This final part of Through the Gates of Gold
ends in a true crescendo, culminating in some very original and inspiring
passages. It will be treated in two parts. The first part gives some hints on
the astral life and introduces an explanation of the relation between the
animal soul and the divine soul.
Before venturing into the astral world, one has
to have solidly mastered the physical world:
The man who is strong, who has resolved to find
the unknown path, takes with the utmost care every step. He utters no idle
word, he does no unconsidered action, he neglects no duty or office however
homely or however difficult. But while his eyes and hands and feet are thus
fulfilling their tasks, new eyes and hands and feet are being born within him. For
his passionate and unceasing desire is to go that way on which the subtile
organs only can guide him. The physical world he has learned, and knows how to
use; gradually his power is passing on, and he recognizes the psychic world.
But he has to learn this world and know how to use it, and he dare not lose
hold of the life he is familiar with till he has taken hold of that with which
he is unfamiliar.
When
he has acquired such power with his psychic organs as the infant has with its
physical organs when it first opens its lungs, then is the hour for the great
adventure. How little is needed — yet how much that is! The man does but need
the psychic body to be formed in all parts, as is an infant's; he does but need
the profound and unshakable conviction which impels the infant, that the new
life is desirable. Once those conditions gained and he may let himself live in
the new atmosphere and look up to the new sun. But then he must remember to
check his new experience by the old. He is breathing still, though differently;
he draws air into his lungs, and takes life from the sun.
The
astral world is but a transition to the spiritual world. This passage can be
compared to the three halls in The Voice
of the Silence:
He has been born into the psychic world, and
depends now on the psychic air and light. His goal is not here: this is but a subtile repetition of physical
life; he has to pass through it according to similar laws. He must study,
learn, grow, and conquer; never forgetting the while that his goal is that
place where there is no air nor any sun or moon.
Do not imagine that in this line of progress
the man himself is being moved or changing his place. Not so. The truest
illustration of the process is that of cutting through layers of crust or skin.
The man, having learned his lesson fully, casts off the physical life; having
learned his lesson fully, casts off the psychic life; having learned his lesson
fully, casts off the contemplative life, or life of adoration.
There is a macrocosmic-microcosmic homology in
the inmost sanctuary of the temple of one’s pure divinity, the universe and all
its wonders are to be found within:
All are cast aside at last, and he enters the
great temple where any memory of self or sensation is left outside as the shoes
are cast from the feet of the worshipper. That temple is the place of his own
pure divinity, the central flame which, however obscured, has animated him
through all these struggles. And having found this sublime home he is sure as
the heavens themselves. He remains still, filled with all knowledge and power.
The outer man, the adoring, the acting, the living personification, goes its
own way hand in hand with Nature, and shows all the superb strength of the
savage growth of the earth, lit by that instinct which contains knowledge. For
in the inmost sanctuary, in the actual temple, the man has found the subtile
essence of Nature herself. No longer can there be any difference between them
or any half-measures.
After one has reached this inmost sanctuary,
then a phase of selfless action and service truly begins:
And now comes the hour of action and power. In
that inmost sanctuary all is to be found: God and his creatures, the fiends who
prey on them, those among men who have been loved, those who have been hated.
Difference between them exists no longer. Then the soul of man laughs in its
strength and fearlessness, and goes forth into the world in which its actions
are needed, and causes these actions to take place without apprehension, alarm,
fear, regret, or joy.
This
state is possible to man while yet he lives in the physical; for men have
attained it while living. It alone can make actions in the physical divine and
true.
Life among objects of sense must forever be an
outer shape to the sublime soul, — it can only become powerful life, the life
of accomplishment, when it is animated by the crowned and indifferent god that
sits in the sanctuary.
The obtaining of this condition is so supremely
desirable because from the moment it is entered there is no more trouble, no
more anxiety, no more doubt or hesitation. As a great artist paints his picture
fearlessly and never committing any error which causes him regret, so the man
who has formed his inner self deals with his life.
But
that is when the condition is entered. That which we who look towards the
mountains hunger to know is the mode of entrance and the way to the Gate. The
Gate is that Gate of Gold barred by a heavy bar of iron. The way to the
threshold of it turns a man giddy and sick. It seems no path, it seems to end
perpetually, its way lies along hideous precipices, it loses itself in deep
waters.
Once
crossed and the way found it appears wonderful that the difficulty should have
looked so great. For the path where it disappears does but turn abruptly, its
line upon the precipice edge is wide enough for the feet, and across the deep
waters that look so treacherous there is always a ford and a ferry. So it
happens in all profound experiences of human nature. When the first grief tears
the heart asunder it seems that the path has ended and a blank darkness taken
the place of the sky. And yet by groping the soul passes on, and that difficult
and seemingly hopeless turn in the road is passed.
The passage below comments on the poetic nature
of exoteric religions compared to the esoteric path, which claims that the path
never ends:
So
with many another form of human torture. Sometimes throughout a long period or
a whole lifetime the path of existence is perpetually checked by what seem like
insurmountable obstacles. Grief, pain, suffering, the loss of all that is
beloved or valued, rise up before the terrified soul and check it at every
turn. Who places those obstacles there? The reason shrinks at the childish
dramatic picture which the religionists place before it, — God permitting the
Devil to torment His creatures for their ultimate good! When will that ultimate
good be attained? The idea involved in this picture supposes an end, a goal.
There is none. We can any one of us safely assent to that; for as far as human
observation, reason, thought, intellect, or instinct can reach towards grasping
the mystery of life, all data obtained show that the path is endless and that
eternity cannot be blinked and converted by the idling soul into a million
years.
The explanation below can be compared to the
tripartite division of animal soul, human soul, spiritual soul:
In
man, taken individually or as a whole, there clearly exists a double
constitution. I am speaking roughly now, being well aware that the various
schools of philosophy cut him up and subdivide him according to their several
theories. What I mean is this: that two
great tides of emotion sweep through his nature, two great forces guide his
life; the one makes him an animal, and the other makes him a god.
The chilling, degrading effects of subjecting
one’s godly power to one’s animal power, making it the slave to the senses:
No brute of the earth is so brutal as the man
who subjects his godly power to his animal power. This is a matter of course,
because the whole force of the double nature is then used in one direction. The
animal pure and simple obeys his instincts only and desires no more than to
gratify his love of pleasure; he pays but little regard to the existence of
other beings except in so far as they offer him pleasure or pain; he knows
nothing of the abstract love of cruelty or of any of those vicious tendencies
of the human being which have in themselves their own gratification. Thus the
man who becomes a beast has a million times the grasp of life over the natural
beast, and that which in the pure animal is sufficiently innocent enjoyment,
uninterrupted by an arbitrary moral standard, becomes in him vice, because it
is gratified on principle. Moreover he turns all the divine powers of his being
into this channel, and degrades his soul by making it the slave of his senses.
The god, deformed and disguised, waits on the animal and feeds it.
