Part 14

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.

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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.

II

... 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.

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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.

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IV

... 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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25

ROMANCE

Affairs like these can only colour and illumine the upper side of the clouds, so far as American fiction is concerned. One might write a real novel of Regeneration, but the field of the story is not now for this; the arteries through which the public is reached by the publisher are not yet friendly to such a novel. We learn at Stonestudy to write what we please, but we are content with still small answers, at least for a time. We have ceased trying to force people to see the thing as we see it. For money to live by, to take our places comfortably in travel or sequestration, we retain the handicraft to write for markets that pay. We keep in touch with the world--that is practical mysticism. We rejoice in the dense pressures and tortures of world traffic. This is very calmly told, as it should be. My young associates learn it easily, performing the actions thereof, but for me, many years were required.

Long ago I wrote a novel about a man and woman coming to a fervent agreement to remain apart for a year before their mating, in order that they array themselves in fuller glory for each other, so that each day each would find the other more wonderful than yesterday. The novel furnished much adventure in the intervening year, otherwise it would have been still-born. What was the real theme to me apparently wasn't noted at all. Yet separation is as essential as companionship for the real Romance. A man who does life in a book must know this much, even if he use his knowledge sparingly. It's all a laugh in the higher workmanship. Romance--each has his idea of that. Each does his best by that. Here's a document of the day from John which gives his idea very well:

Since I was first with Steve and Fred and Irving and Shuk, I have had the great sense of wanting to be out and away from the world--to be with them _one at a time_. In the Rockies or in the misty isles of the sea! All of them have a different meaning and sense. _One_ will mean the Rockies or the misty mountain, saddels, foamy bits and lathering horses. Another will mean the tarry smell of the hold of a ship, the flapping of sails in the moonlight, and the smell of black coffee coming up from the galleys. Another will mean the sun betin desert--camels, and men stooping over a fire. They are all my comrads.

Fred is a young sea-writer. We are great pals. We yousto go down and lie in the sand, read, talk and meditate; then a little later we would take exercise and a long swim, then rub each other down. They were wounderful days--those. I got right to the heart of Fred, and he did to me. He yousto come over at night and sleep with me. Those were the nights! I got so attached to him, but we had to go apart. He is in New York now, going to college, and I am here in California. It does not seem right for me to be in this God blest place in the Youneverse, and he in the slums of the world, going to college. But it is the Plan, or it would not be this way.

The new race will stay high all through partings; then they cannot last long--for there is nothing to stay away for. When pain leaves, then all will be ready for the road and the great comrads, horses and the road of greatness. It is all ahead. In the great future--all ahead--my comrads--all comrads--the world will be all comrads!

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All our days, as tellers of tales, we try to tell, not stories, so much, as what Romance means to us. The very glory of life is that there are no two pictures the same.... To me, Romance means _not to stay_! It was hard to learn. Not to tarry in the senses, if for no other reason than to know the full beauty of the senses. One must not miss his train; one must not linger after curfew has sounded. There is no grey confronting of misery--like that of meeting one's own commonness catching up.

It's stiff grade work all the way, but there are heroic moments. We learn to take a supernal, rather than a sensuous joy. The most rending of lovers is the most passionate saint.... When Mohammed finally got his morals in working order, the desert was said to be full of slain....

There is something to do with _martyrdom_ in my dream of Romance in later years. All pain and fear has gone out of that word--a singing about it. The name _Kuru t'ul Ayn_ comes to my mind in thoughts of Romance--"Consolation of the Eyes," martyred soon after the Forerunner Bab had been shot in Tabriz. I cannot tell why exactly, save that she had beauty that had turned to loveliness, and many men had looked through the door of heaven in her eyes--some haunting mystery there of beauty and bestowal--the blending perhaps of the love of man and God in the same woman-heart, passion lifted remotely above the common rules of life, transcending every man-made institution.

One of the Little Girl's ideas of Romance is a hill cabin, an open door to the dusk,--baby heads weaving under her hands--warm air coming up from the valleys, but _his_ step not coming that night.... Here is a suggestion from one of her letters:

Have just been out in the garden planting little seeds that will grow big and strong so that they can be put into shining pots and cooked for the Stranger's dinner--tiny carrot seeds. They had to be rolled over and over between the fingers before they could decide one by one to fall into the rich warm earth. Planting little seeds at sunset! Does it not awaken in you something of the old days we spent so close to the soil? Radiant dusk? But you have to look _back_ to see how sweet the purity and simplicity of the peasant's life. The peasants themselves do not know. To-day holy hot sunlight and lilac bloom--could there be a more wonderful day than that? And Chapel so full of power, then a planting of little seeds at sunset. Ah, Mary! I am happy as I dare to be in a world that is choking in its own blood. At least we are open and ready for any work if it is ours. We hold up our arms asking for hard and painful tasks that will fill us with that singing conquest that cries aloud: "None have more pain to hold than we!" ... We are all working toward you, toward that height. You will be waiting for us with open arms out there. We all send white love to you--our waiting Mary!

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Peasants and mill-girls, or the dim lacking faces of the passers-by--always these join to the Little Girl's quests and dreams of the spirit. Two brief additional cuttings suggestive of her idea of Romance follow, from the twelve-year period:

The first great vision of the quest must come to a soul over the plough, in the peasant's body--dissatisfaction with self and surroundings. This is the beginning of everything. The person who is content with small things, small thoughts, does not move. His soul stays asleep. With awakening comes hate and anger and much simple blackness. It is just _that_, which gives him the power to stand up against the ways he has known so long--to stand up for himself--to push the new vague dreams through to life and light. It is all blind at first, but great and brave, too. The call that would come to the peasant would be to the Town--to many men and things, for that is just the opposite from his life. In a simple way he would go to the depths of the worst he could find--to the extreme.

The thing that is holding so many from their own, is contentedness, satisfaction. The longer one holds to this, the lower he sinks, until he is buried in himself.... The questers who have come up into the light, are brilliant, flashing, beautiful. But the souls of the "white torrent" are rushing on through the dark night, a night that grows darker and darker as it approaches the day. Their faces are tragic, drawn, expectant; there is a sort of red-dark cloud that they are tearing themselves through.... Only the poor fat ones! they fill you with sadness because you can not help them and they are not trying to help themselves. They seem to sink almost visibly, farther and farther down, as they laugh and smile, and nod their heads to each other (only to each other). The light around them is really not a light at all--just a colour, a cold, grey-black colour that looks almost dead. You could laugh if they had anything to do with you, any power over you--you could laugh at them and tell them that you were laughing, but their helplessness hurts you. _They_ can only hurt themselves. There is absolutely no humour in their faces nor in any of their movements. They are all sober; they can not laugh inside. Always it is the sign of flight from God to lose the sense of humour. For humour is a great inner glowing--the power to overlook, to forget the meaner things in people and in life. It is a power to forget one's self also, to laugh at oneself.... I see the New Race as a line of Classic Ruffians--a Troop of Mystic Warriors ... singing their glorious song of stern compassion and deep love, filling all with their questing for power and beauty.... I hear their laughter."

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She paints the City Street a bit darker in this:

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Dim faces, full of blank suffering and of living death. Dark and noisy streets, crowded stores of trade.... Men--little men, following their women, carrying the babies. The mother part of me goes out to those little men. Down the ages, mothering imprints its pain upon our souls. And their women now--with faces wanting, always wanting, everything in them _wanting_! I have been carried away by these dim hungry faces. I have seen them staring at me with blank surprise. But then they hurry on, and the forgotten babies cry. Hushing them, the women pass--little men following.

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... The pain of utter isolation--somehow this means Romance to me, in a deeper fold of being. Isolation--the hate of an undivided people--a man standing alone against his nation, yet loving it better than any of the natives.... I remember in an early story of having the hero do his big task under the fiery stimulus of the hate of London. All this has something to do with the coming of Saviours.

Time approaches for many when the little three score and ten fails longer to hold the full story; one must look out of this sickly warm room of the body; one longs for the mystic death, which is _martyrdom_.... I tell all this from time to time in tales--but only the children seem to understand....