They do not reject the Vedas. They re-fashion the Upanishads in their own hearts. They study the travels and hopes of Jesus, listen for the divine songs of Orpheus, penetrate the glitter of numbers with Pythagoras, find satisfaction in the Mohammedan thinkers who connected Aristotle with Moses. These names do not belong to the past. The many Buddhas are perpetually modern. Kabir lives to-day in Tagore. Heracleitus and Plato are still living springs.
In just the same sense, the children of the New Race are old as the Pelasgian Zeus, though in point of time they are here for work and play in 1920. But their vitality, reality, beauty, power and achievement—these are affairs of all time.
19
IMAGINATION
Many mystics have lost touch entirely with the deep sunken abutments of the spiritual edifice—the footings in matter. They are deeply wise in the mysteries and unfoldments of contemplation, but lose their way like mindless lambs in the world. We idealise a practical mysticism which dares to walk the earth in the heat of the day, dares to contemplate the stars as outposts of the heavenly kingdom, launching the vision at last, not only to the Holy City, but to the Throne of Itself....
Talks with Shuk at Stonestudy had a tendency to make us see the big Unseen politics and diplomacies and rulerships of the planet. Here are a few paragraphs from one of his letters which show the quality:
... Kings and presidents are the most hampered of men. Great generals are silly without their armies. To remove externals from us, to rid our minds of the illusive and the inessential, is simply to clear us for action. Even a gunner, in taking aim, regards the object or enemy as an abstraction, and focuses his whole attention upon his own instrument, his sights. If he actually looks at the enemy, he will not hit him. The billiardist first glances over the entire table, then, to make a true shot, concentrates his full attention upon the tip of his own cue. Perhaps the great leader of armies does not regard individuals or see them as men, but as extensions of his own body, and in time of stress, he has forgotten them completely save as abstract power for his use, and that use he determines interiorly. Even the most material-minded of men, in the crux of worldly and four-square events, sinks into deep and effective cerebration. Can we, who realise this as a conscious and direct principle, do any less?
I think the Guardians are sitting together a little way off, watching with grand interest, to see just how much of a mess mankind can make. Man is always given lavish supplies with which to create works of art that may prove equal in beauty and wonder to the universe itself. Man does not yet see art in these materials.
He must open his eyes before the Powers are able to help him. The Guardians cannot operate against man's will, because their will and his will, including yours and mine right now, are of one piece. The will of the Guardians is better trained and cleaner, because more experienced.... When men cease to shout for different things from the same Father, they stand a chance of getting the Father's attention.