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22A DITHYRAMB AND A LETTER

A DITHYRAMB AND A LETTER

I think we come through at birth with certain sealed orders to be opened at distant points of the journey.... Ten years ago, as I lay one night, ready for sleep, hand lifted to put out the light—my eyes found these lines:

"Listen, I will be honest with you:I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.These are the days that must happen to you:You shall not heap up what is called riches;You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd—you hardlysettle yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by anirresistible call to depart;You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those whoremain behind you;What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer withpassionate kisses of parting;You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd handstoward you....'Allons! After the Great Companions, and to belong to them!'"

The thing had come around by India—a quotation from Walt, in a little Hindu book of love and death by Nivedeta. It spoiled my night. I resisted. Some entity connected with the lines seemed to smile patiently. Deep within, I knew they belonged to me; that I should have to realise them, line by line, then live them; that here was a page from the envelope of my sealed orders to be opened after clearance—opened far out on the white water.

They used to strike me as hard lines until the warm laugh came up out of them.... Romance meansNot to stay.... Bit by bit, the story unfolds that the Plan is good—that the Plan is unutterably good, that one needs only to rise into the spiritual drift to find that all are God's countries. First the big physical drift, the drift around the world, along the waterfronts, missing none until the laugh comes, until the petty things of life, innoarrangements or combinations, can hold your faculties or even long attract the eye. You know them all.

One must learn the world first; one must not miss the world tricks. The men who have lived most have laughed most. But don't stay too long in the labyrinths. They are passages of pain so long as you give yourself to them. Still you must solve the maze. After that, don't stay—don't stay to pick up threads. There are other mazes, other drifts. I assure you life is rich and brave, but there is nothing so healthy as a laughing discussion of death in one's own mind—the next step of the cosmic adventure ... and to travel light there—not to take our mortgages, our material ambitions, our stone houses full of effects—by no means to take our card-indexes and letter files—to travel light, to pick up the brighter shells by the way—every glimpse ahead showing higher light—a more spacious and splendid prospect.... Why carry our furs and frost-proof igloos for this adventure in the deeper tropics? ... To become as little children—to be open hearted and free handed—to listen, to believe, to make pictures, to see across apparent separateness, to forget one's self in the daisy fields, to love the light and the land, to fall into ecstatic speculations! You can't do that if you carry the plumbing of your house in mind, and stop suddenly to recall if you turned off the water in the laundry-tubs.

Weigh up your external possessions—weigh them carefully—for their amount is the exact measure of your infidelity to God....

To become as a little child—to know that the forests are filled with other than things to eat—to love the mysteries awake, to love the fairies and the hidden flowers into strange unfoldings—to be fearless and free forever!... The Little Girl writes of her love for it all as it comes:

... I have a half a minute to send my love and strong pull forHigh Flight. We wanted this to be the magic week of the Home Coming, but it must be best to wait a little longer. Wait, wait—that is the old song of Earth—young waiting—big waiting—holy waiting.I love it.I love the suffering of it. One is great according to how well one can wait. I am loving Earth terribly. It is close to me, with its strange music.

Last night, the Valley Road one and Esther and I were together—touched great white things—talked and laughed and loved until long after three. Each in her way is a power wherever she touches. Each has everything within. Each is pure and wonderfully sweet. We wait, openarmed, for you. There are wonders in Muriel—and in others. I dream constantly of the beauty to come. Nature's ecstasy will be bursting forth in fulfilment when our Lovers come home. I'm sogladthis morning!

The children learn it so easily. I like to stop in this book and let them say it—the big story of the Seamless Robe, the story of Democracy. The young men say it strongly; and tenderly the young women,—the dream of the mate in their hearts becoming the dream of the Master. They all say it so thrillingly for me in their words and lives—the little boys coming in with their tales of prairie and the deeps; literally it is here out of the mouths of babes.... Dreve found it in a woman, another in science, another in music, another in the open road. Every man is his own way, his own truth and life. It waits for all.... We keep fanning day and night, many of us who work at home—the fanners of the Hive! We cool and harden the great spiritual concept into matter, as the cathedral spires of wax appear and harden in flaky white under the masses of the bees....

I laugh at my own intensity.... It is our one tale, told in essay and story, in different terms for cults and schools, for soldiers and clergy, in verse and prose, with dignity and in slang, but here it runs best out of the mouths of babes ... helping the Big Democrat get his story through.... The rest of the chapter is the Little Girl's:

The Soul Speaks.

I walked through a field. The brown soil was upturned and all the richness of man's labour was in it.... The morning sun was lifting a grey veil of dew up to its heart; the earth was fresh and cool where it had rested. My feet were bare and sank into the soft richness. The field was wide and pure and fragrant and alive. It seemed to sing as the sun grew warm upon it. Ecstatic birds flew close and balanced themselves magically in the sparkling air.

I happened to be just ready to receive the golden loveliness that the old Mother is always eager to give, that morning. She helped me to feel the goodness of all things—the power and beauty of all, and the great, giving spirit.... Inside I felt keenly the presence of Soul—that was the secret. Soul awakened and breathing, Soul waiting and eager, Soul, the holy quickener.... The heart beat peacefully, the brain hushed all unnecessary thought and listened. I lay down upon the sweet ground there—the body relaxed and forgotten.

Then, from the depths within, I heard the sound of the Soul's voice speaking these words:

"This is the appointed time. Long enough have I sat mute and silent in the darkness. We have learned the lesson. The circle of separateness is complete. We are ready to enter a new globe now, a globe much larger than the one wehave known, much more wonderful. In it there are greater tests than we ever had before. But the new tests, instead of being painful, are joyous; not separateness is ahead, but union, oneness in all things.... Long have you gone your way alone, down the road of deafness and blind eyes and pain; and not the way I would have led you, though perfectly right, for it was an education. The blindness and darkness of it has taught us whatnotto do, therefore we know the path.... Ours were not object lessons; always we have learned through opposites.... To learn the great lesson of listening, we talked much. We told others of the paths they should take long before we thought of following our own. We hated all things, to learn how to love; we took all to ourselves, to learn how to give. We did the things of death, to learn life truly.... We have suffered great pain to know the secret source of the everlasting joy. We feared, in order that we may become fearless, and know the mystery of the dark. We chose the road of separateness to feel the ecstasy of oneness and completion at last. We entered the terrible sphere of time and space to transcend both and be free. We took upon ourselves pounds of tiresome flesh, to make of it a golden symbol of the great spiritual beauty and freedom. We asked for everything at first, but through our desiring and brooding, we learned the most wonderful lesson of all—wanting nothing but to give.

"All is for us. The Path gleams before oureyes—the long, sunlit path leading to the Father's house. I go home with my love by my side. By crying out in agony, and by weeping bitterly we have learned how tolaugh. The world is needing us; we contain all things. From now on, we live as one in Wisdom, Love and Power."

23THE MATING MYSTERY

THE MATING MYSTERY

I thought a great deal about Dreve's love-story in relation to the young people, in relation to the love of humanity, and in relation to the mystical growth of a man denied the mate on earth. In the first place, there must be many great love stories in the coming decades of reconstruction, if for no other reason than that great children are coming in. Such friends and brothers and comrades-of-all-the-earth can only be born through the excellent and adequate love of man and woman. In a recent novel, an old priest of the Gobi tells something of the love story of the future to a young American who is greatly troubled in his romance. I quote three or four paragraphs because this expression in fiction is clearer than I could write it again. Rajananda says:

I have watched your devotion for the woman and it has been a holy thing, my son. You lovewell. She has become more than earth-woman to you. She has become the way to God. This leads to trueyoga. Where there is love like yours, there is no lust. Without these trials you could not have known so soon the love that will bring you in good time to her breast. The ways of easily-wedded pairs sink into commonness soon—the dull and dreamless death. It is those who are kept apart, who overcome great obstacles, who learn the greatest thing of all—to wait—who touch the upper reaches of splendour in the love of man and woman, and thus prepare themselves for the greater union and the higher questing which is the love of God together.The seer must know the hearts of men. Knowledge of love is the knowledge of God. Love is the Wheel of Life; love is the Holy Breath that turns the Wheel. The seer is far from ready for his work in the world, who has forgotten from his breast the love of man and woman. And then, my son, we are almost at the end of the night of the world. The Builders are coming in to take the places of those who have torn down with war and every other madness of self. These Builders must be born of men and women—the New Race—but of men and women who have learned what great love means.... Listen, my son: in the elder days men put away their women to worship God. The prophets, the seers, the holy men walked alone, and left the younger-souls of the world to bring forth sons. The time was not ripe for the raceof heroes, therefore the mere children of men brought forth children. And all the masters spoke of the love of God for man, and the love of man for man, and the love of woman for her child, but no one spoke of the love of man and woman. All the sacred writings passed lightly over that, even the lips of the avatars were sealed. But now the Old is destroying itself in the outer world; the last great night of matter and of self is close to breaking into light; the time for heroes has come, my son, and heroes still must be born of this sacred mystery—the love of man and woman. So all the priests have this message now, all the teachers and leaders of men, even I, old Rajananda who speaks to you, and who has never known the kiss of woman—all are opening to the world the great story, unsealing the greatness of the love of man and woman.... For the Builders are coming, coming to lift the earth—the Saints are coming, my son—old Rajananda hears them singing; the Heroes are coming with light about their heads and their voices beautiful with the Story of God.... And now I must sleep. I go to my daughter, who waits for you.... Once, before you came, she rested my head and filled my bowl in the stone square at Nadiram. Even now she waits for you in the hills of my country—not far from this place, my son——

The seer must know the hearts of men. Knowledge of love is the knowledge of God. Love is the Wheel of Life; love is the Holy Breath that turns the Wheel. The seer is far from ready for his work in the world, who has forgotten from his breast the love of man and woman. And then, my son, we are almost at the end of the night of the world. The Builders are coming in to take the places of those who have torn down with war and every other madness of self. These Builders must be born of men and women—the New Race—but of men and women who have learned what great love means.

... Listen, my son: in the elder days men put away their women to worship God. The prophets, the seers, the holy men walked alone, and left the younger-souls of the world to bring forth sons. The time was not ripe for the raceof heroes, therefore the mere children of men brought forth children. And all the masters spoke of the love of God for man, and the love of man for man, and the love of woman for her child, but no one spoke of the love of man and woman. All the sacred writings passed lightly over that, even the lips of the avatars were sealed. But now the Old is destroying itself in the outer world; the last great night of matter and of self is close to breaking into light; the time for heroes has come, my son, and heroes still must be born of this sacred mystery—the love of man and woman. So all the priests have this message now, all the teachers and leaders of men, even I, old Rajananda who speaks to you, and who has never known the kiss of woman—all are opening to the world the great story, unsealing the greatness of the love of man and woman.... For the Builders are coming, coming to lift the earth—the Saints are coming, my son—old Rajananda hears them singing; the Heroes are coming with light about their heads and their voices beautiful with the Story of God.... And now I must sleep. I go to my daughter, who waits for you.... Once, before you came, she rested my head and filled my bowl in the stone square at Nadiram. Even now she waits for you in the hills of my country—not far from this place, my son——

In the big expansions of life, in moments of great happiness, or hard-driven by pain—most of us have realised that the higher we rise in humanconsciousness, the nearer we get to the All. Thousands of people now living have risen, for short periods at least, above the sense of separateness, in which they realised that the finest and most exalted love a man may have is for "the great orphan, Humanity."

The human heart is awakened through the love of one, to the more spacious expression for the world. All life is a learning how to love. The last love of the flesh and the rolling years, before man turns his love from flesh to spirit, is the grand passion of man and woman, yet man does not abandon the woman in turning to Humanity or to the Unseen. Rather, hand in hand, the eyes of the man and woman are uplifted to one star—the Apex of a Triangle perfected.... Yet one must not turn to the Unseen until he has learned the full agony and ecstasy of the seen.

"Love humanity by all means," I tell younger ones, "but learn what love means first. Do not undertake to destroy passion until you have learned its glory and madness. Rather lift passion to adoration, and use it, full-powered, upon that which unfolds forever for your worship. It is not well to kill out a personality until you get one."

Our youthful reconstructionists are apt to stir the community with opinions or actions, whichhave to do with their own heart stories and the world's romance. They have a way of confounding the seasoned authorities of pastorate and parish, with embarrassing questions in regard to method and magic in the making of two souls into one. These young people may not be modest according to Elizabethan ideals; in fact, the young women are apt to go half-way in the choice of the man who is to be the father of her children, but this is an essential of innate beauty and fastidiousness. More and more the higher types of the new social order are questers for that single and holy mating which brings nearer the dream of the beautiful and heroic in children, and which gives us a glimpse of a future to die for.

The story of Romance cannot be written nor interpreted in life without its hill-rock, named Liberty. There is no man-made law for love. The first business of human beings is to find their own on earth. All makeshifts part away; all short-range systems scurry past; all comets and asteroids cease to be considered, when a pair of suns whip into each other's attraction. And so it is with a true-mated pair. Those who have dreamed long and kept themselves pure, realise here below for a time the raptures of the elect. The new generation has a sense of this; and while its eyes look hard and daringly for its own, its finer examples preserve an integrity for the one until he is found.

The New Race realises that promiscuity is only a lack of taste. To draw the fulness and redolence from a book or a friend or a lover, from any episode or fabric of life, one must search for the true, as well as the beautiful, and the beautiful as well as the good.... Perhaps that tells it best—it dares to love Beauty, this New Race. It means to bring back the beauty of the body as well as to breathe forth the Soul. Its devil and its danger is Paganism. It loves Nature so well that it is in danger of forgetting that the old Mother is not complete in herself, but a manifest of her Lord Sun....

As to the liberty of its loves—the New Race realises that one cannot be held, except by vulgar hands, where that one does not want to stay. A mated man and woman turn each other absolutely free, and the first cry of their liberty is toward one immortal nest. Those firmly caught in the pure dream are content to wait for each other. They do not experiment. They realise the long road of romance—a road so long that the three-score and ten is but a caravansary of the night. They build above the flesh if for no other reason than to come into the greater beauty of the flesh. Renouncing nothing, devoted to austerity only for mystical union, carried away in no abandonment, they seek to achieve that command of the body by the mind, and that command of thebody and mind by the Soul, which reveals the ultimate truth—that the plan is for Joy; that the best of all things is for men who have mastered themselves; that chastity is the breath and inevitable answer to self-conquest.

The growth of Romance through an ideal mating becomes a fusion at last of all the loves of earth. Connubial blessedness is therefore more reverently to be promoted than procreation, for upon it depends the loveliness of issue. The New Race acts upon the conviction that the love between man and woman is the holiest of earth expressions, rather than the love of mother and child. The first contains the second.

Still no earth love is the end.... Built through austerity and idolatry, through denial and abandon, through madness and martyrdom, through pettiness and chivalry, through pain turning less and less slowly through the years to power, through a little zone of peace at last (the calm before the greater storm) the fervour of man and woman becomes, in the fullness of time, too strong for earth, and in the final and keenest pain, the administry of a higher force begins.... I mean to tell this in a queer way through the next three or four chapters. Straight statements will not contain it quite—for it isstillwith dream, as yet. Rather I mean to weave the concept for you—fold on fold—so that at the end you will have it, as they do who have listened in Chapel many days.

Flesh is not integrated finely enough to carry the higher ardours of devotion. If the great saints who have learned to pour out their souls in adoration to the Father should turn back to a mere physical expression, they would blast themselves as well as the object of their madness. The awakening of the higher forces of love lifts the eye of the adorer from the breast to the brow of the beloved—from the brow to the Initiatory Star risen at last to meridian.

A new dimension of love is entered upon. All life tells the story. Watch the big birds lift from the sand to the cushion of wings; watch the airplane quicken its speed until it lifts from the monorail.... Machinery of racking power in a falling house, is that great love which has not yet learned to look above the body of the chosen one.

This change is the last and highest pain of romance—the breaking apart of the temporal, for the story of the long road. Man and woman must go apart for the mastery of self, before they are ready for the higher mating. The great love story invariably crosses the mountains of separation. If we cling too long to the less, nature is outraged, beauty is drained. Brief separations are dangerous, because the lovers build recklessly with ideals and the rarest spiritual materials. Meeting again too soon, they encounter an unmiraculous creature face to face. If they had really completed the journey, finished the taskapart, they would have come into that tenderness which loves the human frailties of each other, and which sees the manifest of three-score-ten merely as a garment particularly made for a particular journey.

There is always wrecking work, before a new and wider circle is entered upon. The time will come when men and women shall learn that the magic of going apart is equal to the magic of coming together. In all birth-times, in all transitions, the consciousness of the bearer is changed—often queerly.... One can endure the primitive and the child in the other's mind; one might adore the great play of passion, and all the art of it; one might never weary of fragrance of throat, or magnetism of hand, the inimitable plays and child things—but the mind is forever the slayer of the real....

Remember, there is not a full union possible on the physical plane. The body is the barrier that separates souls. Those who believe they have all of each other in that which they see and hear and touch—have far to come in the real love story. Have you ever asked yourself what physical passion is? It is a frenzy to overcome separation. This separation was necessary for the diffusion of life. It is the outbreath, the going forth, the great generative plan.... Physical passion does not satisfy the agony of the soul; often itonly makes the agony more keen. In the early phenomena of all great love stories, there is encountered that blinding, bewildering needto become the other—to lose identity, to fly somehow into the breast of the other and be no more. This is keen pain of love but also an intimation of greater union.

There was a man who had found much of beauty and power, much of the Burning Desert and certain wonderful touches of the peace of the Hill Country—in his story with a certain woman. She loved him in a way more real than he dreamed. Life had shown him much to scoff at. He had been glad to make the most, merely, of an exquisite playwoman. One day she was down town to meet him, but he left her for a business appointment. That afternoon, about everything he had in a material way was swept from him—much to which his ambition had tied itself for several years. The man was badly rocked. He walked the streets—shocked almost to laughter, to find all that he had held for, and held to, plucked from under.... At length he thought of the woman who waited. The laugh of mockery quickened, because he thought of losing her, too—a worldly-heart who would go with the rest—goods that perish.

He knocked at the door where she waited. It was opened swiftly. He did not need to speak.... She seemed above and around him. There was a great still sweetness he had never dreamed of as a man (and could only remember dimly as a child to his mother), arms of tenderness and healing.... He saw that instant in her eyes that nothing of the world ever did nor ever could really separate them. The queerest thing about it all was, that he used a word he never could use before—a word, as he said, that had been so badly worked by the world that it needed a lot of washing before it was fit for him. Yet it came to his lips—wife—in a way that showed him also a new meaning to the wordforever.

This subject of love and mating is only opened. There is much to say in pages that follow, but now, apropos of nothing, if not this theme, there is a chapter of letters. They somehow contain the spirit of many things I have longed to express. Those to whom they appeal will find the last pages of the book richer because of the insert.

24CHAPTER OF LETTERS

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 losethemselves. 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 uponthe 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 permitthe 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 tothe 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 morehe 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 ofstilled 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 knowallthe 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—thefire 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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