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Page 122 of 1301929 · PDF PAGE 132
… the sense to accept the Ordeal as a compliment. The umbilical cord was cut: I was an independent being, with his own way to make in the world. On the boat from Yokohama to Shanghai were two American spinsters of the faded variety, with parchment skin due to dryness of climate and devotion to virtue and cocktails. Hearing that I was interested in literature, hope revived. They told me their favorite poet was Rossetti. I was tactless enough to ask which of his poems they had read and preferred, but it did not runt to that. It was sufficiently da…
1906 · PDF PAGE 252
…man fording a swift stream can dip his foot twice into the same water, so no man can, with exactness, affirm of anything in the sensible world that it is. As he utters the words, nay, as he thinks them, the predicate ceases to be applicable; the present has become the past; the ‘is’ should be ‘ was.’ And the more we learn of the nature of things the more evident is it that what we call rest is only unperceived activity; that seeming peace is silent but strenuous battle. In every part, at-every moment, the state of the cosmos is the expression o…
1929 · PDF PAGE 166
166 The last quarter of a century has swamped all these. The world is seething with the dissatisfaction that springs from insecurity. Men can adapt themselves to pretty well any conditions, but when they do not know from one day to another whether some fundamental principle may not be abolished in the interests of progress, they no longer know where they are. They tend to adopt the principles of the man who flits from one place to another, grabbing portable property and dodging creditors and policemen. Civilization has become a hysterical scram…
1929 · PDF PAGE 407
…first halt we enjoyed the hospitality of a famous sheikh who had established a sort of mystical university in that obscure corner of the world. We found him a courteous host and a most enlightened scholar. One of the advantages of spiritual development is the confirmation of one's results which one obtains from similarly disposed people whom one meets. There is a real freemasonry among such men, which does not depend upon formula and dogma. The instinctive sympathy proves that one has done right to climb beyond conscious conclusions. In the kin…
1906 · PDF PAGE 251
…nd inevitably destructive against any such structure. But I am surely in danger of becoming ridiculous in writing thus to the scientific world. What IJ really wish to show is that one need not look for all) the Buddhist fancy dishes to be served at the scientific table to the peril of the scientific digestion. And by a backhanded stroke I wish to impress as deeply as possible upon my Buddhist friends that too much zeal for the accidentals of our religion will surely result in the overwhelming of its essentials in the tide of justly scornful or …
1907 · PDF PAGE 27
WHY JESUS WEPT 21 more than your Lrincedom ; you, clchiha,} by sticking manfully to your Work in the World, yet no more allowing it to touch your Purpose than waters may wet the lotus leaf (to take the oldest and best simile of your oldest and best poets), must I dedicate this strange drama; for, like you, [would aban- don all; like you, I see clearly what is of value ; or, tf not, at least what is worthless ; already something! Thus do I wish you and myself the three great boons Stla, Samadht, and Salam. DEDICATIO MAXIMA. To my unborn child, W…
1929 · PDF PAGE 16
…erfall by coloured lights. He felt acutely that nature should be allowed to go her own way and he his! There was plenty of beauty in the world; why make oneself uncomfortable in order to see an extra? Also, you can't improve a waterfall by stagecraft! There is the skeleton of quite a philosophy of life in this. As to the Scottish Highlands, the boy's mind had been so poisoned by romance that he saw nothing that he can remember. The scenery was merely a setting for silly daydreams of Roderick Dhu! Three other episodes of the Redhill period are p…
1906 · PDF PAGE 264
…r in advance of us in the study of the supernormal phenomena of mind as we are in advance of our fathers in the sciences of the physical world.? Note carefully this practical sense of my intention. I care nothing for the academic meanings of the steps inthe Path ; what they meant to the Arahats of old is indifferent to me. ‘‘ Let the dead past bury its dead!” What I require is an advance in the Know- ledge of the Great Problem, derived no longer from hearsay revelation, from exalted fanati- cism, from hysteria and intoxication; but from method …
1904 · PDF PAGE 80
…e years old. VIII. “It really seemed as if fate was agains t him. Poor Jehjaour ! In despair he cried to his partner, ‘O Ganesha, in the world of Gods only we shall be safe. Let him be born as a flute-girl before Indra’s throne !’ ‘Difficult is the task,’ replied the alarm ed deity, ‘but I will use all m y influence. I 1 The Gover nment, in th e intersts of Bud- dhists themselves, r eserves all gr ound within 50 feet of a dagoba. The incident described in this section actually occurred in 1901. 2 Siam. know a thing or two about Indra, for examp…
1929 · PDF PAGE 237
… depend upon events which I had no part in bringing about. It may be said that nevertheless there may have been someone somewhere in the world who possessed the necessary qualities. This again is rebutted by the fact that some of the allusions are to facts known to me alone. We are forced to conclude that the author of The Book of the Law is an intelligence both alien and superior to myself, yet acquainted with my inmost secrets; and, most important point of all, that this intelligence is discarnate. The existence of true religion presupposes t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 503
…n took in the Mammoth Caves of Kentucky. I need not describe them. I content myself with the remark that they make a third wonder of the world worth seeing, from Niagara to the Grand Canyon. Except for the Yellowstone Park, which I have not yet seen, nothing else in America is worth seeing first or last for the matter of that. A final inspection of the bughouse in Detroit left me free to get back to Europe. I reached London a few days before Christmas 1919. {794} 81 In The Vision and the Voice, the attainment of the grade of Master of the Templ…
1906 · PDF PAGE 275
…e wander far—By the way, how old are you? You appear young, but you know much. Myst. You are too polite. I am but an ultimate truth, six world-truths, fourteen grand generalisations, eighty generalisations, sixty-two dilemmas, and the usual odd mil- lion impressions. Scept. What is all this? You are surely— Myst. No, most noble Festus. Put me 1.6. , 1 The physical basis of thought, as dis- tinguished from its physical mechanism. A Hindu conception. Sanskrit, Chittam. | to the test, and I the matter will reword: which madness would gambol from.!…
1929 · PDF PAGE 44
… instinct was masked for a long time, firstly by the abominations of the Plymouth Brethren and the Evangelicals; secondly, by the normal world. It only broke out at a subsequent period in any recognizable form. But when it {92} did so, it became the axis of my being. As a matter of fact, even in these early days, my real need was spiritual satisfaction; and I was a satanist or a worldling (as the case may be) in the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi. My poetry during this period was either amorous or satirical. A few of my efforts are preserved i…
1929 · PDF PAGE 136
…ical determination and saintly simplicity to the search for a spiritual solution to the material muddle. Our sojourn, short as it was by worldly reckoning, proved to be pregnant with events of internal import. The tyrant time took his first wound in Kandy. {236} 28 Allan's adventures in Ceylon had been varied. His first idea had been to take the Yellow Robe; that is, to become a member of the Buddhist Sangha. These men are not priests or monks, as we understand the words; it is hard for European minds to understand the conditions of their life.…
1929 · PDF PAGE 457
… own. Now, years afterwards, it still seems to me as if for the whole period of the initiation I had been transported into an unfamiliar world; their history is a magical history in the most comically complete sense. Its events are neither real nor rational --- save only in relation to the condition of an experiment, exactly as a candidate in freemasonry sees, hears, speaks and acts with his normal senses, yet in a way which has no relation to his previous experience. The stolid old gentleman in evening dress is really King Solomon. He hears a …
1907 · PDF PAGE 135
…in the white chalice o God’s awful Dawn, he now offers them the wine of the Via Lactea caught from the rosy nipples of the Virgin of the World, of which he hath drunk, whereby the heart of man is glad. The ATHEIST says: A capital exposition. . . . Far as we are from admiring the dreamy romanticism of Captain Fuller’s hero, his staunch denial of the supernatural, the divine, the mystical, must command our respect and sympathy. . . . A great future lies before Captain Fuller. , The PROPHETIC MERCURY says: A wonderful mystin book . . . [Follows a …
1929 · PDF PAGE 129
…ffair with the detached cynicism of a third party. I took her with me to Japan1, but there was not enough in her character to count "the world well lost for love". Exactly fifty days after I had met her she beat it back to her "provider"; and I understood immediately why my subconsciousness had insisted on my scribbling the details of our liaison in my diary.
1944 · PDF PAGE 22
…at all to the conception of a really existing thing. No more has been done than to make definitions, all in a purely ideal and imaginary world. Now then comes The Abyss. One cannot go any further into the ideal. The next step must be the Actual—at least, an approach to the Actual. There are three points, but there is no idea of where any one of them. is. A fourth point is essential, and this formulates the idea of matter. The Point, the Line, the Plane. The fourth point, unless it should happen to lie in the plane, gives The Solid. If one wants…
1929 · PDF PAGE 127
…yet this is sore, A stain; not one of these is delicate. For some time, I had been contemplating a lyric poem in which everything in the world should be celebrated in detail. It was a crazy notion --- one of those fantastic follies which is impossible in nature --- a species of literary "squaring the circle". I doubt whether it was a genuine impulse. Its motive was the vanity and vulgarity of attempting something big. It was the American passion for tall buildings and record processions in another form. It was the probably my reaction to the sp…
1929 · PDF PAGE 91
…nd will necessarily fall into the hands of practical colonists, who will be content to dwell peaceably together and communicate with the world in a living language. Like Byron, Shelly, Swinburne and Tennyson, I left the university without taking a degree. It has been better so; I have accepted no honour from her; she has had much from me. I wanted the spirit of the university and I passed my examinations in order to be able to imbibe it without interference from the authorities, but I saw no sense in paying fifteen guineas for the privilege of …