23
THE MATING MYSTERY
I thought a great deal about Dreve's love-story in relation to the young people, in relation to the love of humanity, and in relation to the mystical growth of a man denied the mate on earth. In the first place, there must be many great love stories in the coming decades of reconstruction, if for no other reason than that great children are coming in. Such friends and brothers and comrades-of-all-the-earth can only be born through the excellent and adequate love of man and woman. In a recent novel, an old priest of the Gobi tells something of the love story of the future to a young American who is greatly troubled in his romance. I quote three or four paragraphs because this expression in fiction is clearer than I could write it again. Rajananda says:
I have watched your devotion for the woman and it has been a holy thing, my son. You love well. She has become more than earth-woman to you. She has become the way to God. This leads to true yoga. Where there is love like yours, there is no lust. Without these trials you could not have known so soon the love that will bring you in good time to her breast. The ways of easily-wedded pairs sink into commonness soon—the dull and dreamless death. It is those who are kept apart, who overcome great obstacles, who learn the greatest thing of all—to wait—who touch the upper reaches of splendour in the love of man and woman, and thus prepare themselves for the greater union and the higher questing which is the love of God together.
The seer must know the hearts of men. Knowledge of love is the knowledge of God. Love is the Wheel of Life; love is the Holy Breath that turns the Wheel. The seer is far from ready for his work in the world, who has forgotten from his breast the love of man and woman. And then, my son, we are almost at the end of the night of the world. The Builders are coming in to take the places of those who have torn down with war and every other madness of self. These Builders must be born of men and women—the New Race—but of men and women who have learned what great love means.
... Listen, my son: in the elder days men put away their women to worship God. The prophets, the seers, the holy men walked alone, and left the younger-souls of the world to bring forth sons. The time was not ripe for the race of heroes, therefore the mere children of men brought forth children. And all the masters spoke of the love of God for man, and the love of man for man, and the love of woman for her child, but no one spoke of the love of man and woman. All the sacred writings passed lightly over that, even the lips of the avatars were sealed. But now the Old is destroying itself in the outer world; the last great night of matter and of self is close to breaking into light; the time for heroes has come, my son, and heroes still must be born of this sacred mystery—the love of man and woman. So all the priests have this message now, all the teachers and leaders of men, even I, old Rajananda who speaks to you, and who has never known the kiss of woman—all are opening to the world the great story, unsealing the greatness of the love of man and woman.... For the Builders are coming, coming to lift the earth—the Saints are coming, my son—old Rajananda hears them singing; the Heroes are coming with light about their heads and their voices beautiful with the Story of God.... And now I must sleep. I go to my daughter, who waits for you.... Once, before you came, she rested my head and filled my bowl in the stone square at Nadiram. Even now she waits for you in the hills of my country—not far from this place, my son——
In the big expansions of life, in moments of great happiness, or hard-driven by pain—most of us have realised that the higher we rise in human consciousness, the nearer we get to the All. Thousands of people now living have risen, for short periods at least, above the sense of separateness, in which they realised that the finest and most exalted love a man may have is for "the great orphan, Humanity."
The human heart is awakened through the love of one, to the more spacious expression for the world. All life is a learning how to love. The last love of the flesh and the rolling years, before man turns his love from flesh to spirit, is the grand passion of man and woman, yet man does not abandon the woman in turning to Humanity or to the Unseen. Rather, hand in hand, the eyes of the man and woman are uplifted to one star—the Apex of a Triangle perfected.... Yet one must not turn to the Unseen until he has learned the full agony and ecstasy of the seen.
"Love humanity by all means," I tell younger ones, "but learn what love means first. Do not undertake to destroy passion until you have learned its glory and madness. Rather lift passion to adoration, and use it, full-powered, upon that which unfolds forever for your worship. It is not well to kill out a personality until you get one."
Our youthful reconstructionists are apt to stir the community with opinions or actions, which have to do with their own heart stories and the world's romance. They have a way of confounding the seasoned authorities of pastorate and parish, with embarrassing questions in regard to method and magic in the making of two souls into one. These young people may not be modest according to Elizabethan ideals; in fact, the young women are apt to go half-way in the choice of the man who is to be the father of her children, but this is an essential of innate beauty and fastidiousness. More and more the higher types of the new social order are questers for that single and holy mating which brings nearer the dream of the beautiful and heroic in children, and which gives us a glimpse of a future to die for.