The day comes at last when we have audience with Him—when we rule with Him, when we become united with Him. From the throne Itself, then we perceive the outsiders, the sentries, the couriers, messengers, charioteers, the winged riders and the deep-down men of the dungeons.... With the fine tranquillity of power, we measure forth to all, reverence, justice and grace.
20
BOYS AND DOGS
Children of the new social order love strange creatures; they are passionate about the care and protection of animals, but until they are made to suffer, they are apt to be sceptical about the infallibility of their elders. They are usually forced into silence early. I have noted that their ideas are intrinsically at variance with parental ideas—about purity, sunlight, dancing, foods, religion, odours.... It takes a good man to break a horse or a dog. In a sense break is the word, although I would accomplish it with enchantment rather than a gad.... This is invariable: "When the pupil is ready—the Master appears——" an old occult saying, and another: "The first thing the Master does, is to break the back of his disciple——"
Stiffness of opinion, rigidity of holding to that which one has, preconception, deep-rutted habits of mind—all these are fatal to that swift and splendid growth of the disciple when he first finds his teacher. For days the child is in a bewildering series of changes—made over new each fortnight—reviewing lives of experience—razing the old structures to the very footings for new temples of mind and soul. The child must be ready to give himself—must give himself utterly. The essential reverence is first required; the self is broken for all births; one gives one's self to gain all. I would not try to quicken a child who doubted what I was saying; and yet I have never sought to make myself unerring or infallible. I like to have the young ones make humour of my frailties, and at the same time believe there is something priceless in our better moments together. There is no possibility of front or acting.
I seek to make them practise the presence of the Divine in themselves. I tell them never to do anything alone that they would not do before me. I take away all sense of sin from them. I sometimes congratulate them on being especially close to us, because of mistakes. I seek to set them free in all their ways, stripping the last attraction from evil, jockeying them higher from a humorous and artistic point of view. I show them the banality of many popular and obvious evils, the dulness of paying the price for something off form and of questionable taste.
There is a lot of humour and nobility about a good dog and a good boy together. John has been sleeping for a few nights in a bit of a cabin with an open door. He picked up a friend down on the beach somewhere, the same that he described as "World Man Dog" in one of his letters. I liked the tone of his voice as he talked with this old loafer named Seaweed.... One evening I was sitting on the hill above the cabin, so still that even a bird would have mistaken me for a part of the landscape.