In India the principal general symbols are fire and water, sun and moon, man and woman, bull and cow, the linga and yoni, the lotus and the sacred fig (ficus indica). The lotus is formed of red, white and blue colors; blue is considered the same as black.
Isaac Myer.
“Light on the Path.”
“The Soul of man is immortal and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendour has no limit.”
It is with extreme diffidence that I venture to undertake a short commentary or analysis of the book whose title heads this article; not only because of the nature of the work itself, but also because it has already been twice commented upon, once by the author, and once by a very learned student of Eastern Literature. The author’s notes, however, were rather an extension of the original text than a commentary in the strict sense of the word; while the object of the second annotator was more an attempt to show the identity of the doctrines contained in Light on the Path with those of ancient Brahamanical Philosophy, than to give the nature of those doctrines in themselves.
The object of this paper on the contrary, is to attempt to analyze the scheme of Philosophy in accordance with which this little book has been written; in other words, to attempt to set forth the intellectual counterpart of the spiritual doctrines of Light on the Path. It is inevitable that, in thus changing the doctrine from the Spiritual to the intellectual plane, so to speak, the intellectual counterpart should be inferior to the Spiritual original. To counterbalance this loss, however, it is true on the other hand that the intellectual counterpart may render the spiritual original accessible to some, the conformation of whose minds renders them unable to appreciate it directly. It is in the hope that this may be so that the present paper has been attempted.
To begin with, then, the work we are considering indicates a possible enlightenment of the Soul, and development of the higher part of our nature; and further states that these results cannot take place before a certain battle has been fought and won: we have, therefore, to discover what the soul is; what is the nature of the battle; what are the opposing forces; and what are the results of the struggle.
The combatants are the higher nature, or Soul on the one side; and the lower nature or egotism on the other. The higher nature includes the intellectual, Spiritual, and æsthetical powers: that is to say, the powers which deal with the perception of truth, goodness, and beauty.
The sense of truth is characteristically manifested in the conquest of some intricate mathematical problem, or in following successfully some difficult chain of reasoning.