The Way of Power - L. Adams Beck (most inspirational books of all time txt) 📗
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“When such a one draws in his sense-instruments altogether from the objects of the sense-instruments, as a tortoise draws in its limbs, he has wisdom abidingly set.”
And he being sense-free who holds a flower in his hand or looks into the eyes of a dog may know more truly than by the tongues of men and angels what the Divine is in the least of these his brethren and in himself. He will be aware and awake for all the hauntings of loveliness taking personal form in the deep solitude of the woods or on trackless oceans. Desiring no throne for himself, crowned and clothed with humility, he will claim no place in the universe because all is his. And fear can never touch him, because in the world of the true occult nothing can happen or exist that is not in conformity with law and therefore with a man’s own inmost knowledge of the absolute fitness of things. Given the pure heart and tested, disciplined will none need fear to adventure. But indeed these two are not easy to acquire and in any case the wise will begin with the simplicities and so go on from strength to strength.
For the teaching of Indian thought is that not only are all things one with each other and one with the One, but that each in its place is the very keystone of the arch of the universe and the crown of Law so that without its existence all would ruin and fall to pieces; and this applies to what we call the animal kingdom as fully as to ourselves. It is probable—nay, certain, that no wrong can be done to any member of this great Unity without sending a shuddering vibration to the outmost orbit of the outermost star. Only of late years has material science begun to realize that the transplantation of a plant or an animal from its own sphere to another may bring disaster in its train, and things material are but the faint shadow of the spiritual reality behind them. One smiles in reading these great truths to think that they have been attacked because India, once their fervent believer, has in the mass followed other gods and has lost herself in the morasses of rite and formalism, though not even then with the materialistic results among ourselves. Her sufferings are material and temporary, her hopes spiritual and eternal even now. Whereas in the West our sufferings and hopes are alike for the most part material. But, be that as it may, truth being eternal can always afford to wait its day and demonstration.
The summing up of that matter is that because each thing is the keystone of the arch, when the soul is prepared by purity and high discipline the opening of the Gate may and probably will come by so simple a means and with such perfect naturalness that those skilled in the wisdom of this world would disdain it. But it comes and brings with it such blissful certainty of life, exquisite, abundant, eternal in and for all, that the man who knows may smile in thinking of earth’s prizes.
Is the true occult, then, religion? Religion is certainly a part of it, for nothing is outside its circumference. And therefore the one impossible question to answer is, What is it not?
It is at least to know the truth in all things and to love it, to be a glad inhabitant of the darkness as of the light, to be the friend of the whole gradation of light to the highest, to call nothing common or unclean, knowing that all are one in a mounting perfection. Of such it may be said in the words of India:
“Death and fear I have not, nor caste nor creed, father and mother I have not, nor birth nor death nor friend nor foe, for I am Existence, Knowledge, Joy. I am the Blissful One, the Blissful One! How should I be bound by happiness or misery? No book nor pilgrimage nor ceremony can bind me. The body is not mine nor mine its decay, for I am Existence, Knowledge, Joy.”
Looking back through these pages I realize from what very small beginnings, what a very humble and dubious observation of the “occult” I started and to what vast conclusions it led me. I do not for a moment say it would lead others in the same way, for every man has his own dharma as it is called in India, his own right, wrong, physical, circumstantial, spiritual consciousness by which alone he can live in any full sense.
I have inclined to wonder whether it would have been better to write the whole thing as a finished statement rather than as creeping painfully from step to step of insight and revelation as I have done. But I decided against recasting it, for its gradual climb is more human and is as it truly befell and therefore possibly more helpful to others in these perplexities. I have not of course told all my personal experiences. That would not be possible. But there is one thing I should like to make very clear. The powers can be attained. Of that there can be no doubt. The faiths are largely based upon the fact that many have attained them, and they bring great things in their train. But let it be remembered that those who have attained them set little value on the powers in themselves. Realization is what matters, not the power to startle or awe the multitude. Here we have all who have attained the higher consciousness, who have known the truth, in full agreement. The Buddha unfrocked a monk for exhibiting a “marvel” without due occasion and sternly discouraged such “show-off.” A very much later teacher in India, when a disciple came with triumph to show him that he had in sixteen years acquired the power of walking on the water, replied:
“Why waste sixteen years in attaining what the ferryman can do for you for a penny?”
St. Paul points out that the powers such as speaking with tongues and others must vanish away but that love (union) abides eternally. A great Indian saint said of these powers:
“They may have a certain use in establishing the truth of our statements; even a little glimpse gives faith that there is something beyond gross matter, but those who spend time on such things run into great dangers. These are frontier questions. The boundary line is always shifting.”
This was said by one who had practiced the sternest asceticism, who had frequently entered the state of ecstasy—who could so forget the body that it became perfectly insensitive.
Professor Radhakrishnan most truly says:
“The supernormal powers are really obstacles to Samadhi [the higher form of consciousness]. They are by-products of the higher life. They are the flowers we pick on the road though the true seeker does not set out to gather them. He who falls a victim to the magical powers goes rapidly downward. Devotion to the Divine is one of the aids to Yoga.”
These warnings are very necessary, for in India and elsewhere are instances of the degradation of this research into most repulsive and terrible practices and consequences. From these the original Yoga is pure. But, as in all mountain-climbing, the heights have their perils. I could multiply instances of the teachings of the saints in all the faiths that the power to use the supernormal in this way matters nothing and may be dangerous unless in circumstances of perfect understanding. What does matter is to understand, to know, to realize. I think this cannot be too strongly dwelt upon. I will end with another truth. In India the wisest have never talked of good and evil. They have talked of knowledge and ignorance. And those two words cover the whole realm of the “occult” and the whole of life, and may themselves be summed up and obliterated in the one word—
“REALIZATION”
For that is the key of the universe, and it sits above “good and evil.”
I conclude with a quotation from Professor Radhakrishnan that offers the conclusion to which my own experiences and those of many others have led me.
“The normal limits of human vision are not the limits of the universe. There are other worlds than that which our senses reveal to us, other senses than those which we share with the lower animals, other forces than those of material nature. Most of us go through life with eyes half shut and with dull minds and heavy hearts. It is good to know that the ancient thinkers required us to realize the possibilities of the soul in solitude and silence and to transform the flashing and fading moments of vision into a steady light which could illumine the long years of life.”
This is the true Occult.
THE END
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