sometimes hot and sometimes cold ... I never found any so religious and
devout, that he had not sometimes a withdrawing of grace or felt not some
decrease of zeal." (Bk. II, ix, 4, 5, 7.) This alternation of states being
recognized as the result of a general law, a special manifestation of a
universal principle, it becomes possible for us to utilize this knowledge both
as a warning and an encouragement. We may be passing through a period
of great spiritual illumination, when all seems to be easy of [Page
17]
accomplishment, when the glow
of devotion sheds its glory over life, and when the peace of sure insight
is ours. Such a condition is often one of considerable danger, its very happiness
lulling us into a careless security, and forcing into growth any remaining
germs of the lower nature. At such moments the recalling of past periods
of gloom is often useful, so that happiness may not become elation, nor enjoyment
lead to attachment to pleasure; balancing the present joy by the memory of
past trouble and the calm prevision of trouble yet to come, we reach equilibrium
and find a middle point of rest; we can then gain all the advantages that
accrue from seizing a favorable opportunity for progress without risking
a slip backwards from premature triumph. When the night comes down and all
the life has ebbed away, when we find ourselves cold and indifferent,
caring for nothing that had first attracted us, then, knowing the law,
we can quietly say: This also will pass in its turn, light and life must
come back,
and the old love will again glow warmly forth. We refuse to be unduly
depressed in the gloom, as we refused to be unduly elated in the light;
we balance one experience against the other, removing the thorn of present
pain by the memory of past joy and the foretaste of joy in the future;
we learn in happiness to remember sorrow and in sorrow to remember
happiness, till neither the one nor the other can shake the steady foothold
of the soul. Thus we begin [Page
18] to rise above the lower
stages of consciousness in which we are flung from one extreme to the other,
and to gain the equilibrium which is called yoga. Thus the existence of
the law becomes to us not a theory but a conviction, and we gradually learn
something of the peace of the Self.
It
may be well also for us to realize that the way in which we face and live
through this trial of inner darkness and deadness is one of the surest tests
of spiritual evolution. " What worldly man is there that would not willingly
receive spiritual joy and comfort if he could always have it ? For spiritual
comforts exceed all the delights of the world and the pleasures of the flesh
. . . But no man can always enjoy these divine comforts according to his
desire; for the time of trial is never far away . . . Are not all those to
be called mercenary who are ever seeking consolations ? . . . Where shall one
be found who is willing to serve God for naught ? Barely is anyone found
so spiritual as to have suffered the loss of all things." (Bk. II, x, 1; xi,
3, 4) The subtle germs of selfishness persist far on into the life of discipleship,
though they then ape in their growth the semblance of virtues, and hide the
serpent of desire under the fair blossom of beneficence or of devotion. Few
indeed are they who serve for nothing, who have eradicated the root of
desire, and have not merely cut off the branches that spread above ground.
Many a one who has tasted the subtle joy of spiritual [Page
19] experience
finds therein his reward for the grosser delights he has renounced, and
when the keen ordeal of spiritual darkness bars his way and he has to
enter into that darkness unbefriended and apparently alone, then he learns
by the bitter and humiliating lesson of disillusion that he has been serving
his ideal for wages and not for love. Well for us if we can be glad in the
darkness as well as in the light, by the sure faith in — though not
yet by the vision of — that Flame which burns evermore within, THAT
from the light of which we can never be separated, for it is in truth our
very Self. Bankrupt in Time must we be, ere ours is the wealth of the Eternal,
and only when the living have abandoned us does the Vision of Life appear.
Another difficulty
that sorely bewilders and distresses the aspirant is the unbidden presence
of thoughts and desires that are incongruous with his life and aims. When
he would fain contemplate the Holy, the presence of the unholy thrusts itself
upon him; when he would see the radiant face of the Divine Man, the mask
of the satyr leers at him in its stead. Whence these thronging forms of evil
that crowd round him ? Whence these mutterings and whisperings as of devils
in his ear ? They fill him with shuddering repulsion, yet they seem to be
his; can he really be the father of this foul swarm ? Once again an understanding
of the cause at work may rob the effect of its sharp poison-tooth, and [Page
20 deliver us from the
impotence due to ignorance. It is a commonplace of Theosophical
teaching that life embodies itself in forms, and that the life-energy
which comes forth from that aspect of the Self which is knowledge, moulds
the matter of the mental plane into thought-forms. The vibrations that
affect the mental body determine the materials that are built into
its composition, and these materials are slowly changed in accordance
with the changes in the vibrations sent forth. If the
consciousness cease to work in a particular way, the materials
which answered to those previous workings gradually lose their activity,
finally becoming effete matter and being shaken out of the mental body.
A considerable number of stages, however, intervene between the full
activity of the matter constantly answering to mental impulses and its
final deadness when ready for expulsion. Until the last stage is
reached, it is capable of being thrown into renewed activity by
mental impulses either from within or from without, and long after the man
has ceased to energize it, having outgrown the stage it represents, it may
be thrown into active vibration, made to start up as a living thought, by
a wholly external influence. For example: a man has succeeded in purifying
his thoughts from sensuality, and his mind no longer generates impure
ideas nor takes pleasure in contemplating impure images. The
coarse matter, which in the mental and astral bodies vibrates under such
impulses, is no longer [Page
21] being
vivified by him, and the thought-forms erst created by him are dying or
dead. But he meets someone in whom these things are active, and the vibrations
sent out by him revivify the dying thought-forms, lending them a temporary
and artificial life; they start up as the aspirant's own thoughts, presenting
themselves as the children of his mind, and he knows not that they
are but corpses from his past, re-animated by the evil magic of impure
propinquity. The very contrast they afford to his purified mind adds
to the harassing torture of their presence, as though a dead body were
fettered to a living man. But when he learns their true nature, they lose
their power to torment. He can look at them calmly as remnants of his past,
so that they cease to be the poisoners of his present. He knows that the
life in them is an alien one and is not drawn from him, and he can " wait,
with the patience of confidence, for the hour when they shall affect him no
longer ".
Sometimes in the case of a person who is making rapid
progress, this temporary revivification is caused deliberately by those who
are seeking to retard evolution, those who set themselves against the Good
Law. They may send a thought-force calculated to stir the dying ghosts into
weird activity, with the set purpose of causing distress, even when the aspirant
has passed beyond the reach of temptation along these lines. Once again
the difficulty ceases when the [Page
22] thoughts
are known to draw their energy from outside and not from inside, when the
man can calmly say to the surging crowd of impish tormentors: "You are not
mine, you are no part of me, your life is not drawn from my thought. Ere long
you will be dead beyond possibility of resurrection, and meanwhile you are
but phantoms, shades that were once my foes."
Another
fruitful source of trouble is the great magician Time, past-master of illusion.
He imposes on us a sense of hurry, of unrest, by masking the oneness of
our life with the veils of births and deaths. The aspirant cries out eagerly: "How
much can I do, what progress can I make, during my present life ?" There
is no such thing as a present
life; there is but one life — past and future, with the ever-changing
moment that is their meeting-place; on one side of it we see the past, on
the other side the future, and it is itself as invisible as the little piece
of ground on which we stand. There is but one life, without beginning and
without ending, the ageless, timeless life, and our arbitrary divisions of
it by the ever-recurring incidents of births and deaths delude us and ensnare.
These are some of the traps set for the Self by the lower nature, which would
fain keep its hold on the winged Immortal that is straying through its miry
paths. This bird of paradise is so fair a thing, as its plumes begin to grow
that all the powers of nature fall to loving it, and set snares to [Page
23] hold it prisoner; and of
all the snares the illusion of Time is the most subtle.
When
a vision of truth has come late in a physical life, this discouragement
as to time is apt to be most keenly felt. "I am too old to begin; if I had
only known this in youth” is the cry. Yet truly the path is one, as the
life is one, and all the path must be trodden in the life; what matters it
then whether one stage of the path be trodden or not during a particular part
of a physical life ? If A and B are both going to catch their first glimpse
of the Reality two years hence, what matters it that A will then be seventy
years of age while B will be a lad of twenty ? A will return and begin anew
his work on earth when B is ageing, and each will pass many times through
the childhood, youth and old age of the body, while traveling along the
higher stages of the path of life. The old man who late in life as we
say, begins to learn the truths of the Ancient Wisdom, instead of lamenting
over his age and saying: " how little I can do in the short time that remains
to me," should say: " how good a foundation I can lay for my next incarnation,
thanks to this learning of the truth." We are not slaves of Time, save as we
bow to his imperious tyranny, and let him bind over our eyes his bandages
of birth and death. We are always ourselves, and can pace steadfastly
onwards through the changing lights and shadows cast by his magic
lantern on the life he cannot age. Why are the Gods figured as [Page
24] ever
young, save to remind us that the true life untouched by Time ? We borrow
some of the strength and calm of Eternity when we try to live in it, escaping
from the meshes of the great enchanter.
Many another difficulty will stretch itself across the upward path as the
aspirant essays to tread it, but a resolute will and a devoted heart, lighted
by knowledge, will conquer all in the end and will reach the Supreme Goal.
To rest on the Law is one of the secrets of peace, to trust it utterly at all
times, not least when the gloom descends. No soul that aspires can ever
fail to rise; no heart that loves can ever be abandoned. Difficulties exist
only that in overcoming them we may grow strong, and they only who have
suffered are able to save.
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