The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

THE EQUINOX —bliss immediate, and at the other—bliss deferred. Both are of merit the reward; the choice is thine. The “four and seven Portals” refer, the first to the four stages ending in Arhat, the second to the Portals referred to in the third Fragment. 76. The One becomes the two, the Open and the Secret. The first one leadeth to the goal, the second, to Self-Immola- tion. The obvious meaning of the verse is the one to take. However, I must again warn the reader against supposing that “Self-Immolation” has anything to do with Sir Philip Sidney, or the Sati of the Brahmin’s widow. 77. When to the Permanent is sacrificed the Mutable, the prize is thine: the drop returneth whence it came. The Open PATH leads to the changeless change—Nirvéna, the glori- ous state of Absoluteness, the Bliss past human thought. 78. Thus, the first Path is LIBERATION. 79. But Path the second is RENUNCIATION, and therefore called the “Path of Woe.” There is far too much emotionalism in this part of the treatise, though perhaps this is the fault of the language; but the attitude of contemplating the sorrow of the Universe eternally is unmanly and unscientific. In the practical at- tempt to aid suffering, the consciousness of that suffering is lost. With regard to the Doctrine of Karma, argument is nugatory. In one sense Karma cannot be interfered with, even to the smallest extent, in any way, and therefore all action is not truly cause, but effect. In another sense Zoro- aster is right when he says “Theurgists fall not so low as to 7O