This deals with the question why so few
people seek the gates of gold or find it. Picking up a thread from part 3, it
is also hinted that the context of a declining civilisation can provide an
impetus to seek. And like Plato in the Philebus, he states
pleasure is not to be negated, but the idea is to tun away from the sensual ones and enjoy the more subtle, absract ones, such as enjoying the feeling of a job well done, living a balanced life, living according to spiritual ideals. The ideas of the homological unity
of the universe and non-separateness are key.
“When it seems as if the end was reached, the goal
attained, and that man has no more to do, — just then, when he appears to have no
choice but between eating and drinking and living in his comfort as the beasts
do in theirs, and scepticism which is death, — then it is that in fact, if he
will but look, the Golden Gates are before him. With the culture of the age
within him and assimilated perfectly, so that he is himself an incarnation of
it, then he is fit to attempt the great step which is absolutely possible, yet
is attempted by so few even of those who are fitted for it. It is so seldom
attempted, partly because of the profound difficulties which surround it, but
much more because man does not realize that this is actually the direction in
which pleasure and satisfaction are to be obtained.”
“There are certain pleasures which appeal to each
individual; every man knows that in one layer or another of sensation he finds
his chief delight. Naturally he turns to this systematically through life, just
as the sunflower turns to the sun and the water-lily leans on the water. But he
struggles throughout with an awful fact which oppresses him to the soul, — that
no sooner has he obtained his pleasure than he loses it again and has once more
to go in search of it. More than that; he never actually reaches it, for it
eludes him at the final moment. This is because he endeavors to seize that which
is untouchable and satisfy his soul’s hunger for sensation by contact with
external objects.
“How can that which is external satisfy or even please
the inner man, — the thing which reigns within and has no eyes for matter, no
hands for touch of objects, no senses with which to apprehend that which is
outside its magic walls? Those charmed barriers which surround it are
limitless, for it is everywhere; it is to be discovered in all living things,
and no part of the universe can be conceived of without it, if that universe is
regarded as a coherent whole. And unless that point is granted at the outset it
is useless to consider the subject of life at all. Life is indeed meaningless
unless it is universal and coherent, and unless we maintain our existence by reason
of the fact that we are part of that which is, not by reason of our own being “
“This is one of the most important factors in the
development of man, the recognition — profound and complete recognition — of
the law of universal unity and coherence. The separation which exists between
individuals, between worlds, between the different poles of the universe and of
life, the mental and physical fantasy called space, is a nightmare of the human
imagination.”
“But if man has the courage to resist this reactionary
tendency, to stand steadily on the height he has reached and put out his foot
in search of yet another step, why should he not find it? There is nothing to
make one suppose the pathway to end at a certain point, except that tradition
which has declared it is so, and which men have accepted and hug to themselves
as a justification for their indolence.”
Some related passages from Light on the Path:
As he retreats within himself and becomes self-dependent, he finds himself more definitely becoming part of a great tide of definite thought and feeling.
He does not obtain his strength by his own right, but because he is a part of the whole; and as soon as he is safe from the vibration of life and can stand unshaken, the outer world cries out to him to come and labor in it.
For the voice to have lost the power to wound, a man must have reached that point where he sees himself only as one of the vast multitudes that live; one of the sands washed hither and thither by the sea of vibratory existence. It is said that every grain of sand in the ocean bed does, in its turn, get washed up on to the shore and lie for a moment in the sunshine. So with human beings, they are driven hither and thither by a great force, and each, in his turn, finds the sunrays on him.
(Comment 2)
Some related passages from Light on the Path:
As he retreats within himself and becomes self-dependent, he finds himself more definitely becoming part of a great tide of definite thought and feeling.
He does not obtain his strength by his own right, but because he is a part of the whole; and as soon as he is safe from the vibration of life and can stand unshaken, the outer world cries out to him to come and labor in it.
For the voice to have lost the power to wound, a man must have reached that point where he sees himself only as one of the vast multitudes that live; one of the sands washed hither and thither by the sea of vibratory existence. It is said that every grain of sand in the ocean bed does, in its turn, get washed up on to the shore and lie for a moment in the sunshine. So with human beings, they are driven hither and thither by a great force, and each, in his turn, finds the sunrays on him.
(Comment 2)
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