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Page 1 of 11909 · PDF PAGE 23
…nsider that as the pendulum swings more and more slowly every time, it must ultimately stop, as soon as the shaft is of infinite length. Good! then it isn’t a pendulum at all but a Mahalingam— The Mahalingam of Shiva (amo Shivaya namaha Aum !) which is all I ever thought it was; all you have to do is to keep swinging hard—I know it’s hook-swinging!—and you get there in the End. Why trouble to swing? First, because you're bound to swing, whether you like it or not; second, because your attention is thereby distracted from those lumbar muscles in…
1909 · PDF PAGE 26
…s unpleasing metaphor, the whip! As some schoolboy poet repeatedly wrote, his rimes as poor as Edwin Arnold, his metre as erratic and as good as Francis Thompson, his good sense and frank indecency a match for Browning! “Can’t be helped; must be done— So...” Nay! ’tis a bad, bad rime. And only after the scourge that smites shall come the rod that consoles, if I may borrow a somewhat daring simile from Abdullah Haji of Shiraz and the twenty-third Psalm. Well, I would much prefer to spend my life at the rod ; it is wearisome and loathsome to be c…
1909 · PDF PAGE 14
THE EQUINOX out works is dead,” so, good friends, Samadhi is all humbug unless the practitioner shows the glint of its gold in his work in the world. If your mystic becomes Dante, well; if Tennyson, a fig for his trances! But how does this tower of Samadhi stand the assault of Question-time? Is not the idea of Samadhi just as dependent on all the other ideas—man, time, being, thought, logic? If I seek to explain Samadhi by analogy, am I not often found talking as if we knew all about Evolution, and Mathematics, and His- tory? Complex and unscie…
1909 · PDF PAGE 18
…and the hat on the other. In short, why not be a clean-living Irish gentleman, even if you do have insane ideas about the universe? Very good, say my friends, unabashed, then why not stick to that? Why glorify Spanish gipsies when you have married a clergyman’s daughter? Why go about proclaiming that you can get as good fun for eighteenpence as usually costs men a career? Ah! let me introduce you to the man in Tiphereth ; that is, the man who is trying to raise his consciousness from Malkuth to Kether. This Tiphereth man is in a devil of a hole…
1909 · PDF PAGE 5
…in favour of a negative conclusion; and the true sceptic should be perfectly unbiassed. Second, I exclude “vital scepticism.” What's the good of anyfink? expects (as we used to learn about “nonne?”) the answer, ‘Why, nuffink !” and again is prejudiced. Indolence is no virtue in a questioner. Eagerness, intentness, concen- H 113
1909 · PDF PAGE 12
…of God or say of Him, so long as our words really represent thoughts, is less than the whole brain which thinks, and orders speech. Very good; shall we proceed by denying Him all think- able qualities, as do the heathen? All we obtain is mere negation of thought. Either He is unknowable, or He is less than we are. Then, too, that which is unknowable is unknown; and “God” or “ There is God” as an answer to our question becomes as meaningless as any other. Who are we, then? We are Spencerian Agnostics, poor silly, damned Spen- cerian Agnostics ! …
1909 · PDF PAGE 24
…ch little importance to the Reverend Out-at-Elbows, thundering in Bareboards Chapel that the rich man gets no enjoyment from his wealth. Good, then. Let us obtain the volume entitled “The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage”; or the magical writings of that holy illuminated Man of God, Captain Fuller, and carry out fully their instructions. And only when we have succeeded, when we have put a colossal ! against our vital ? need we inquire whether after all the soldier is not going to develop spinal curvature. Let us take the first ste…
1909 · PDF PAGE 20
…magine, give long odds to one of Frederick’s grenadiers. It is useless to attack the mystic by asking him if he is quite sure Samadhi is good for his poor health; ’tis like asking the huntsman to be very careful, please, not to hurt the fox. The ultimate Question, the one that really knocks Samadhi to pieces, is such a stupendous Idea that it is far more of a! than all previous !’s whatever, for all its ? form. And the name of that Question is Nibbana. Take this matter of the soul. When Mr. Judas McCabbage asks the Man in the Street why he beli…