Beauty is the lustre shining from within, because of the sheer intensity of being. It is proof of spiritual battles won, a gift earned by ages of renunciation, martyrdom, and self-sacrifice. It is manifest balance, order and serenity gained from isolation and self-conquest. The glow seen about the heads of saints is really there. It is a splendour not of earth, the same ray from which beauty is drawn.
A certain tragic joy and a terrible serenity, that is mistaken for melancholy, often goes with beauty. It is the result of turning back voluntarily for work in the world, renouncing possible bliss for the service of humanity. Chief among the spiritual victories mentioned, is this turning back, facing the stream of evolution again, and all its cold metal, for new work. So its light is a light from behind—a reflection to the world of the wonders ahead.
Beauty is an indication of the weave of one's higher life, of developed discrimination, material proof of the perfecting ordination of the life, will and emotions. All that is beautiful is good, all that is good must be beautiful. Ugliness is false and fleeting, a confession of sickness and turmoil within. There can absolutely be no great love without a sheer worship of beauty, not for itself, not from the Æsthetic standpoint—no temperamental moth-man ethics—but the calm mastery of its inner meaning, which is mastery of life itself.
This does not mean that we must love things merely because they are beautiful, but because of the truth we know to be in them, manifest in their beauty. Also it means that we must never accept a thing merely because it is demonstrated, or seek truth for truth's sake. Beauty is the one lasting criterion.
As soon as we truly see these things, we know the secret of real love, which is beauty's expression. The lover is no longer lover only, but love-master—all domination of the sexes then becomes a slavery of the past. The lover is parent, mate and child in one. Each is also the other's teacher.
At the beginning these lovers give each other complete freedom, knowing that nothing can be maintained that is held; that joyous freedom is its own wise bondage. The finding of the lover is never the end of the quest as in the world. Rather, it is the beginning. Never is there a lying back in satisfaction or inconsequence. That would be failure for themselves as well as their children. Growth is the goal. Growth goes on after the mating at a rate never before approached, for each has been opened, liberated. Every relation is evident alternately in this growth, parent and child, teacher and pupil, master and disciple, madonna and messiah. At certain high moments, the other appears as the Master himself; through his eyes the mysteries of the universe are seen.
The three-ply love yearns to give, knowing that by giving all one gains all. It yearns to protect, to mother, to love failings and make them virtues. It loves the failings as well as the gifts, treasuring all the little humanesses of the loved one, searching them out zealously. Never are they foolish enough to expect perfection at first. Every fault is told point-blank, at any cost of pain or injury to the other. For it is the god-given privilege of each to bring suffering to the other, because he loves that other more than life, more than self, more than happiness, and it is understood that their mutual goal is the priceless heritage, perfection. Nothing short of perfection remains. For this all else, even life, is a paltry price. There is no hiding the truth. This is the supreme test for great loves, great friendships. Both mates are equal. Equality—the word comes to mean more than worship.
This philosophy is justified by the law of sacrifice. That which we love more than life is ours more wholly than ourselves, by the great law. In fact, we cannot belong to ourselves; we must work upon ourselves until we are big enough to cast body mind and soul in the heart of another, without fear. Separateness—the pitiful sense of self, has long been the prime illusion of the world, the cause of all lust, wars and torments. Those who are not great enough lovers to surrender all to their love find pain and disparity throughout. They have yet to learn that all that belongs to the self-willed, only half belongs, for it has not been given its freedom.
In loves such as the New Age is bringing in, true creativeness is touched. In worshipping both the soul of her child and that of her mate more than her own, the mother is given for the moment a beam from the divine shaft from the Creator. For that moment she has over-reached herself. Just so is the new love constantly over-reaching itself in the cause of the loved one, a divine madness the world has not begun to dream of—to belong and to have, to be in and through and around the loved one. Thus to over-reach is to create. The ordinary one must become extraordinary when loved in this god-like manner. To over-reach oneself—that is the cry of the New!... To think or act in any way that will hurt the self becomes impossible then, for the self is truly become the other lover.
Blindness of passion is far from the nature of things in the new loves. Or rather such passions have been washed and redeemed until they are self-governing. There is all the difference between them and the world idea of passion, as between adoration and infatuation. Deep waters and deep characters hold to their channels. Only shallow and frothy currents are loud and turbulent.... Again it is the three in one. How could one hold a mad destroying passion for one in whom the parent child and master are equally dominant? Always the spirit of tenderness is there like an unseen third. Thus passion has become compassion, and the earth love is seen truly for the first time partaking of the nature of the infinite love which holds the universe together. This is the source of calm, of will-lessness.
The elder generation, judging all things from the standpoint of the self will, is dumbfounded. Such iron repression among children is beyond its imagination. The elder generation goes on living sharkish and predatory lives, experimenting with repression after too much getting and taking and licentiousness. It concentrates terribly on repression, throwing up about itself temporary breastworks, developing cruel red rays of personal will which at best is but a defiant pugnacity. Its eyes grow red and voice savage. For the time the gargoyles of the ancient self are locked in the lower room, but they are not mastered. All personal will is but a confession of inordination within. Where there is inner order and beauty, it is not needed, becomes indeed an affront to the most high.
The beautiful will-lessness which marks the relation of the sexes of the New Order is the key to the freedom of the future. Tiger and ape are transformed into white presences—the mutinous slaves of the earth-self become cosmic servants.
