The sensual appetites are impelling because the creative quality upon the physical plane counterfeits the unity of masculine and feminine principles in the final perfection of human consciousness. The attraction of the sexes depends upon an awakening not only to the qualities of the opposite, but also to an exaltation of the lover's sense of his or her own manhood or womanhood. Exercised merely for gratification the lower appetites fill the indulger's world with insistent desires, capable of leading to degrading depths. But when the creative energy is consciously expended along the uplifting lines of noble and altruistic endeavor it arouses in all the auto-creative sense of power, which, reproductive in its own right, has the satisfying sense of attainment. Unselfish love so far awakens the higher nature to its own richness and strength and beauty that its royal impulse to give would sacrifice the personal self in protecting and idealizing the beloved.
The temptations of ambition spring from a love of power—the power of knowledge, of courage, of beauty, of strength, of influence—those things which arouse the possessor to an enlarged or intensified sense of himself. That the ruling personal ambition too often sacrifices the greatest elements of the nature to obtain the gratification of seeming greatness does not discount the fact of the Real Self which sacrifices its lesser desires to be great.
Back of all counterfeits must be the genuine coin to give the false its spurious value. So beyond the many byways of sense and sensation wherein humanity seeks to feel and to think and to do more there is the sunlit highway of the natural soul-life wherein one grows more conscious of his divine power and possibilities. Normal growth during incarnation is not found in a repeated round of sensational climaxes, but in a progressive journey with an ever-expanding horizon where the soul dominates the nature forces within and without the body. The child who learns to know the divine reality of his dual nature inevitably comes to find that "pleasure within himself" that is satisfying in its expansive sense of power and beauty and largeness.
That the child is incapable of realizing so profound a truth as that of his divine origin is questioned by a world psychologized with centuries of false teachings of natural depravity, etc. But in the teaching of the dual nature in the Râja Yoga training that calls upon the higher side to master and utilize the force of the lower impulses, the reality of innate power becomes the satisfying keynote of daily life. In the plastic period of child growth, he should be spared the usual external distractions while acquiring the habit of looking within to "find himself." Protection from the taint of artificial life is no more enervating than the suitable care the gardener gives to seedlings while they take firm root for future growth and resistance.
Temptation can only tempt where there is lack and longing. One who has learned how to live in the fulness and richness of the reality can easily estimate the worth of any imitation, familiar or unknown. Theosophy does not haggle over theological minutiae. It broadly asserts that the divine man incarnating becomes dual in nature. Râja Yoga training confidently challenges the indwelling soul to come forth and declare itself.
LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF PYTHAGORAS:
by F. S. Darrow, A. M., Ph. D. (Harv.)
III. The Teachings
