THE WHITE MONK.
By the Author of “A Professor of Alchemy.”
(Continued.)
“Margaret had been in grief so sad and potent since her brother’s death, that it at last brought her into a fever, from which, with difficulty, she recovered, and which kept her long to her chamber.
“During this time the monk roamed like a restless spirit, seeming to seek her, and despairing because he found her not. Giles Hughson even went so far as to suspect he was no true priest at all, until he had seen his tonsure. Even then he was drawn into most sacrilegious surmises by what he beheld some few nights after.
“Having some work to do in Castle Troyes garden, he noted the White Monk, his lodger, glide noiselessly through the grounds, hidden behind the thick black walls of yew, and pause under the casement of Mistress Margaret and stand there listening intently for a certain space. At last, with a gesture of despair, he slung himself with infinite agile stillness up some feet of the ivy that covered the wall, from which insecure footing he did long and earnestly search if he might see her shadow cross the room. Giles, the gardener, swore afterwards that the sight of that priest, with his cowl fallen back from his dark face, and that look of straining, terrified attention had in it something so partaking of the unearthly, that for the life of him he dared not accost the daring intruder. ‘Time enough if there were need,’ he excused himself afterwards, ‘but Castle Troyes is ever well enow defended, and at that time there must have been enough of inmates watching over Margaret, the beautiful, to win her back to life.’
“The horrible recklessness of an act such as this, with the carbines of a round thirty men within a few yards of him, made the monk seem to Giles a creature of charmed life, who may not be addressed as ordinary mortals.
“But the White Monk saw his discoverer when he descended and glided away again, scared by some noise made by Margaret’s attendants. And thus there occurred a tragedy, which you shall learn as far as it was ever known.
“Now Giles Hughson had a young son afflicted with total dumbness, but whom Mistress Margaret de Troyes had taught to write; and it is through this scholarship of his that we come to know as much as we do of what really happened. The White Monk appeared fond of this boy, possibly because he had seen Margaret kiss him. Thus the lad had greater access to the monk’s small attic than any other; and this is the tale he tells of the night after Giles had espied his lodger clinging to the wall of Castle Troyes.
“The boy had noiselessly, so as not to disturb the often musings of the solitary one, stepped up the attic stairs to fetch some trifle he wanted of the monk. Pausing timidly at the door, he beheld the familiar white-clad figure, with an air of terrible malignity, mixing some powder of a greenish colour, which, at the sight of the intruder, he hastily laid aside, thinking it had not been seen.
“But the lad was unnerved by the expression he had caught on the monk’s face, and he forgot not so lightly.
“At the frugal supper, that very night, he observed the monk ate even less than was his wont, and of one dish only, the which he also pressed upon the young lad by his side, seeming to wish to keep the others from him. The others of the family, Giles Hughson and his dame, did eat as usual, and were both found dead on the morrow.
“The monk strove to comfort the poor boy by every means in his power, but it was all of no avail. The lad seized a moment, fled into the wood, and there wrote down all that he had seen and suspected, with which account he presently did seek the justices. These caused proper inquiry into the manner of the deaths of the workman and his wife to be made, and, finding they had died of potent poison, instituted careful search for the person of the White Monk, who had vanished from the cottage.
“At length they found him, in a strange state for one of his way of living. Into the wood had he gone, but not so far as that he could hide him. He had stopped beside a little brook, where he had sat when first he saw fair Margaret, the sister of his victims. There, even there, was he found, in so deep contemplation that he never heard his pursuers’ footsteps. He had made a cross of two elder branches (folk about us say that the elder-wood formed the Cross whereon Christ died), and having set it on the summit of a bank, was deep in prayer, as it seemed, before it.
“One of his Italian repentances, I doubt not.
“He seemed in sore distress of mind, and lost to all thought of his surroundings.
“So they took him; the foreign wild beast, tracked at last. But not without trouble for he fought like the panther he was. Escaping lissomely from their hands at the moment when they would have bound him, the ex-bravo snatched a genuine stiletto from the folds of his monastic frock and stabbed one man to death, laughing coarsely at the stupid astonishment of the harquebusiers to see this weapon in so unseemly a hand.
“He had no chance, being taken thus unawares, and exhaustion came upon him; so, with tremours, the officers of justice held him fast. Before the first cord was fastened round his struggling wrists, he fell back, rigid, in their arms; sighed once or twice, smiled bitterly to himself at their consternation, and flung his head back, dead.
“A small quantity of a green powder was found on him (a large dose, I ween, had killed so hardy a villain!), and by comparing the signs of death with those of Giles Hughson and his wife, they saw he had poisoned himself some time within the last five hours. Whether he had seen Margaret again, and by seeing her upon the earth, had come to know himself too bad for it; or whether the weariness attendant upon sins so heavy had worn him out at last, remains a mystery. The leeches said a man so wasted and wan as this could scarce, in the way of Nature, have lived many years longer; but I question this, and so did the men who had so great trouble to hold him!
“News travelled slowly in those days from Italy to England, and it was not until very shortly after the White Monk’s death that our town learnt it had harboured Pietro Rinucci, the slayer of the two good brothers, Ambrose and Gilbert de Troyes. No one ever told Mistress Margaret that she had spoken with such a man. And now the beautiful maiden rose from her bed, and asked for her mostly costly gowns, of amber, blue and rosy colours; and went amongst her friends brightly, wreathed with pearls and radiant in smiles. She was thought to have recovered, though she looked ethereal as a daisy or white cloud; but she said and averred that she was dying, and that her brother Ambrose had appeared to her in a vision, bidding her make all speed to do what remained to her upon the earth and be soon ready, when he should come behind the angels to fetch her hence. Her kinsfolk thought she wandered in her mind. She asked for the man who had wooed her, and held long speech with him, very merrily, and yet with tears; beseeching him to pause e’er he rashly threw away his life on this earth, since we know not in the beginning, whither our pleasant sins may carry us, and when we have no enjoyment of them, save by memory, what are they to us? The instruments of our present ruin.
“‘All this,’ said the lovely Margaret with a smile, ‘hath right off, my Lord, been heard, by you and others; but from a lady’s lips (and that lady who is even now bent to consider the past failings of her own life, soon to be taken from her) it hath been made evident to me, these poor oft-repeated words shall have some power. God bless you, my Lord—farewell.’
“The gentleman came out from her boudoir exceeding sobered, and essaying as he might to conceal his tears.
“The words of this dying angel—for so indeed she seemed—he vowed should be as a challenge to him from God to purify his ways. And indeed from that day the gentleman made such progress in godliness as can be made by one of his complexion.
“And now a strange and terrible portent was observed.
“Those who watched by the Lady Margaret, began to see a vision, and of that most dreaded being, the White Monk!
“Night or day, it mattered not; with a chill like to that of Death itself, the horrified watchers knew the presence of the phantom. In the dark corners of the room would shape themselves dimly the features of the murderer, Rinucci, and his monastic gown, so glaring white in its dimness through the dark that the eye could not search it, and gone, ever gone, if some bold spirit neared the spot where he had thought he saw it.
“No[“No] one said aught of this to the Lady Margaret, in fear to fright her; and she alone, of all who watched, did never see nor feel the constant presence. It seemed sometimes as though the phantom yearned to make itself visible to her kind, half-divine eyes, but her thoughts were too high-set for it to be given her to see a sight so horrible.
“She was much upheld by visions then—her contemplative soul shaped to itself many fair sights and sounds that others knew not. Sitting by the open casement in her sun-coloured gown, with white arms, pearl encircled, leaning out, and her smile ever brighter as she murmured to herself, she would stretch far over the lattice and grasp at rosy clouds, which she said floated past her in the peopled air. She would reply, still leaning out and smiling, to what she vowed was said to her by wandering happy spirits. And all this while, behind her, there would stand the White Mystery, with slight hand lifting the cowl from a face whose eyes were as deep as death and more despairing.
“Small marvel that the murderer’s ghost should cling to our saint while she yet lived on earth! He may have known that, once dead, restored to Heaven, she would thenceforth move in worlds where such as he should never have the force to breathe.
“And in her due hour she died; and after that for a space no one saw aught of the dread ghost. His spirit, drawn by some power to enter our house, wherein was held all he knew of goodness, had now no further business there, for a while. His loathed name, fraught with horror to your ancestors’ home, was now never spoken. It was thought, doubtless, that since Margaret de Troyes—the innocent avenger—had unwittingly caused the murderer’s death, the house he had so deeply injured was for ever free from his godless presence. And, indeed, for a while, the chronicles are silent respecting him. The next two generations were happy, and no great misfortune blasted the house. But in the third generation there were harsh feuds in the city, and much bloodshed, and several of your name came to violent and sometimes mysterious ends. Then it was that there arose a searching into past traditions to discover the secret of a certain white spectre said to appear about the castle previous to each calamity. Not all saw it; but still it grew known, and it bore a marked resemblance to an ancient portrait—hung up for curiosity’s sake—of Pietro Rinucci.
“Well, young master, I myself served your grandfather, and I myself can bear witness to the presence of the White Monk’s ghost on one of the shrewd moments of the family destinies. Wilt hear it? So your father was then a stalwart young man, away at the wars in Spain. Your uncles, two blithe young gallants, were at home at the time I speak of, and there was some merry-making toward in the castle. Myself was seeing to the torches in the garden, when I chanced to see your uncle, Geoffrey de Troyes, come hastily into the yew-walk with his rapier drawn, followed by another youth whom I knew well, his rival, and in some sort, his enemy.
“As the guests danced within, these nobles fought without. A man dared not have interposed; it was matter of life and death to them, and they were there to prove it.
“I was glad, as I stood on the further side the hedge, to mark the vigour and the skill of our Geoffrey. Methought the vantage was with him, and with my whole heart I hated his opponent, the cold, selfish Ernle Deane, and wished him to succumb.
“And so, by mine honour, he should have done, for my boy was the pride of us all for swordsmanship; but it was not to be.
“Geoffrey de Troyes never suffered more from his mortal wound than I did in my heart and my pride, as I led him, bleeding piteously to this very stable-room, where he sank on the hay and said he must die.
“‘Look to it,’ groaned the poor young noble, as he lay dying, ‘that Mistress Beatrice Savile has this token from me—my gold chain—warn her from me when I am dead, that she wed not Ernle Deane—he is bad to the core, and she is too good to mend him. Oh! but for that hateful vision!’
“‘What vision, a God’s name?’ I cried.
“And he told me trembling—he who had never trembled of his whole life!—that even at the moment when he had thought to subdue his enemy—even as he raised his sword to strike home to a worthless heart—even then had his arm fallen paralysed and a frightful shiver quite unmanned him at the sight of a poor monk in white, who stood some yards away, and raised his cowl with a thin white hand, and fixed unearthly eyes upon him with a steadfast look that drew the soul away from the deadliest earthly peril.
“‘And so I fell!’ cried the shamed noble, crimsoning though the pallor of exhaustion. ‘I—a practised hand, a not unworthy courage—a De Troyes! I fell—for this!—and so would any man have fallen,’ he defiantly ended, ‘for ’twas a devil—’twas Pietro Rinucci himself, who came from hell to lure me from my hopes of earthly happiness. O, life! O, Beatrice!’
“And I nursed him and wept over him like any woman, whilst one young, bright life more departed,
“In truth, young master,” ended honest Ralph, “the noble Geoffrey may have been deceived, and fancied this; but, you shall pardon me, I would rather think that armies of devils nightly march these grounds than that one De Troyes was ever seen to quail, save under magic! Thus it is that I, and that many of us yet believe in the spectre of Pietro Rinucci, ‘the White Monk.’”
Oh these faithful servitors, they would die for us children of the house, I believe, and yet they have ever this curious bent to terrify the childish minds. I know not when it was precisely that I thus first heard the White Monk’s story, but this I know, I was young enough to sit with my clenched fistlets supporting my chin, and my eyes and mouth very wide open.
“And was he always in white, that fearful man?” I asked, somewhere toward the middle of the story. “Always in white?” I know not why, but this detail struck my child’s phantasy more powerfully than all the rest; this was awful, this was the pith of the whole matter, and from that moment I sat trembling, and drinking in the history with reluctant suspense, until it became the bane of my life for a term of years.
For hours I lay shuddering ofttimes in my bed, dreading with my body and my soul lest the Monk should appear to me! And never had I courage to speak of this to anyone of the many loving house mates who would so promptly have put an end to my fears by leaving me no more alone at night. There is a keen, hard honour for children to maintain, and to them the confession of nocturnal terror is as flight to the soldier. So, as the banquet sped its course below, I shuddered lonely in my bed in the oaken room, often weeping angrily amidst my fears because I alone, the only son of the house, was the only soul in it left desolate.
A little later I was comforted in some sort by my baby sister Margaret, who was put to sleep in an adjacent cot, and being too tiny for Fear to reach, would sleep secure, all gold and white in the dusky gleam of our rushlight—the one oasis of hope throughout the terrible oaken room. Yet she in her turn, became a source of fear to me. Should the Monk appear, and should the dire extremity cause me to shriek, what would become of Marguerite? She would die of sudden terror. Worse—if he should stand by her bedside, raising his cowl off the awful face, and her blue eyes should open at that instant? How should I protect her?
But before I wander further, I must begin straight and tell how we lived, and where, and to what end.
Percy Ross.
(To be continued.)
AN AUTO-HYPNOTIC RHAPSODY.
“When all desires that dwell in the heart cease, then the mortal becomes immortal, and obtains Brahman.
When all the fetters of the heart here on earth are broken;
When all that bind us to this life is undone, then the mortal becomes immortal—here my teaching ends.”
—Katha Upanishad.
I (Âtman) have crossed the sea—I have reached the other shore—I have triumphed over gravitation, my soul is in the sun-currents, moving sunwards with the sun.
Where the currents are bearing me to I scarcely know, but yet something has been revealed.
I died the mystical death, I was received by the Dawn-Maidens—the bright ones of the eternal twilights, the two bright Ushas, Ahana and Antigone, Isis, and Nephtys of Aanru.[[162]]
The Ahana-Aurora of Eternity laid me asleep on her bosom, giving me amrita[[163]] to drink, as Hebe gave to Herakles, and then I at once knew that I (Atman) was immortal; the Mask of Personality had fallen to earth, the Âtma was revealed—my true Self—I knew my name, and found myself soaring sunwards. Then the Voice of that Dawn said, “I give you the ‘Amrita’ of the cessation of deaths,” and her lips burning with sun-ardours, kissed my forehead, and said, “I bring you to the sun; when blind—on earth, that Sanskara of sorrow—you fancied your sun was nothing but a great centre of physical force—light and heat, and their equivalents; but it was Maya, the Earth-Queen of illusions, who thus deceived your earth eyes. Look now, and you can see nothing but a vast group of mighty spirit-wills clustered round a yet mightier Spirit centre, drawing from thence inspiration, and ever-radiating sun effluxes, for the good and advancement of those unhappy lower wills yet sunk in the earth. What you called light was intelligence, and heat was—love. Did not Koré suggest this to you, O my weak child, for she, too, was one of the Ushas, a Maiden of the Dawn, kindling your soul to love?”
I was silent to this question, for a dread sorrow clung to me.
“Though” (began again the Voice) “the sun-souls attract the earth-souls, the lost ones, for a while, to bring them up to themselves by the path that leads to Nirvana[[164]] ‘where there is no sorrow’; yet the sun-groups of Spirits are themselves attracted by a grander centre of force, and the Sun, with his planet-children, are speeding in a mighty orbit round a far mightier Soul-centre—the lost Pleiad—lost on earth to be found in Heaven. Dost thou not hear the solemn music of that tempest flight?” And then she touched my ears, and I heard the myriad voiced song of the blessed ones as they passed on rejoicing, and the Voice continued: “That lost Pleiad, the dove-woman, the ‘Woman Clothed with the Sun,’ who, as Jeremiah prophesied, should ‘compass man,’ is that eternal womanhood which attracts all men.” And the chorus of the psalm I heard them sing, as they passed on Pleiad-ward, was “Freedom and Love—Love in Bi-unity. The Two in One foretold has come even to earth.” And the souls in that Pleiad-world are infinite in number as the sands of the seas of countless worlds, elective affinities attract like to like, forming celestial choirs, each member of which breathes the akasian air synchronously with the other, and what you call in your earth-symbol-language their “hearts,” beat and throb in unison together as one heart, and thus become coalesced in, and by, love.
“Listen, O my child, to the music of their breathing,” and I said, “Is Koré there?” Then I heard voices in Heaven, and I began to breathe the interior akasa breath synchronously with her—our breaths became one, I was mingled with, and melted in her; and lo! a great mystery! that Dawn-maiden changed to Koré, and Koré gave me the amrita of the Pleiad, and I knew that our biune love was immortal.
I have passed over the deep waters, I am free, I have infinite peace and infinite joy, at rest for ever.
Have I not, like Herakles, slept on the bosom of Athéné, breathing the wisdom of her breaths? I, too, breathe internally akasian love-breaths, I live in the love-choirs of the Pleiad Sun, I am in the true Nirvana, where there is no sorrow and no desire, for desire is lost in an ever-abiding and eternal fruition. The Lotus has bloomed in the Sun-fire,[[165]] and my soul is newborn in the pure white calyx, and floats down the golden waters that wash the eternal shores. I have found the “Path,” “suffering, and the cause of suffering” (separation from the loved one) have been seen, and have passed away, whilst we ever rise and pass onwards by the star-paths. I am no more blind, but, like Orion of old, gazing eastwards on that rising sun, the red flush of whose dawn is ever blushing in our central souls. I have received my sight.—Om....
A. J. C.
Lucerne.
Since writing the foregoing, A. J. C. has met with the following note contained in Mr. Edwin Arnold’s interesting essay, “Death and Afterwards,” which throws light on the views in said Rhapsody: “That which safely bears our ‘solid world’ in the gulfs of space is no base or basis, no moveless central rock, but throbbing energies in complex and manifold action, in swing and wave and thrill; whirling us onward in mighty sweeps of three-fold rythm[rythm] to which our hearts are set. So therefore not solidity of base in fixity of status is our supreme and vital need, but moving power beyond our ken or senses; known to us in energising action, and working through blue ‘void’; impelling us in rings of spiral orbit round a moving sun in which we are dependent.”
The same book contains Walt Whitman’s beautiful and striking poem on Death, in which the poet says:
“Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?”
Yes, one other, the writer of the foregoing Rhapsody, has attempted a song in praise of Death the deliverer, and the Italian poet, Leopardi, stated in beautiful verse years ago that the world had two good things in it—Love and Death.
“Due belle cose ho il mondo
L’amor e la Morte”...
OUR OTHER HALF.
When our ancient brethren, the Kabalists, Jewish as well as Oriental, taught that the divine monad, starting on its long journey from the bosom of the Infinite One was divided into halves, they had a double meaning, one exoteric, the other esoteric. The exoteric one, being that the two halves, swept through cycles upon cycles of time, in search of each other; and, that, when they finally met, in a perfect union, or marriage, the two halves became one on earth, and after death, united again. The true explanation, however, the esoteric one, is, that each and every one of us, contains within himself, both the halves: the feminine predominating through some incarnations, the masculine through others. It adds that, when we evolute into the perfect being, the Adept, the Mahatma, both principles are in perfect harmony. Or, as the Kabalists have recorded it, harmony is in equilibrium, and equilibrium exists by the analogy of contraries. How often we discern in the most masculine of men, distinct feminine traits of character, and vice versa, in the gentlest of the fair sex, discover masculine traits.
The Jewish Kabbalists represented these two principles in the letters forming their Ineffable Name. Its first three characters mean Eve, or Eva, or Hâyah היה or woman, or by another reading it means mother, and is, in fact, the proper name as given in Genesis for Eve, “the mother of all living.” Adding the character י Yodh or Yah, the male, the number one, the masculine, we have Jehovah, or Jah-eve, or being as male-female, the perfect number—10, symbolised by the Sephirothal Adam Kadmon.
A few evenings ago, while pondering on this subject, in a room devoted to occult research, where an Eastern incense burning with a ruddy glow on the triangular-shaped altar, sent its refreshing fragrance through the apartment, my outer senses were lulled, and the inner ones came into play, and I became conscious of my other “half.” I saw standing before me, a being, whom I had hitherto considered as my guardian angel stretching out her hands to me, and saying—“my beloved one, know thy-self.”
The fire on the altar burnt low. The north-east wind, which had been blowing in furious gusts outside, lashing the bosom of the lake into white foam, died away, sounding like some far distant choral chant. An unearthly silence ensued, and seemed to pervade the infinitudes of space. A thousand voices spoke to me, saying, “Man, know thyself.” Shadowy, ghostly forms filled the apartment. One, more distinct than the rest, tall in form, clad in a long flowing garment of pure white, the long black hair falling in curly locks over his shoulders, the silky beard reaching to his waist, the light of centuries of centuries gleaming forth from his dark eyes—extended his right hand toward me. A thrill of unutterable delight passed through my being. Slowly I emerged from my earthly casket, looked for an instant at its sleeping form, then felt irresistibly drawn to the fair being, who still stood with outstretched hands, and seemed to lose myself in her. The twain had become one. The mystic union had taken place. For a few brief moments I realized the possibilities of jnânayoga, the wisdom-power of the adepts. Space was annihilated. I could see systems upon systems of worlds, galaxies of stars, suns and systems of suns, whirling through space. I thought of some distant place, and I was there. Complex problems solved themselves quite naturally: I had become all THOUGHT....
The extended hand of the tall form flashed before my eyes, and I became unconscious. When I awoke, I found lying on the altar a full-blown white rose. The north-east wind was again roaring in fierce gusts, the fire on the altar had died out. The mirrors had draped themselves with their curtains of black. The two interlaced triangles had merged into a circle, of pure gold in colour. Once more I took upon myself my objective life. But I had solved the problem which has taken me seven years to solve. I was content....
“Bertrand Stonex,” F.T.S.
THE THREE DESIRES.
The first three of the numbered rules of “Light on the Path” must appear somewhat of an unequal character to bracket together. The sense in which they follow each other is purely spiritual. Ambition is the highest point of personal activity reached by the mind, and there is something noble in it, even to an Occultist. Having conquered the desire to stand above his fellows, the restless aspirant, in seeking what his personal desires are, finds the thirst for life stand next in his way. For all that are ordinarily classed as desires have long since been subjugated, passed by, or forgotten, before this pitched battle of the soul is begun. The desire for life is entirely a desire of the spirit, not mental at all; and in facing it a man begins to face his own soul. But very few have even attempted to face it; still fewer can guess at all at its meaning.
The connection between ambition and the desire of life is of this kind. Men are seldom really ambitious in whom the animal passions are strong. What is taken for ambition in men of powerful physique is more often merely the exercise of great energy in order to obtain full gratification of all physical desires. Ambition pure and simple is the struggle of the mind upwards, the exercise of a native intellectual force which lifts a man altogether above his peers. To rise—to be preeminent in some special manner, in some department of art, science, or thought, is the keenest longing of delicate and highly-tuned minds. It is quite a different thing from the thirst for knowledge which makes of a man a student always—a learner to the end, however great he may become. Ambition is born of no love for anything for its own sake, but purely for the sake of oneself. “It is I that will know, I that will rise, and by my own power.”
“Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition;
By that sin fell the angels.”
The place-seeking for which the word was originally used, differs in degree, not in kind, from that more abstract meaning now generally attached to it. A poet is considered ambitious when he writes for fame. It is true; so he is. He may not be seeking a place at court, but he is certainly seeking the highest place he knows of. Is it conceivable that any great author could really be anonymous, and remain so? The human mind revolts against the theory of the Baconian authorship of Shakespeare’s works, not only because it deprives the world of a splendid figure, but also because it makes of Bacon a monster, unlike all other human beings. To the ordinary intelligence it is inconceivable that a man should hide his light in this purposeless manner. Yet it is conceivable to an occultist that a great poet might be inspired by one greater than himself, who would stand back entirely from the world and all contact with it. This inspirer would not only have conquered ambition but also the abstract desire for life, before he could work vicariously to so great an extent. For he would part with his work for ever when once it had gone to the world; it would never be[be] his. A person who can imagine making no claim on the world, neither desiring to take pleasure from it nor to give pleasure to it, can dimly apprehend the condition which the occultist has reached when he no longer desires to live. Do not suppose this to mean that he neither takes nor gives pleasure; he does both, as also he lives. A great man, full of work and thought, eats his food with pleasure; he does not dwell on the prospect of it, and linger over the memory, like the gluttonous child, or the gourmand pure and simple. This is a very material image, yet sometimes these simple illustrations serve to help the mind more than any others. It is easy to see, from this analogy, that an advanced occultist who has work in the world may be perfectly free from the desires which would make him a part of it, and yet may take its pleasures and give them back with interest. He is enabled to give more pleasure than he takes, because he is incapable of fear or disappointment. He has no dread of death, nor of that which is called annihilation. He rests on the waters of life, submerged and sleeping, or above them and conscious, indifferently. He cannot feel disappointment, because although pleasure is to him intensely vivid and keen, it is the same to him whether he enjoys it himself or whether another enjoys it. It is pleasure, pure and simple, untarnished by personal craving or desire.[desire.] So with regard to what occultists call “progress”—the advance from stage to stage of knowledge. In a school of any sort in the external world emulation is the great spur to progress. The occultist, on the contrary, is incapable of taking a single step until he has acquired the faculty of realizing progress as an abstract fact. Someone must draw nearer to the Divine in every moment of life; there must always be progress. But the disciple who desires that he shall be the one to advance in the next moment, may lay aside all hope of it. Neither should he be conscious of preferring progress for another or of any kind of vicarious sacrifice. Such ideas are in a certain sense unselfish, but they are essentially characteristic of the world in which separateness exists, and form is regarded as having a value of its own. The shape of a man is as much an eidolon as though no spark of divinity inhabited it; at any moment that spark may desert the particular shape, and we are left with a substantial shadow of the man we knew. It is in vain, after the first step in occultism has been taken, that the mind clings to the old beliefs and certainties. Time and space are known to be non-existent, and are only regarded as existing in practical life for the sake of convenience. So with the separation of the divine-human spirit into the multitudes of men on the earth. Roses have their own colours, and lilies theirs; none can tell why this is when the same sun, the same light, gives the colour to each. Nature is indivisible. She clothes the earth, and when that clothing is torn away, she bides her time and re-clothes it again when there is no more interference with her. Encircling the earth like an atmosphere, she keeps it always glowing and green, moistened and sun-lit. The spirit of man encompasses the earth like a fiery spirit, living on Nature, devouring her, sometimes being devoured by her, but always in the mass remaining more ethereal and sublime than she is. In the individual, man is conscious of the vast superiority of Nature; but when once he becomes conscious that he is part of an indivisible and indestructible whole, he knows also that the whole of which he is part stands above nature. The starry sky is a terrible sight to a man who is just self-less enough to be aware of his own littleness and unimportance as an individual; it almost crushes him. But let him once touch on the power which comes from knowing himself as part of the human spirit, and nothing can crush him by its greatness. For if the wheels of the chariot of the enemy pass over his body, he forgets that it is his body, and rises again to fight among the crowd of his own army. But this state can never be reached, nor even approached, until the last of the three desires is conquered, as well as the first. They must be apprehended and encountered together.
Comfort, in the language used by occultists, is a very comprehensive word. It is perfectly useless for a neophyte to practise discomfort or asceticism as do religious fanatics. He may come to prefer deprivation in the end, and then it has become his comfort. Homelessness is a condition to which the religious Brahmin pledges himself; and in the external religion he is considered to fulfil this pledge if he leaves wife and child, and becomes a begging wanderer, with no shelter of his own to return to. But all external forms of religion are forms of comfort, and men take vows of abstinence in the same spirit that they take pledges of boon companionship. The difference between these two sides of life is only apparent. But the homelessness which is demanded of the neophyte is a much more vital thing than this. It demands the surrender from him of choice or desire. Dwelling with wife and child, under the shelter of a familiar roof-tree, and fulfilling the duties of citizenship, the neophyte may be far more homeless, in the esoteric sense, than when he is a wanderer or an outcast. The first lesson in practical occultism usually given to a pledged disciple is that of fulfilling the duties immediately to hand with the same subtle mixture of enthusiasm and indifference as the neophyte would imagine himself able to feel when he had grown to the size of a ruler of worlds and a designer of destinies. This rule is to be found in the Gospels and in the Bhagavad Gita. The immediate work, whatever it may be, has the abstract claim of duty, and its relative importance or non-importance is not to be considered at all. This law can never be obeyed until all desire of comfort is for ever destroyed. The ceaseless assertions and re-assertions of the personal self must be left behind for ever. They belong as completely to the character of this world as does the desire to have a certain balance at the bank, or to retain the affections of a loved person. They are equally subject to the change which is characteristic of this world; indeed, they are even more so, for what the neophyte does by becoming a neophyte is simply to enter a forcing-house. Change, disillusionment, disheartenment, despair will crowd upon him by invitation; for his wish is to learn his lessons quickly. And as he turns these evils out they will probably be replaced by others worse than themselves—a passionate longing for separate life, for sensation, for the consciousness of growth in his own self, will rush in upon him and sweep over the frail barriers which he has raised. And no such barriers as asceticism, as renunciation, nothing indeed which is negative, will stand for a single moment against this powerful tide of feeling. The only barrier is built up of new desires. For it is perfectly useless for the neophyte to imagine he can get beyond the region of desires. He cannot; he is still a man, Nature must bring forth flowers while she is still Nature, and the human spirit would loose its hold on this form of existence altogether did it not continue to desire. The individual man cannot wrench himself instantly out of that life of which he is an essential part. He can only change his position in it. The man whose intellectual life dominates his animal life, changes his position; but he is still in the dominion of desire. The disciple who believes it possible to become selfless in a single effort, will find himself flung into a bottomless pit as the consequence of his rash endeavour. Seize upon a new order of desires, purer, wider, nobler; and so plant your foot upon the ladder firmly. It is only on the last and topmost rung of the ladder, at the very entrance upon Divine or Mahatmic life, that it is possible to hold fast to that which has neither substance or existence.
The first part of “Light on the Path” is like a chord in music; the notes have to be struck together though they must be touched separately. Study and seize hold of the new desires before you have thrust out the old ones; otherwise in the storm you will be lost. Man while he is man has substance and needs some step to stand on, some idea to cling to. But let it be the least possible. Learn as the acrobat learns, slowly and with care, to become more independent. Before you attempt to cast out the devil of ambition—the desire of something, however fine and elevated, outside of yourself,—seize on the desire to find the light of the world within yourself. Before you attempt to cast out the desire of conscious life, learn to look to the unattainable or in other language to that which you know you can only reach in unconsciousness. In knowing that your aim is of this lofty character, that it will never bring conscious success, never bring comfort to you, that it will never carry you in your own temporary personal self to any haven of rest or place of agreeable activity, you cut away all the force and power of the desires of the lower astral nature. For what avail is it, when these facts have been once realised, to desire separateness, sensation or growth?
The armour of the warrior who rises to fight for you in the battle depicted in the second part of “Light on the Path,” is like the shirt of the happy man in the old story. The king was to be cured of all his ills by sleeping in this shirt; but when the one happy man in his kingdom was found, he was a beggar, without care, without anxiety—and shirtless. So with the divine warrior. None can take his armour and use it, for he has none. The king could never find happiness like that of the careless beggar. The man of the world, however fine and cultivated he may be, is hampered by a thousand thoughts and feelings which have to be cast aside before he can even stand on the threshold of occultism. And, be it observed, he is chiefly handicapped by the armour he wears, which isolates him. He has personal pride, personal respect. These things must die out as the personality recedes. The process described in the first part of “Light on the Path,” is one which takes off that shell, or armour, and casts it aside for ever. Then the warrior arises, armourless, defenceless, offenceless, identified with the afflicters and the afflicted, the angered and the one that angers; fighting not on any side, but for the Divine, the highest in all.
