Through the Gates of Gold 3 Mabel Collins Chapter 4

Chapter 4  The Meaning of Pain

 

Through the Gatesof Gold : A Fragment of Thought is a wonderful, profound, eloquent work, the study of which offers many insights and valuable seeds of inspiration… Intimately linked with that well-regarded spiritual classic, Light on the Path, and they are often packaged together; indeed, studying this text in relation to corresponding passages in Light on the Path is recommended, and in general, can be viewed as a good introduction to that more demanding text. We are also indebted to Mabel Collins for a third theosophical classic, The Idyll of the White Lotus, of which T. Subba Row has written a remarkable commentary, nigh indispensable for unlocking the profundities of that fascinating work.

Information on Mabel Collins and the possible original author of this work:
http://blavatskyarchives.com/sisson1.htm

The Golden Gate, is a semi-legendary Jerusalem gate with mystical symbolic import. Taken up by Christian culture, appearing in 19th c. hymns, adopted with full mystical meaning in Theosophy, Mabel Collins,Through the Gates of Gold, and continues to seen in popular culture, for example with a 2015 Los Lobos album. For the world history of this symbol see, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, by W.R. Lethaby, [1892] Chapter 8, The Golden Gate of the Sun. 

 

Part 1 The answer may at first sight seem to be that he primarily desires pleasure, and so is willing to continue on that battlefield where it wages war with pain for the possession of him, hoping always that pleasure will win the victory and take him home to herself. This is but the external aspect of the man's state. In himself he knows well that pain is co-ruler with pleasure, and that though the war wages always it never will be won. The superficial observer concludes that man submits to the inevitable. But that is a fallacy not worthy of discussion. A little serious thought shows us that man does not exist at all except by exercise of his positive qualities; it is but logical to suppose that he chooses the state he will live in by the exercise of those same qualities.

Part 2 That place is the central point of existence, where there is a permanent spot of life as there is in the midst of the heart of man. It is by the equal development of that, — first by the recognition of it, and then by its equal development upon the many radiating lines of experience, — that man is at last enabled to reach the Golden Gate and lift the latch. The process is the gradual recognition of the god in himself; the goal is reached when that godhood is consciously restored to its right glory. 

Part 3 To remain still amid life and its changes, and stand firmly on the chosen spot, is a feat which can only be accomplished by the man who has confidence in himself and in his destiny.

Otherwise the hurrying forms of life, the rushing tide of men, the great floods of thought, must inevitably carry him with them, and then he will lose that place of consciousness whence it was possible to start on the great enterprise. For it must be done knowingly, and without pressure from without, — this act of the new-born man. All the great ones of the earth have possessed this confidence, and have stood firmly on that place which was to them the one solid spot in the universe. To each man this place is of necessity different. Each man must find his own earth and his own heaven.

Pain and pleasure stand apart and separate, as do the two sexes; and it is in the merging, the making the two into one, that joy and deep sensation and profound peace are obtained.

Where there is neither male nor female, neither pain nor pleasure, there is the god in man dominant, and then is life real.

Part 4 For the noble soul of the man, that potential king which is within us all, knows full well that this household idol may be cast down and destroyed at any moment, — that it is without finality in itself, without any real and absolute life. And he has been content in his possession, forgetting that anything possessed can only by the immutable laws of life be held temporarily. He has forgotten that the infinite is his only friend; he has forgotten that in its glory is his only home, — that it alone can be his god. There he feels as if he is homeless; but that amid the sacrifices he offers to his own especial idol there is for him a brief resting-place; and for this he clings passionately to it.

For that man does indeed hold within him the infinite, and that the ocean is really in the cup, is an incontestable truth; but it is only so because the cup is absolutely non-existent. It is merely an experience of the infinite, having no permanence, liable to be shattered at any instant.”

It is in the claiming of reality and permanence for the four walls of his personality, that man makes the vast blunder which plunges him into a prolonged series of unfortunate incidents, and intensifies continually the existence of his favorite forms of sensation. Pleasure and pain become to him more real than the great ocean of which he is a part and where his home is; he perpetually knocks himself painfully against these walls where he feels, and his tiny self oscillates within his chosen prison.