The first half of this chapter uses the images
of death and the battlefield, the second part uses the images of nature and
gardening. The chapter begins with an interesting reflection on the exoteric
nature of religion, with its tendency towards rigid dogmatism. With the simple
experience of living with in a different religious tradition, one can relativize this narrow
outlook and appreciate the esoteric perspective better:
Religion
holds a man back from the path, prevents his stepping forward, for various very
plain reasons. First, it makes the vital mistake of distinguishing between good
and evil. Nature knows no such distinction; and the moral and social laws set
us by our religions are as temporary, as much a thing of our own special mode
and form of existence, as are the moral and social laws of the ants or the
bees. We pass out of that state in which these things appear to be final, and
we forget them forever.
This
is easily shown, because a man of broad habits of thought and of intelligence
must modify his code of life when he dwells among another people. These people
among whom he is an alien have their own deep-rooted religions and hereditary
convictions, against which he cannot offend. Unless his is an abjectly narrow
and unthinking mind, he sees that their form of law and order is as good as his
own. What then can he do but reconcile his conduct gradually to their rules?
And then if he dwells among them many years the sharp edge of difference is
worn away, and he forgets at last where their faith ends and his commences. Yet
is it for his own people to say he has done wrong, if he has injured no man and
remained just?
As in many wisdom traditions, observation of
the dying process has great philosophical value:
When
a man's soul passes away from its brief dwelling-place, thoughts of law and
order do not accompany it. If it is strong, it is the ecstasy of true being and
real life which it becomes possessed of, as all know who have watched by the
dying. If the soul is weak, it faints and fades away, overcome by the first
flush of the new life.
Why? Because he is no longer
held back and made to quiver by hesitation. In the strange moment of death he
has had release given him; and with a sudden passion of delight he recognizes
that it is release. Had he been sure of this before, he would have been a great
sage, a man to rule the world, for he would have had the power to rule himself
and his own body. That release from the chains of ordinary life can be obtained
as easily during life as by death.
The experience of being on a battlefield, opens some interesting
reflections of the nature of suffering and empathy; by focusing on everyone’s
suffering, one’s own suffering loses its importance:
It only needs a sufficiently
profound conviction to enable the man to look on his body with the same
emotions as he would look on the body of another man, or on the bodies of a
thousand men. In contemplating a battlefield it is impossible to realize the
agony of every sufferer; why, then, realize your own pain more keenly than
another's? Mass the whole together, and look at it all from a wider standpoint
than that of the individual life. That you actually feel your own physical
wound is a weakness of your limitation. The man who is developed psychically
feels the wound of another as keenly as his own, and does not feel his own at
all if he is strong enough to will it so.
Next is a reflection on the stark reality of
the instinctive nature of the struggle for existence – we are born alone, we
die alone, and we have to fight our own battles. And like a breath of fresh
air, a new possibility is proposed – instead of struggling and resisting the
forces of life, why not join in with nature and work along with her; and this
goes hand in hand with the idea that it is better to conquer yourself than a thousand men in
battle.
The
great life of the world rushes by, and we are in danger each instant that it
will overwhelm us or even utterly destroy us. There is no defence to be offered
to it; no opposition army can be set up, because in this life every man fights
his own battle against every other man, and no two can be united under the same
banner. There is only one way of escape from this terrible danger which we
battle against every hour. Turn round, and instead of standing against the
forces, join them; become one with Nature, and go easily upon her path. Do not
resist or resent the circumstances of life any more than the plants resent the
rain and the wind. Then suddenly, to your own amazement, you find you have time
and strength to spare, to use in the great battle which it is inevitable every
man must fight, — that in himself, that which leads to his own conquest.
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