The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

THE EQUINOX do that without losing anything. And because the sur- render must be complete, it must beware of that expansion which is called pride; for it is destroying duality, and pride implies duality. 56. Thine “isle” is the deer, thy thoughts the hounds that weary and pursue his progress to the stream of Life. Woe to the deer that is o’ertaken by the barking fiends before he reach the Vale of Refuge—Dhyana-Marga, “path of pure knowledge” named. Once more the passage harks back to the Abyss where thoughts prevail. It is another poetic image, and not a good one. Extraordinary how liable this unassailable Alaya- Soul is to catch cold! It isn’t woe to him; it’s woe to YOU! 57. Ere thou canst settle in Dhyéna-Mérga and call it thine, thy Soul has to become as the ripe mango fruit; as soft and sweet as its bright golden pulp for others’ woes, as hard as that fruit’s stone for thine own throes and sorrows, O conqueror of weal and woe. More trouble, more poetic image, more apparent sen- timentality. Its true interpretation is to be found in the old symbolism of this marriage of Chiah and Neshamah. Chiah is the male, proof against seduction; Neshamah the female that overcomes by weakness. But in actual practice the meaning may be explained thus,—you yourself have con- quered, you have become perfectly indifferent, perfectly energetic, perfectly creative, but, having united yourself to the Universe, you become acutely conscious that your own fortunate condition is not shared by that which you now are. It is then that the adept turns his face downwards, changes II2