... I was watching the pool this morning—fish and frogs and eels under the lily-pads—a slow cold life. They have colour and grace—but eyes of glass. They move so softly down in the dim coppery light.... I thought of the lakes and the seas, the simple cold of all life—the coldest and most rudimentary in the great deeps.... Birds were playing about in the rose gardens, darting in and out of the bamboo clumps and yucca stalks. Humming-birds were continually fanning the trumpet and honeysuckle vines.... I thought of the skylarks—throats that open only as wings beat upward, and the infinite blue harbours where the white gulls flash—the lonely lakes and tarns where the heron cross in the evening and the loon cries at night—the cypress deeps where the flamingoes commune in shaded glory, and the eagles that cross from peak to peak, along the spine of the continents.
... And then, of course, it came to me—the old conquest—how we must lift our consciousness above the face of the waters and put on our wings.... Many have almost finished with the waters of generation—the emotional body of man, the same as the planet.... In the beginning, it was necessary to "go down into the water"—the terms of the baptismal rite. Regeneration is "coming up out of the water." The struggle between the two dimensions is dramatically expressed by the faith, and the lapse of faith, of Peter when he obeyed the Lord, and arose to walk upon his storm-tossed lower self. His supplication as he sank saved him from perishing. Regenerated, he walked with the Lord upon the waters. I remember, too, the saying, "You must be born again of water and of spirit——," the story of regeneration told once more....
It's a lifting from the cold, bloodless vibrations of the creatures of the deep, to the winged passages of air and sun and starlight.... We think that we give up joys of life—we plunge back again and again to the dim cold waters—our eyes blinded at first by the light, our senses frightened by the fragrance and the space.... As if the reflected light of the lower cosmos could compare with the pure radiance above; as if the love of desire could compare to the glory of the outpouring heart—the heart filled with light—the fulness of spirit, the ecstasy of wings.
IV
... The time comes in the progress of spiritual aspiration when the generative impulse begins to manifest within rather than without. Firmly and gently the thoughts are turned to the Image within or above; the tendencies for outward manifestation slowly but surely give way.... This work sometimes goes on rapidly. A hundred times a day the thoughts of earthy attraction are finished with a soul conception, where formerly the mere physical presence sufficed.
Nothing answers thought more swiftly, but in this passage of mastery, if a single desire eludes from the aspirant, he must meet it later in a tearing and cumulative call. Surely at length the mind rises to rule. One's conception changes from the fear, the torment and the red haze, to gentleness and calm, a readiness to know all the mysteries of life—to care for and respect all functions as one only can who has mastered himself.
To cast them out in hatred is failure. That means the hardening. It blights the beauty of the vales and all magic.