The Hive :: 24

CHAPTER OF LETTERS

We come up through many slaveries into freedom. It is the end of a considerable road to be able to stand against the morning sun, saying: "I want nothing but to give——" ... To be able to say this without an answering laugh of mockery in the heart, where old King Desire sits with his dogs.

To be free—that is to be irresistible. Do you want love? You only spoil it when you stipulate what the return shall be—how the proffering of the return shall be ordered and arranged. The great love is giving; great love is incandescence. One must be radiant to be happy. It is so literally. It is so, fold within fold....

One sees gold, looking up from below, and its attraction becomes eminent among all desires for the time. We pass it by and look down, as the spirit of man should look down upon gold, and it becomes a mineral merely. You can enjoy it as you enjoy other people's roses. It bestows itself. Others seek to bestow it upon you.

Hold to nothing in matter. It is slavery. Give yourself laughingly to your work for daily bread without thought of result. Then, and not until then, are you inimitable in your task. Order the performance of your task with mere brain and attach it to your ambitions—you but do what the many accomplish. Your product is multiple, not a perfect cube. It cannot unfold into the Cross. It misses Resurrection. You must be free, even to perform your work in the world. You must be free to be irresistible.... Genius is approach to freedom. It finds its own paths; it cuts itself free from the forms and vehicles of others.

We have known the dark slavery of the opinions of others. Many of us have cast off such bonds, who are still slaves to our own opinions. We learn to stop lying to others before we learn to stop lying to ourselves. Until we are free, we have no opinion that is fit to endure; until we are free, our opinions are coloured and formed in the matrices of personal self, which is subject to death.

It's all so simple. We have to put down what is in our hands to help others. We have to still our own thought to listen to another's saying. We have to silence the self to hear the Master.

This silencing goes on and on in all our work. Pain shows the way.... We must traverse the deserts. We must cross all the rivers. We must see one by one every material thing betray us. This is the Path—money, opinions, ambitions, health, friends, desires, all betray so long as we obstruct their approaches with our own conceptions and our own greeds. We rise one by one above these illusions. The last and greatest is that desire which is born in generation.... All the old reaches its highest perfection in the human love story. All Nature binds one to the loveliness of this tale. It is the way to the Way. Because it is not the Way itself, it appears to end. The great intensities of agony now begin. The soul realises that only the foothills of pain are passed; that here are the mountains, here are the deep valleys that contain the Gethsemanes and timbers for the Cross, and the plan by which the Cross must be morticed and tenoned....

The sea, the mountain, gold, the rose, the child, the peasant's simplicity, the coming of the coolness of evening, the glory of the clay and waterfall, mist and cloud and star, the deep healing winds that come slowly with their heavy fruitage of power from the mountains, the swift winds with the holy breath of the Sea—all these in the breast of the mate.... When this dream is taken, one bleeds, laterally and full-length. One wants to die; thus he overcomes death. He feels the great burden in which all other burdens lose themselves. When he passes this highest series of inland peaks, the distances stretch clear and shining ahead. This the test of faith because you deal with love itself. Your soul, in its earliest advices, tells you that your love of earth is pure.

It is. It is good. It is the highest here.

It is still to be perfected by the races, even by the new races, who must be born bright with its untried magic.... But so long as it is idolatry to that which is subject to change, it is hourly impregnating the life itself with the seeds of pain....

You are called to the love of Souls. Sooner or later you must go. It is the Path. It is the steep path to the Master. You give up all to go this way—and then you laugh to find it all returned in lovelier dimensions. You take your idolatry from the plane of mutation—lift it into the glorious and changeless plateaus of the spirit....

You turn from the Seen to the Unseen.

This is the passage. You are called to go alone a little way—to be worthy of the great Meeting. You carry your gifts of the passage woven into the Seamless Robe of your being. All that impedes day by day you cast aside, as an army making a perilous retreat casts off day by day its impedimenta—until at last you stand naked upon the eminence, and the Voice says, "Be not Ashamed—I am the Beloved...."

Out of slaveries.... We think at first that God is without—at last we look for Him within. We come from the happiness of the Father's House making our great journey, but our Soul's quest continually is for the happiness again. Yet we must not look back. It is failure to go back. That which we have left unfinished, is not behind, but awaiting ahead.

We are slaves to our bodily health until we learn that the body is superbly fitted for obedience to the Soul; that it comes into its rhythm and beauty only when mastered. Indeed the very process of mastery is to lead it to the Fountain of Youth.

We learn that truly to be rich, we must give continually. We learn by the quickenings of our spirit that white lines run from the brows of all creatures to an apex which is God—that God is all. All is God.... All is one. We are one. We are brothers. One house for all at the end of the Road.... We find the King in our own Souls. We learn from that that all men are Kings. We bow to all Souls. All souls are rays of God. We come at last to see the sons of God in the eyes of passing men.

Our passion now is outpoured. That is joy. We ask nothing but to give, to heal,—to permit the spirit of the Healing Masters to flow through us, but first we clear away the obstructions of the self.

Achieving our own chastity, we perceive the potential chastity in every face. We are deluded no longer. The imbecile cannot hide our eyes from the Flame. All purity must be found within. We have no fault with others when we are cleansed. We see the heroes then, the giants, the runners, the singers, the charioteers.

We learn that we can give nothing real away—that all we do for others is service for ourselves. We give pain for joy, time for eternity, the human for the divine—give to receive, give to be radiant. We must be Flame to be fed by the Flame Itself.

We are prepared by every suffering, every humiliation, until the personality bows at last.... Personality is good. It has brought us where we are. Do not kill it out before its work is finished. We do not realise its beauty until we see it mastered—until we see it with the eyes of the Soul. All one story. We learn to love step by step. We love ourselves, our possessions, our children, our friends, our mates, our Masters, our God.... The higher we go, the more perfectly we contain all the gradations.

The last sufferings, the last tests, are so often through the human love story, because all weaknesses are easily shown through that—all our pains so quickly received.... The bright sandals of the Master at last are heard across the Hills. One laughs then, for He brings with Him the beloved we have cried for so long.... Not in the love of desire after that, but the love of giving, the love that casts out fear, that passes understanding, that fulfils the law, the irresistible love of the Christ.

... A wonderful morning—a rare Monday—the highest hold yet—all is ascending. All beings are so wonderful. I sit on a certain bench to work one morning—the next morning cushions are there for me.... I speak a sentence from a book with a word how much it means and how worthy to love—and the sentence is brought to me illuminated on vellum.... They bring the finest fruits—honey for tea, cream for peeled figs, black bread perfectly toasted, the perfection of unsalted butter.... I walk up the mountain to work—and the voice of the gardener is a benediction from the Most High—and I stand for a moment looking toward your sea over the city, and the birds say, "It is time."

There is a pool of lilies at the top, an Alhambran villa, great rose gardens.... I come to the pool—dip my feet in the still waters and I know from that how chill the night has been. I look at the lilies—how far they have opened—and know the time of day. I pray for a moment under a priestly Pine ... and my heart goes out in the new joy we have found—the joy of knowing that one may be the king of the world and the confirmed Son of God—if he but learn the one lesson—to want nothing.

Pool of lilies in the morning sun. (A little lizard is walking along the arm of the bench. My bare feet are quiet, and he wonders what kind of barkless trees they are. He is here and there. One sees his body move, not the members. The sun puts him to sleep.) ... The pool is still as the waters of sleep. The Sea—I think of her always as the emotional body of the world—the old Sea Mother with diamond-tipped emotions. And then I think of the Master Jesus walking upon the Sea and saying "Peace be still" to the stormy waters.... Each Soul must say that to his emotions. We learn to walk upright upon the earth, then to still the waters, then to have dominion over the birds of the air—and last to be seven times refined in the Fire.... Earth, water, air, fire—the first quaternary.... Yes, we are learning to say "Peace be still" to the stormy waters. We do not know how beautiful they are until they obey.

... Out of the still waters in the pure blue starlight, the lily blooms—the lotus on the still lagoons of the Soul.... Naked as a serpent's head, the sealed bud rises from the water in the night.... Out of the power that follows the peace upon the waters—for the blooms of the spirit lift greatly in the tranquillity of the heart that follows the storm—out of the power of peace upon the waters, the lotus rises and waits like a bride in the dawn-dusk for her Lord Sun to brush back the veils and find her heart.

It is only the beginning of heaven we find here. We weary of the world and turn back to the Father's House. We have plucked the fruits of pain—we have thirsted and hungered again and again.... Out of the darkness we have formed the thought, at last, that there must be quenching waters, and somewhere bread to eat that does not perish.... You can say it in a thousand ways. The Prodigal tells the story. He arises and turns back. Evolution has ceased, involution begins again. He is being folded back to the Father with all the treasures of Egypt. He has ceased to diffuse himself in generation, through which he has become an integral part of every fibre of the world, and begins now to call in and synthesise all his spiritual possessions. The processes of diffusion were in pain—the integration is joy again. Each day of the up-slope his step quickens. The more he knows, the more he believes. The more he sees, the larger his faith—the more his treasures, the more sumptuous his order. "Unto him who hath it shall be given."

Again, it is merely lifting the consciousness from time to eternity, from the cramp of space to the flow of the universe—from pain to play—from desire to radiation.... One ascends and at each steps sees farther. Day by day, the work of the installation of the higher powers goes on. We give up nothing but that which impedes the inflow of godly forces. That which we think we want to-day will look as absurd to-morrow as the hopelessness of a child over a plaything broken.

It's a way of loving every step. Thus we heal from the infinite tears of the changes of matter and dissolution, and lift our love to the Masters and the Immortal Gods. We dare love utterly only that which can contain us. If the Masters loved us with all their power, we would fall in the madness of too much light.... Always, they give us all the love that we can endure.... We give our all to them and expand daily, until we know the passion to break ourselves open in ecstasy, like the king bee under the whirring wings of the queen.

In the human body, the diaphragm is the surface of the waters. If our consciousness is below that, we are in generation. To become regenerated is to lift the balance of consciousness above—to rise like the lotus from the face of stilled waters.... It is a quickened vibration. Simultaneously, one lifts from cerebration to intuition—from the time of matter to the spaciousness of Soul—from the light of the camp-fire in the night, to the full day upon the plain—from the son of man to the Son of God—from the pain of loving with desire to the irresistible creativeness of wanting nothing but to give.

III

... I was watching the pool this morning—fish and frogs and eels under the lily-pads—a slow cold life. They have colour and grace—but eyes of glass. They move so softly down in the dim coppery light.... I thought of the lakes and the seas, the simple cold of all life—the coldest and most rudimentary in the great deeps.... Birds were playing about in the rose gardens, darting in and out of the bamboo clumps and yucca stalks. Humming-birds were continually fanning the trumpet and honeysuckle vines.... I thought of the skylarks—throats that open only as wings beat upward, and the infinite blue harbours where the white gulls flash—the lonely lakes and tarns where the heron cross in the evening and the loon cries at night—the cypress deeps where the flamingoes commune in shaded glory, and the eagles that cross from peak to peak, along the spine of the continents.

... And then, of course, it came to me—the old conquest—how we must lift our consciousness above the face of the waters and put on our wings.... Many have almost finished with the waters of generation—the emotional body of man, the same as the planet.... In the beginning, it was necessary to "go down into the water"—the terms of the baptismal rite. Regeneration is "coming up out of the water." The struggle between the two dimensions is dramatically expressed by the faith, and the lapse of faith, of Peter when he obeyed the Lord, and arose to walk upon his storm-tossed lower self. His supplication as he sank saved him from perishing. Regenerated, he walked with the Lord upon the waters. I remember, too, the saying, "You must be born again of water and of spirit——," the story of regeneration told once more....

It's a lifting from the cold, bloodless vibrations of the creatures of the deep, to the winged passages of air and sun and starlight.... We think that we give up joys of life—we plunge back again and again to the dim cold waters—our eyes blinded at first by the light, our senses frightened by the fragrance and the space.... As if the reflected light of the lower cosmos could compare with the pure radiance above; as if the love of desire could compare to the glory of the outpouring heart—the heart filled with light—the fulness of spirit, the ecstasy of wings.

... The time comes in the progress of spiritual aspiration when the generative impulse begins to manifest within rather than without. Firmly and gently the thoughts are turned to the Image within or above; the tendencies for outward manifestation slowly but surely give way.... This work sometimes goes on rapidly. A hundred times a day the thoughts of earthy attraction are finished with a soul conception, where formerly the mere physical presence sufficed.

Nothing answers thought more swiftly, but in this passage of mastery, if a single desire eludes from the aspirant, he must meet it later in a tearing and cumulative call. Surely at length the mind rises to rule. One's conception changes from the fear, the torment and the red haze, to gentleness and calm, a readiness to know all the mysteries of life—to care for and respect all functions as one only can who has mastered himself.

To cast them out in hatred is failure. That means the hardening. It blights the beauty of the vales and all magic.

When one begins to unfold the wonders of the kingdom within, as one is called to do in the higher and contemplative spheres of the artistic life, there is an increasing joy that makes it easy, more and more, to lift the power of life from the torment and unrest of the generative seas.

One finds his dream of the beloved changed and infinitively endeared to him. Patience, reverence, tenderness comes to the love that once knew only the single passion of a male for the mammal. Even that, in memory, becomes beautiful to eyes of wisdom and calm—all God's plan. One is sensitive all through his breast for the unfathomable sweetness of life and love. He sees the child and the immortal in the mate. He finds that the body is truly sacred because he sees it with love and not with desire. These are good tidings. They make one happy to write them.

There are seven centres of ecstasy in the body. Through the mastery of will and love and action, the life-force is lifted to dwell with and awaken these centres. With each awakening, a new power comes—a new joy—a new hill-range crossed toward the Father's House; with each awakening, the beloved within is quickened in consciousness, and the beloved without is held more dear. The wondrous story of regeneration goes on and on, to the love that seeks to give itself utterly. To love—that is all the Soul asks.

Momentary passion swiftly passes in the increase of spiritual aspiration. Its force is not killed, but used for awakening the higher and immortal principles where real love abides. The hand of the loved one becomes sacred unto tears, and the joy of life is to serve.

The whole body is presently repolarised—the fire sparking upward—the apex of the triangle turned upward—desire of soul instead of desire of the body.... The mating of the mind and the soul is the larger, the cosmic consciousness, awaited so long. This means that the Lord has come into His Temple—the body made ready. It means that the mind and soul are one, the house no longer divided against itself. The lover is ready for the approach of his mate. Each has been cleansed at the fountains apart....

One must be utterly weary of the old. This repolarisation of the generative force cannot come until one has heard with furious passion, in the depths of pain, the call to the higher life, the new quest. Not repression then, but transmutation. One changes gently, often under a mystic administry, but always with growing love for the body and for the world, using the life forces for healing and concentration and the power to listen to the Lord within—the Voice of the Silence.... Upon the illumination of the seven centres by the life force, another mystery takes place. The levitation of the spiritual life overpowers to a considerable extent the natural gravitation of the flesh—the down-pull of years. The result, of course, is the restoration of health to all tissues of the body—the Fountain of Youth starts singing again.... To you.

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