Those of the Dualist Philosophy might indeed argue that such an one had his feet well planted on the narrow way—but the students of the wider Philosophy of Nature know well that everything on Earth—religion included—is under the governance of natural law. The attainment of perfection is not to be achieved by sentiment alone—it is a scientific process, and knowledge is the supreme enlightener.
The devotion of Bhakti is indeed a necessary prelude to progress in the religious life, under the guidance of whichever special cult the neophyte may aspire, but it is as it were the outer court of the Temple, and the Holy of Holies cannot be reached by any save those who have attained knowledge.
Without some previous study of occult writings, this word knowledge will entirely fail to carry home the idea which it is intended to express, and let alone the liability to misinterpretation from this cause, how can anyone pretend to describe it who has himself none of this knowledge, who has not yet trodden one step of the path that leads there, and who can only strain with vague imagination towards the sublime conception of the inmost workings of Nature through her manifold diversity laid bare before the intuitive vision? However, although it is an act of temerity on the writer’s part, these few words may convey some idea to those who are no further on the path than himself.
When the lower states of consciousness have been so welded in the fire of supreme emotion that duty, though involving the most appalling sacrifice, is no longer a thing to strive after with pain and struggle, but is a natural outcome of the life—the absolute expression of unity with nature—when the higher faculties, emotional, ethical and intellectual, whose respective functions may be said to be the perceiving of the Beautiful, the Good, and the True, have been so merged in one that the Buddhi or divine spark which hitherto flickered, becomes a bright, steady, luminous flame—when the “Explosion,” as St. Martin called it, has taken place, “by which our natural will is forever dispersed and annihilated by contact with the divine,”—then and then only is one fit to begin to tread the path of knowledge.
That it leads altogether beyond human experience, and entirely transcends what we can conceive is but too apparent.
The 15th and 16th Rules in the second part of “Light on the Path” may help towards a vague apprehension of what this knowledge means.
15th. Inquire of the earth, the air and the water of the secrets they hold for you. The development of your inner senses will enable you to do this.
16th. Inquire of the holy ones of the earth of the secrets they hold for you. The conquering of the desires of the outer senses will give you the right to do this.
And the final secret of all may be said to be wrapped up in the mystery of “self.” When the knowledge of the individualization of Being is reached, man has learned all that this world can teach him, and in the words “Know thyself” lie folded the ultimate possibilities of Humanity. Knowledge is indeed the supreme enlightener.
“There is no purifier like thereto