"I am seventy years young" says the man who hopes for eternal youth and life; and if he says it from the standpoint of wisdom—the wisdom that knows himself an immortal soul fired by pure and holy spiritual love, then indeed his words are truly symbolical.
But if he utters them merely in desperate defiance of organic decay, they are empty and he will enter the after-life, even as he leaves this one, without having attained that which he craves.
This truth is an integral part of the cosmos, from which there is no appeal; no reprieve; no immunity, no "respecter of persons." The law is absolute and it is also just. Pure and perfect love is the price of immortal life. There is no other "coin of the realm."
"But," questions the initiate, "why cannot those who know, if there be such in the world today, give us this mystical formula? Why do they not tell us how we may reach this desirable state of spiritual sex-love, which affords such divine happiness to those who find it?" The query is pertinent and the desire is natural; the doubt of its reality is consistent, yet we are constrained to say that in the very nature of such inquiry the disciple of the Hidden Wisdom voices his unreadiness for Illumination. The desire for self-gratification, though right and natural to the sense-conscious plane, is yet inimical to attainment of spiritual consciousness.
There is a spiritual message in the persistently inculcated doctrine of sacrifice. It is not that a Supreme Being desires sacrifice, or gifts, or adulation, or homage, or worship, or that any power glories in our unhappiness. It is not that we may purchase any spiritual thing by giving up something which we prize, but it is because our spirit becomes attuned to the central source of Life by means of our willingness to perform what to the sense-conscious plane of existence seems a sacrifice.
"He sought for others the good he desired for himself; let him pass on" is the Egyptian phrasing of the Golden Rule, and this states it as clearly as it can be stated.
Yet should any one take this truism as an unfailing formula and expect to enter the golden gate of eternal life because of obedience to the letter of the pass-word, he would fail. Altruism is; it is not mere recognition of a word.
We may presuppose another natural and instinctive query: "If then only by union with one's true mate one can enter the bliss of eternal life and love, should not we drop every other responsibility, sever all ties of relationship, give up wife or husband or family or work, and search for the one perfect complementary, finding which, is found the answer to all life's problems?"
Again we can only say that the seeker would be disappointed. We should remember the story of Sir Launfall. Returning from the unfruitful quest of long years for the Holy Grail (the golden chalice), he learned the lesson of Truth from the beggar at his own door to whom he gave the cup of cold water without any consciousness of doing a good deed; without hope of thereby finding the grail.
He who seeks with the selfish thought of securing for self any good will not find it though he should give away every farthing to the poor; though he should never permit one unkind word to pass his lips; though he should fast and scourge and deny the flesh; kneel all day and all night in prayer. As long as he holds to the thought of self and of obtaining something so long will he miss the attainment.