The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

THE TWO PATHS The subject of elimination is here further developed. The favourite Eastern image of the Wheel of the Good Law is difficult to Western minds, and the whole metaphor appears to us somewhat confused. 19. True knowledge is the flour, false learning is the husk. If thou would’st eat the bread of Wisdom, thy flour thou hast to knead with Amrita’s clear waters. But if thou kneadest husks with Maya's dew, thou canst create but food for the black doves of death, the birds of birth, decay and SOrrow. “Amrita” means not only Immortality, but is the techni- cal name of the Divine force which descends upon man, but which is burnt up by his tendencies, by the forces which make him what he is. It is also a certain Elixir which is the Menstruum of Harpocrates. Amrita here is best interpreted thus, for it is in opposition to “Maya.” To interpret illusion is to make confusion more confused. 20. If thou art told that to become Arhan thou hast to cease to love all beings—tell them they lie. Here begins an instruction against Asceticism, which has always been the stumbling block most dreaded by the wise. ‘Christ’ said that John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, and the people called him mad. He himself came eating and drinking; and they called him a gluttonous man and a wine bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. The Adept does what he likes, or rather what he wills, and allows nothing to interfere with it, but because he is ascetic in the sense that he has no appetite for the stale stupidities which 47