Letters That Have Helped Me

by William Quan Judge; Julia Wharton Lewis Campbell Ver Planck Keightley

In regard to the phrase in the above letter that the Adept "brings back what he can" from Turya, it is to be understood as referring to the fact that all depends upon the coördination of the various principles in man. He who has attained perfection or Mahâtmaship has assumed complete control of the body and informs it at will. But, of course, while in the body he is still, to some extent, as a soul of power, limited by that body or vehicle. That is to say, there are experiences not to be shared by that organ of the soul called by us "the body," and beyond a certain point its brain cannot reflect or recall them. This point varies according to the degree of attainment of individual souls, and while in some it may be a high point of great knowledge and power, still it must be considered as limited compared with those spiritual experiences of the freed soul.

The work upon which all disciples are employed is that of rendering the body more porous, more fluidic, more responsive to all spiritual influences which arise in the inner center, in the soul which is an undivided part of the great Soul of all, and less receptive of the outside material influences which are generated by the unthinking world and by those qualities which are in nature. Abstract thought is said to be "the power of thinking of a thing apart from its qualities;" but these qualities are the phenomenal, the evident, and they make the most impression upon our senses. They bewilder us, and they form a part of that trap which Nature sets for us lest we discover her inmost secret and rule her. More than this: our detention as individual components of a race provides time for that and other races to go through evolutionary experience slowly, provides long and repeated chances for every soul to amend, to return, to round the curve of evolution. In this Nature is most merciful, and even in the darkness of the eighth sphere to which souls of spiritual wickedness descend, her impulses provide opportunities of return if a single responsive energy is left in the self-condemned soul.

Many persons insist upon a perfect moral code tempered by social amenities, forgetting that these vary with climate, nationalities, and dates. Virtue is a noble offering to the Lord. But insomuch as it is mere bodily uprightness and mere mental uprightness, it is insufficient and stands apart from uprightness of the psychic nature or the virtue of soul. The virtue of the soul is true Being; its virtue is, to be free. The body and the mind are not sharers in such experiences, though they may afterward reflect them, and this reflection may inform them with light and power of their own kind. Spirituality is not virtue. It is impersonality, in one aspect. It is as possible to be spiritually "wicked" as to be spiritually "good." These attributes are only conferred upon spirituality by reason of its use for or against the great evolutionary Law, which must finally prevail because it is the Law of the Deity, an expression of the nature and Being of the Unknown, which nature is towards manifestation, self-realization, and reäbsorption. All that clashes with this Law by striving for separate existence must in the long run fail, and any differentiation which is in itself incapable of reäbsorption is reduced to its original elements, in which shape, so to say, it can be reabsorbed.

Spirituality is, then, a condition of Being which is beyond expression in language. Call it a rate of vibration, far beyond our cognizance. Its language is the language of motion, in its incipiency, and its perfection is beyond words and even thought.

"The knowledge of the Supreme Principle is a divine silence, and the quiescence of all the senses."—(Clavis of Hermes.)

"Likes and dislikes, good and evil, do not in the least affect the knower of Brahm, who is bodiless and always existing."—(Crest Jewel of Wisdom.)

"Of that nature which is beyond intellect many things are asserted according to intellection, but it is contemplated by a cessation of intellectual energy better than with it."—(Porphyrios.)

Thought is bounded, and we seek to enter the boundless. The intellect is the first production of Nature which energizes for the experience of the soul, as I said. When we recognize this truth we make use of that natural energy called Thought for comparison, instruction, and the removal of doubt, and so reach a point where we restrain the outward tendencies of Nature, for, when these are resolved into their cause and Nature is wholly conquered and restrained, that cause manifests itself both in and beyond Nature.

"The incorporeal substances in descending are divided and multiplied about individuals with a diminution of power; but when they ascend by their energies beyond bodies, they become united and exist as a whole by and through exuberance of power."—(Porphyrios.)