The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING whatsoever thou givest, whatsoever thou doest of austerity, O Kaunteya, do thou that as an offering unto Me. On Me fix thy mind; be devoted to Me; sacrifice to Me; prostrate thyself before Me; harmonized thus in the SELF (Atman), thou shalt come unto Me, having Me as thy supreme goal.* These last two verses are taken from ‘The Yoga of the Kingly Science and the Kingly Secret”; and if put into slightly different language might easily be mistaken for a passage out of ‘‘ The Book of the Sacred Magic.” Not so, however, the first, which is taken from “ The Yoga by the Safkhya,” and which is reminiscent of the Quietism of Molinos and Madam de Guyon rather than of the operations of a ceremonial magician. And it was just this Quietism that P. as yet had never fully experienced; and he, realizing this, it came about that when once the key of Yoga was proffered him, he preferred to open the door of Renunciation and close that of Action, and to abandon the Western methods by the means of which he had already advanced so far rather than to continue in them. This in itself was the first great Sacrifice which he made upon the path of Renunciation—to abandon all that he had as yet attained to, to cut himself off from the world, and like an Hermit in a desolate land seek salvation by him- self, through himself and of Himself. Ultimately, as we shall see, he renounced even this disownment, for which he now sacrificed all, and, by an unification of both, welded the East to the West, the two halves of that perfect whole which had been lying apart since that night wherein the breath of God moved upon the face of the waters and the limbs of a living world struggled from out the Chaos of Ancient Night. * Ibid. Ninth Discourse, 27, 34. 67