Pain - It's
Meaning and Use
by
Annie Besant
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE
Adyar, Madras 600 020, India Wheaton, 111., USA • London, England
[A LECTURE GIVEN AT THE BLAVATSKY LODGE]
I PROPOSE to take for tonight a matter which is full of deep interest, I think,
to everyone, as everyone comes in the way of it—'the Meaning and the Use of
Pain. First of all as to the meaning. You may remember that when I was speaking
here, I think the last time, I tried to explain to you something of the nature
of man and the way in which man's true Self, his innermost Self, was to be
regarded as the man working in the different bodies or sheaths, and so
manifesting consciousness in different ways. You may remember that I laid
considerable stress on the fact that it is always the Self that is working, and
that if we want to understand the human constitution we must realise that the
spiritual Self lies at the root of all activities, and that the different
characteristics of the activities depend., not on a difference in the Self, but
on a difference in the medium—or the qualities— through which he is at work.
Now, I want you to start with that conception tonight, adding to it another
which I think I mentioned previously, but which is essential for the work that I
have to do now—to explain to you the meaning and the use of pain.
The spiritual Self is conscious on his own plane from the very beginning.
Offspring of the Universal
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Consciousness, what else could he be? But as he descends into this manifested
universe, and as he clothes himself in body after body, or in sheath after
sheath, the eyes, so to speak, of the Self become blinded by these successive
veils that he wraps around him, and so when he arrives at the lowest stage of
his manifestation—this physical universe in which we are—the Spirit has become
blinded by Matter, and is no longer conscious of his own high destiny or of his
own essential nature in the physical universe.
Now, it is this blinded Self, as we know, that comes into the manifested
universe for the sake of learning and of gathering experience. Let us think of
him for a moment as wearing those bodies that by this time must have become so
familiar to you—the body in which he thinks, the mind or mentality; the body in
which he feels, that we generally speak of as the " body of desire," because
feeling and desire are so very closely connected, and feelings of pleasure and
of pain arise from contact with things from without, which work on this body of
desire, and make it to be either attracted to or repelled from external objects.
Think, then, for a moment of the Self clothed in this body of desire, and
blinded by it to his own real nature and to the true conditions in which he
finds himself. He will be attracted by all sorts of external objects; attracted
by those from which he gains the sensation of pleasure, repelled, of course, by
those from which he feels the sensation of pain. So that coming into this
world—of which he knows nothing, you must remember, for I am taking him in the
very earliest stages of his experience—'Coming into this
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world of which he knows nothing, he will naturally be strongly attracted to that
which gives him pleasure by contact, which makes him feel that which he
recognises as joy or happiness or content. Thus attracted to everything which
appears to him desirable, he will often find that the gratification of desire is
followed by suffering. Attracted by the desirable object, and without experience
which would enable him to distinguish and to discriminate, he flings himself, as
it were, towards this attractive thing, only knowing that he feels pleasure in
the contact. Presently out of this contact, which was pleasurable, pain grows
up; and by that pain he finds that he has flung himself against something that
is not desirable, but repellent. And over and over and over again he will have
this experience; constantly reiterated he will find this lesson, which is taught
him by the external universe.
Let us take two very common animal appetites which, thus attracted and gratified
by pleasure, turn into sources of pain. Let us take that of attractive food,
which would work on ihe sense of taste, which is part of the body of desire;
this food will attract the sense of taste, and the unconscious
Spirit—unconscious, that is, on this plane as to the results that will follow—is
run away with by this pleasure of contact; if I may repeat the old Eastern
simile that I have used so often, that the senses are like horses that are yoked
to the chariot of the body, and that carry away the Soul towards the objects of
desire. He will gratify, then, the sense of taste to excess; he will pass into
gluttony. The result of this gratification of the sense of taste without
experience will be the pain that
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will follow on the over-gratification. So again if he gratifies the sense of the
taste, say by over-drinking, by the taking of alcohol. There again pain will
follow on the gratification of the immediate desire. And when this has been
repeated over and over and over again, this Spirit—which as mind is able to
think— connects the things together, connects the gratification of the desire
with the pain which follows on that gratification, and in this way he gradually
comes to understand that there are laws in the universe connected with his
physical body, and that if he comes into contact with those laws and tries to
violate them, he will suffer as a result. It is just as though a person flung
himself against an invisible wall and was bruised by the contact. Over and. over
again a person might thus fling himself, attracted by some object visible on the
other side of this invisible barrier but if he bruised himself every time, he
would learn to connect the going after that object with the pain which he felt.
Thus there would grow up in his mind the idea of sequence, of cause and effect,
of the relationship existing between the gratification and the suffering which
followed after it; in this way there would, become impressed on this infant mind
that is learning its lessons, that there is something in the world that is
stronger than itself—a Law which it cannot break; a Law which it may endeavour
tc violate but which it cannot violate, and which will prove its existence by
the suffering which is inflicted when the Spirit flings himself against that
barrier. And thus with object of desire after object of desire this lesson will
be learned, until an accumulated mass of experience will gradually be gained by
the Spirit and he will learn
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by pain to regulate his desires and no longer to let the horses of the senses
gallop whithersoever they w'll, but to curb them and. rein them in, and permit
them only to go along the roads that are really desirable. Thus the lesson of
self-control will be the result of this painful experience.
Now it may be said here, or thought, that alter all we have this body of desire
in common with the lower animal, and. that the lower animal is in one curious
way distinct from man: that it is mostly guided to the avoidance of this painful
experience by what we call instinct; that while man has the experience
constantly until he learns self-control, the animal by an innate inherited
experience, as it has been called, which we speak of as instinct, is, to a very
great extent at least, preserved from this experience of pain. And that is so.
Observing the fact, we ask the reason. And the reason is not far to seek. First,
I ought perhaps to say, in order to guard, against possibility of mistake, that
people to some extent exaggerate the force of instinct in the highest animals.
In the lower animals the rule of instinct is fairly complete. In the higher
animals it is less complete than in the lowfcf, and some experience is often
needed by them before the instinct becomes a thoroughly safe guide for them. And
the reason in their case, and the deeper reason in our own case, is this: that
in man you have not only to deal with this body of desire—which, if it were
alone, would be guided by an external law, which would direct it towards the
objects that were healthful and health-giving and make it avoid the objects
which were fatal or dangerous—• but you have in man the coming in of the Soul:
that is,
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of the individualised Spirit, which is not to be compelled by a Law from
without, but evolved by a Law from within; it is not simply to be forced into
conformity with outside Nature by the compulsion to which the mineral, the
vegetable, and the animal kingdoms are subjected; it is no longer the case of
evolution in the aggregate, of the collective evolution which, in order that it
may take place effectively, must be under the control of an external Law. Man is
to take his evolution into his own hands; his evolution is to be by experience
and not by compulsion; for at this period, of evolution Spirit has become
individualised by the sheath of mind, and the accumulating experience of the
reincarnating Soul is to take the place of the compulsory education of the lower
realms in Nature.
And so it is the presence of manas, or mind, in man that makes this element of
pain so necessary a part of his education. He is able to remember, he is able to
compare, he is able to draw this link of relation between the things that form
the sequence of events; and just because he has this power of thought, of mind,
he is able to take his growth into his own hands, that he may become a
fellow-worker with Nature; not merely a brick as it were in her edifice, but a
self-conscious builder, taking part in that building of the whole.
And so gradually by this education of pain, working upon mind through the body
of desire, this knowledge of Law in the external universe grows up. So that here
the meaning of pain is hostile contact with Law, the effort to break Law that
never can succeed; and the use of pain is the gaining of the knowledge of
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Law, and so the guiding and the education of the lower nature by the reasoning
intelligence.
Let us pass from that view of pain to another. By pain this growing Soul has
learned the existence of Law. The next use that is found, in pain is a deeper
one. By pain is rooted out desire for every object in the external universe,
found in the language of the Bhagavad-Gita, to prove one of " the wombs of pain
". Desire is that which draws the Soul to rebirth; de?ire is that which
fundamentally causes the manifestation of the universe. It was when " Desire
first arose in the bosom of the Eternal " that the germ of the manifested
universe appeared; and so always it is desire that leads to
manifestation—whether of the whole or of the part; and desire continually draws
back the Soul over and over again to earth. Notice that it is desire which draws
the Soul outwards, always outwards, to the external. And the education of the
Soul consists in this passing out into the external, gathering there all
knowledge, and then by experience losing its taste for the external and carrying
inwards the knowledge it has obtained. But suppose that objects of desire
remained desirable, then there would be no end to the revolution of the wheel of
births and deaths; then there could be no garnering, as it were, of knowledge,
and no real evolution of the highest possibilities. For remember that human
perfection is not the end of our growth; it is the end of the present cycle; but
this is only the preparation for another, and those who become perfect men in
the present cycle are those who, from the calmness of Nirvana, are to come out
in the next period of manifestation, no longer men to be educated, but
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Builders and Gods to guide the next manifested universe, passing on into that
higher sphere of activity and utilising there the experiences that here they
have won. It is thus essential that these manifesting Souls that today are human
but in future millenniums are to be divine —it is necessary that they shall not
only gather knowledge but shall also carry it back with them, and so make it
part of their own future being; and in order that this may be done, desire must
gradually change its nature until at last it vanishes away. The objects of the
lowest external world must become undesirable to the Soul that has gained
knowledge; the objects of each phase of the external world, subtle or physical,
must become undesirable; everything must become undesirable save the Eternal,
which is the essence of the Scul himself: and so gradually the Soul learns by
pain in the physical universe to get rid of desire.
There is no other way in which desire can be conquered. You might, if there were
no pain in the gratification of these external desires, you might by strong will
hold back the horses and prevent them from galloping along the road along which
you did not choose that they should go. But you want to do more than hold them
back by force—that is a very elementary stage of the progress of the Soul: you
want them no longer to desire to gallop after these objects; that is, you want
to cut off the very root of desire, and that can only be by the objects that
once attracted, losing their power of attraction, so that they no longer can
draw the Soul outwards; then the Soul, having exhausted everything that he can
learn from the object, and having found it productive of pain in the
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end, no longer finds it desirable, but casts it aside, and carries away only the
knowledge he has gained. For the Soul is like the bee that visits the flower; it
does not need to remain always in the flower, it needs only the honey that the
flower contains; when it has gathered the honey, the flower is no longer
desirable to it. And when the Soul has gathered, the honey of knowledge from the
flowers of earth, then it is the use of pain that he no longer feels desire for
the flower; he has gained from it all that is needed for the lesson, and the
pain destroys desire and throws the Soul inward on himself. If you think it over
at your leisure you will not, I think, be able to invent any other way of really
getting rid of desire. And unless you can get rid of desire for the things of
the physical world, you will never feel the inner drawing, first to the things
of the mind, and then to those of the Higher Life, which it is the very obejct
of the Soul's evolution to make the experience of all that are born into the
world. But what other use has pain? We have found out two-the learning of Law
and the gradual extirpation of desire. The next lesson that we learn through
pain is the transitory nature of all that is not of the essence of the Spirit
himself. In one of the many allegories of the Hindu Scriptures, you may read,
how the God of Death, looking at men and sorrowing over their sorrows, wept as
he contemplated Humanity; and as the tears of Yama dropped upon the earth they
turned into diseases and miseries which afflicted human kind. Why should the
pity of the God have been turned into scourges for the torturing of man? These
allegories are always worth thinking over, for always
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under the veil of the allegory is hidden some truth which reaches you the more
surely because of the simile under which it is veiled. What is the God of
Death? He is, as it were, the incarnation of change. Sometimes we hear of Yama
as Destroyer; the truer word is Regenerator; for there is no such thing as
destruction in the manifested universe. Always that which on one side is
death, on another side is birth; and that which is change and which seems to
destroy is that which in another aspect is giving new form and new shape to the
life which is seeking embodiment. And so Yama, the God of Death, is the great
representative of change—'the change which marks manifestation, the change which
is in everything save in the Eternal itself; and inasmuch as he who is change
incarnate weeps over men, it is natural that his tears should be the things that
teach men the transitory nature of all that surrounds them. And these miseries
and diseases into which turn the tears of the God of Death are the lessons which
in guise of pain bring the most useful teaching of all—that nothing that is
transitory can satisfy the Soul, and that only by learning the transitory
nature of the lower life will the Soul turn to that in which true happiness and
satisfaction must lie. Thus, the teaching of the transitoriness of all things
is the object of these tears of Yama, and he shows the deepest compassion in the
lessons that by pain he gives to human kind. For in this fashion, by disease
and misery, by poverty and by grief, we learn that everything that surrounds
us—not only in the physical world, but also in the region of desire, and in the
region of the mind itself—that all these things are changing, and that in
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the changing he who is changeless may never find his rest. For at heart we are
the Eternal and not the transient; the centre of our life, the very Self within
us, is immortal and eternal, he can never change nor die. Therefore, nothing
that changes can satisfy him; nothing over which Death has power can bring to
him final happiness and peace. But he must learn this lesson through pain, and.
only in that learning lies the possibility of final joy. Thus the Soul also
learns the difference between the stages of transitoriness; very slow are these
lessons in the learning, and many a life it takes to complete them. At first the
Soul will not think of the Eternal being that in which he must rest; but he will
learn to turn from the physical to the mental, to turn from the sensuous to the
intellectual, because relatively the one is permanent to the other, and the
happinesses of the mind are lasting as compared with the pleasures of the body.
And in the slow course of evolution that lesson is learned long before the
lessons of the Spirit are touched, and man becomes a higher creature when he has
learned to dominate the animal side and to find satisfaction in the mind and in
the intelligence, so that the pleasures of the aesthetic tastes overbear the
pleasures of the body, and the pleasures of the mind and of the intellect and of
the intelligence are more attractive than the pleasures of the lower senses.
Thus man is gradually evolving today, and the great work of human evolution at
the present time—'speaking of the average human evolution—is not the evolution
of the Spirit, but this evolution of the relatively permanent as compared with
the senses and of the
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body in which the waking consciousness of man is still so active. So that what
man on the average needs to do is to turn his desires from the transient to the
relatively permanent, and rather to cultivate the mind and the intelligence and
the artistic side of Nature, instead of seeking the gratification of the senses
which he has in common with the lower forms of animal life. And those are
helping human evolution who are turning away from the life of the body and are
training themselves in the life of the mind, who are seeking the relatively
permanent; although in its turn it will be found to be transitory, still it is a
step upward, it is the drawing away of desire from the body to the mind, from
the senses to the internal organ, from sensations to ideas and images, and that
is part of the experience of the indrawing Soul,, which draws himself away from
the senses and fixes himself for a while in the inner organ of the mind. And
then that inner organ is also found only to give rise to things that are
transitory. See, yet, how great is the gain; for conflict between men is over
when the desire turns to the intelligence, to the inner organ instead of to the
outer things of sense. The things of sense are limited; and men fight the one
with the other in order to get their share of the limited quantity. The things
of the tastes, the higher tastes, and of the intelligence are practically
unlimited, and there is no conflict between men for them; for no man is the
poorer because his brother is richly gifted artistically or intellectually; none
has his own share diminished because his brother's share is great. And so
humanity progresses from competition to co-operation, and learns the lesson of
Brotherhood.: that the richer you are in intellect the
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more you can give and the less you need grudge, seeing that we are going upwards
to the Higher Life where all is giving, and. where none desires to seize for
self. For in this middle region of intellect and of the higher tastes and
emotions, there is no need for grudging; but all may share what they have, and
find themselves, after the sharing, the richer and not the poorer for the
giving.
But even then it is found that satisfaction does not lie that way, for still it
is of the nature of desire. On this I pause one moment. On the realisation of
the principle that I am now going to put to you depends the whole direction of
your life. If you seek gratification of desire you will never find happiness,
for every desire that is gratified gives birth to a new desire, and the more
desires you gratify the more open mouths there are which demand that they shall
be filled. Says an ancient Scripture:
As well might you try to put out a fire by pouring upon it melted butter, as try
to get rid of desire by filling with it the objects of desire.
—a saying that is worthy your long and thoughtful consideration. For if
happiness does not lie that way, then the great majority of people, especially
in civilised lands, are on the wrong road to happiness; they will never reach it
along the road they travel. And if you notice the demand of modern life, it is
always for more of the same thing which is already possessed—• that is, for the
multiplication of the objects of desire, and so the continual increase of the
longings which cannot be gratified. I might put it in a somewhat rough form
which comes to my mind, because it was
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quoted to me the other day as an illustration of the way in which, with the
narrowness of thought, this idea of more and more of the same thing comes out
increasingly. You remember the story of the rustic who was asked what would make
him completely happy, and he said: "To sit upon a gate and swing, and chew fat
bacon all day." Then he was asked: " Suppose you could have something more to
make you happy, what would you ask for?" And he said: " More swinging on a gate,
and more fat bacon." Now, that is a rough way of putting it; but it is
essentially the answer the majority of people make. They may have a higher
desire, I grant, than sitting on a gate and eating fat bacon; but the principle
of their desire is the same as the principle of the rustic—that they want more
of these things that they already possess, and. that they do not realise that
happiness does not lie in this increasing gratification of desires, but in the
transmuting of the desire for the transitory into the aspiration to the Eternal,
and the complete changing of the nature from that which seeks to enjoy to that
which seeks to give. And if this be true, then in your search for happiness you
had batter consider on what line you are travelling; for if you be travelling
along the line of the gratification of desire, then no matter how much you
refine it, you are travelling along a road that is practically an endless
circle, and that will always leave you unsatisfied and never give you the bliss
which is the natural goal of the Spirit in man.
And thus after a while, by this absence of satisfaction, which is pain, the
realisation comes to the Soul that this is not the road, and he grows weary of
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change. All these outer objects of body and of mind lose their attractive force;
weary of the change which he finds everywhere in the lower world, he no longer
goes outward but he turns his face inward and upward. He went outward to the
senses and failed; then he drew into the mind, but the mind is outward from the
standpoint of the Spirit, and again he failed; always beaten back by pain,
always beaten back by the dissatisfaction that is the most wearisome pain of
all. And then, finally, he learns his lesson, and he turns away from that which
is without; he turns within; and then he finds the beginning of peace, the first
touch of real, of essential satisfaction.
And another use of pain, a more inner lesson now: for we have reached the point
where the Soul has distinguished himself from the body of desire and even from
the mind itself. And still he has not got outside the reach of pain, for he has
not yet quite found his centre, he is only seeking it still; and although he
knows that he is not the body, nor the sense?, nor the mind, he still finds
himself susceptible of pain that comes from within, of contacts that translate
themselves as pain. And coming into contact with others —-with the thoughts and
the feelings and the judgment of others—'he constantly finds himself pained by
mis-judgments and mistranslations, by unkind thoughts and unkind feelings; and
if the Soul has by this time gained wisdom, as he must have done if he has
followed the path along which we have been tracing him, then he will begin to
ask himself: Why do I still feel pain? What is there, not in the outside, but in
me that gives rise to pain? For he has now passed beyond the
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ignorance which makes this outer thing appear as the inflicter of pain, and he
relates to himself the element that causes pain, and realises that nothing can
touch him save himself, which is in truth responsible for all. And if he feels
pain the cause of pain must lie in himself, and not, after all, in the external
object; for if the Soul were perfect, nothing that is outside could avail to
give him pain; and if he feel pain, it is a sign of imperfection, that he is not
withdrawn wholly from the lower nature which is not himself. And then he begins
to use pain instead of merely feeling it; and there is a distinction between the
two. He is no longer at the mercy of pain, but he takes pain into his own hands
as an instrument and uses it for his own purpose; when he finds this pain—we
will say which comes from unkind action, or from misjudgment of motive or of
conduct—-the Soul takes the pain in hand as a sculptor might take a chisel, and
with this instrument of pain he strikes at his own personality, for he knows
that if it were not for this personality which is selfish, he would not feel the
pain at all, and that he may use the pain as a chisel to cut off this personal
weakness, and so remain serene and untroubled amid the conflicts of the world.
For thus has it been with all those who have risen above personality, those
great and liberated Souls whom we speak of as Masters, and who always work for
the world, no matter how the world misjudges Them. It was said by one of Them:
"We feel the slanders and the criticisms of mankind just as much as the heights
of the Himalayas feel the hissing of the serpents that glide around their feet."
There is
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there no personality which can be hurt by misjudg-ment, no personality which can
suffer by misconstruction. They bestow a blessing, and the man who receives it
knows not whence it comes; in his ignorance he jeers or scoffs, or accuses the
Masters unknowing what They are, and translating Them into himself as though he
were They. Are They hurt? No; to the misconstruction They answer with pity, to
the insult They answer with forgiveness, for in Them there is nothing that can
be hurt by misconstruction; only They can feel pity for the sake of the one who
is blinded and who cannot see—'pity for the blinded brother who by his wrong
thought is injuring his own Soul. The moon is not injured by anyone who would
throw mud against it; the mud falls back on the one who throws it and soils his
garments; the light of the moon remains pure and untouched by the mud of earth.
And so, as the Soul is thus growing onwards to the light, he uses pain as an
instrument to destroy personality and those subtle things of the personality
that even the strong Soul may be blind to; he takes the pain as the most
merciful of messages to tell him of his own weakness, of his own fault, and of
his own mistake. For as you grow in knowledge you realise that your worst enemy
is not the outside fault that you recognise, but the inner blindness that does
not see the place of danger, and does not know that it does not see. When you
fall, and know you fall, then the danger is but a small one; it is when you fall
and know not that you have fallen, that the enemies of the Soul rejoice. And if
there comes pain from the falling then the pain is welcome; for that tells of
the danger and may open our eyes to the
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slip that has been made. In that way pain, as I said, is no longer an
infliction; it is welcome as a warning and as an instrument that the Soul may
use; it is now the surgeon's knife that cuts away the spot of danger; no longer
to be resisted as an enemy but to be welcomed as a friend.
And still pain has another use, now a matter of choice by the free Soul, the
Soul that means to be strong, not for himself but for helping of the world, the
Soul that realises that he has to live for others, and knows that he can only
learn to live for others if he is strong in himself; then he will choose pain
because only thus can he learn endurance: he will choose pain because only thus
can he learn patience. Those who never suffer must always remain weak, and only
in the stress and the agony of the combat will the Soul learn to endure, though
the combat, remember, is still a sign of weakness. Were we strong we should not
need to fight; but we can only gain the strength that shall not need to struggle
in the agony of the struggle, for then gradually the strength will work itself
into the Soul, and that which once was anxiety and struggle will gain the calm
serenity of perfect strength.
And for one other thing the Soul will choose pain —'that it may learn sympathy.
For even the strong Soul would be useless if he had not learned sympathy. Nay,
the strong Soul might be rather dangerous than anything else if he had become
strong without compassion, and had learned to gather force while he had not
learned to guide that force aright. For force that is only strong and not
compassionate may trample instead of raising, and of all things that would
break.
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as it were, the heart of the Soul that would fain rise. Strength, not having
that touch of sympathy which is keener than all sight and is the very intuition
of the Spirit, might be used for mischief and not for helping. He might injure
where he desired to help, and might crush where he desired to lift. And so the
stronger it is, the more eagerly will the Soul seek this lesson of pain, in
order that by feeling he may learn to feel, and that by his own pain he may
learn how the pains of the world shall be healed; for otherwise we may not
learn. Not from without but from within we have to be builded, and all the pains
that we have in our imperfections are, as it were, the stones with which the
temple of the perfect Spirit is finally built. Pain in the end there will not
be; but pain in the building there must be; therefore the Disciple chooses the
Path of Woe, because only by woe may he learn compassion, and only as he thrills
to every touch from the outer universe will he, who is to be the heart of the
universe, be able to send out responsive thrills of healing, which shall pass
through all manifested life and carry with them the message of helpfulness and
of strength.
Thus then for the uses of pain, though you might find many another. And though I
have only taken out a few obvious and simple enough examples, yet they may be
helpful in the telling. But is that the end? Is that the final fate of the Soul?
Is pain to be anything more than a use ? Is pain the natural atmosphere of the
Spirit? They err who believe that sorrow is the end of things; they err who
believe that pain and sadness are really the atmosphere in which the Spirit
lives. The Spirit is bliss, it is not sorrow; the
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Spirit is joy, it is not pain; the Spirit is peace, it is not struggle; the
essence and the heart of all things is love, is joy, is peace; and the path of
pain is the path and not the goal, the Path of Woe is only the means and not the
end. For out of that Ocean of Blessedness whence the universe has sprung, spring
love and peace and joy unceasing, and those are the heritage of the Spirit out
of manifestation. Pain lies in the sheaths in which he is clothed, and not in
his essential nature.
Never forget that in the struggle of life! Never let the pain blind your eyes to
the joy, nor let the passing anxieties make, you unconscious of the bliss which
is the core and heart of Being. Pain is passing, bliss is eternal; for bliss is
the inner essence of Brahman, the Self of all. Therefore as the Spirit goes
onward, therefore as the Spirit grows freer, peace takes the p'ace of struggle,
and joy takes the place of pain. Look on the highest face: there is indeed the
mark of pain, but of pain that is over and that has been changed into strength
and sympathy and compassion, and a deep unending joy. For the final word of the
universe is Bliss; the final outcome of Humanity is rest, conscious rest in
happiness. And all the messages of pain are in order that the Spirit may gain
his liberation; the end is the end of peace, and the manifested side of peace is
joy.
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