Nirvana

A Study in Synthetic Consciousness

by

George S. Arundale

(Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, together with a new Chapter)

Theosophical Publishing House

Adyar, Madras, India

1927 

First published, December, 1926

Second Edition, November, 1927 

To

Two Elder Brothers

Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater by whose aid these experiences were possible and to those in whom Nirvana shines revealed

FOREWORD

I HAVE been asked by my life-long friend Bishop Arundale to write a few words of introduction to his book. I consider it a very remarkable production - a valiant attempt to describe the indescribable. Few among men still living on earth are they who have experienced Nirvana; fewer still have made any endeavour to record their impressions. Those of us who have touched that truly tremendous altitude know well that all human words fall short in the effort, that all earthly colours are hopelessly inadequate, to depict its supernal glories; yet must we try, even though we are foredoomed to failure. That which is given to us we must share with our brethren, so far as may be, for that is the law of the occult life; in obedience to that law this book is written. I have myself tried to convey in words some­thing of that supercelestial atmosphere, as you may read in The Masters and the Path, but I think my brother Bishop has been more success­ful than I. There is a living fire in his words. True, that which he has seen cannot be port­rayed; yet the enthusiasm which he throws [vii] into the essay is so infectious that we feel ourselves on the very verge of understanding. Much of upliftment, much of help he certainly can and does give us; if we cannot yet know all, at least we are nearer to the knowing, at least we are encouraged by the testimony of one who already knows. And where he stands now, all will stand one day.

So let us unite in outpouring our heartfelt gratitude for this rare book which he has given us; and the best way in which we can show it is to aid him and to follow him in the splendid work which he is doing in the service of our Holy Masters.

C. W. LEADBEATER

My son George has asked me to add a few words to the above, written by one who knows. To try to describe Nirvana is as hopeless a task as to try to empty the ocean into a thimble. Yet it is one of the efforts that are made by heroes only. I recall the words spoken by one who greatly dared in this lower world, as marking the heroic enthusiast:

It is better to climb nobly and to fail,

Than ignobly not to climb at all.

ANNIE BESANT[viii]

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

I THINK I may say I have been a rather strenuous person for many years, for over twenty-five years now, under the inspiring guidance of my revered Chief, Dr. Annie Besant; and my strenuousness has been very much on the physical plane. I confess to having thought little of what people call “higher things,” of causes and of origins, of theories of life, of planes of nature, of hierar­chies of beings, and so forth. I have had work to do in the outer world, and I have tried to do it, and have not concerned myself with whys and wherefores. Whenever I have studied, I have studied specifically to the immediate ends of a particular piece of work. I have never studied for study’s sake. I have never cared for wisdom for what wisdom is, but for what wisdom can do. My universe is full of the things I need. If I could not relate a thing to my work, then that thing has been out of my perspective, at all events for the [ix] time being. I have been one-pointed, even though I may have turned my eyes from much upon which they might usefully have rested.

But during the last year or so I have been making a discovery. I have discovered that however much I may have been strenuous on the physical plane, this physical plane strenuousness has been almost as nothing compared with my strenuousness on other planes. This is probably the case with everybody, but it came as a great surprise to me on the physical plane. I began at once to realize that I must cease to live in these plane-tight compartments. I must begin to live on many planes simultane­ously. I began to realize that the one life unites all planes and all things; and that in reality there is nothing which should be indifferent to me. Everything is related to everything else, and everything modifies everything else. Why, the far-distant Sun Himself presses physically upon every part of the world, as science itself teaches us.

So I brooded much upon this unity, both in and out of the body, and tried to live more from the universal than from the particular. The result has been, I hope, bigger living, more effective living. But I had no clear perception [x] of unity, only a sense of it, a vague idea of it just sufficient to make life strangely and intriguingly different.

Many years ago, it was in 1912 at Taormina, Sicily, I had my first glimpse of the funda­mental unities. I remember sitting at the window of my room in the hotel in which a party of us were staying, and I was listlessly dreaming. All of a sudden my half non-seeing eyes rested on the orange grove in the little valley beneath, and I found myself peculiarly, wonderfully, identified with the orange trees, with their very life and being. I was at my window, yet was I also in the orange grove - ­indeed, I was the orange grove. It was almost as if my consciousness flickered between George Arundale as George Arundale and George Arundale as the orange grove. I was two entities, yet one. And as I lived as the orange grove a gardener entered and began to pluck some of the oranges and to cut off some of the branches. All these things the gardener was doing to me. I rebelled   not as George Arundale might rebel, not with my mind and my will, but as orange groves apparently do rebel. I was conscious of discomfort, of loss, not exactly of pain but of something next door [xi] to it. I was the more discomforted because the gardener did not treat me reverently or affectionately, but as if I were inanimate with no feelings, with no capacity for sensation. Why could he not realise that the same life was in us both? If he had only had the attitude of asking my permission, of begging my pardon, for his actions, of conveying to me that I could make others happy by sharing myself with them, I should not have minded so much. But he was callous, selfish, and treated the orange grove as a slave instead of as a comrade. He hurt me every time he plucked an orange or cut off a branch. With a different attitude on his part, he might have had all my oranges, all my branches, and we might have rejoiced together, for we could have worked together. As it was, being at his mercy and treated as his chattel, life was only just worth living, and I was a poor orange grove, because uncared for.

This experience of consciousness in the vegetable kingdom opened before my eyes an entirely new conception of consciousness at different levels of unfoldment, and of the implications of the all-embracing unity. I have never been the same since. I have never [xii]

been able to pluck a flower, or even to uproot a weed, without as it were silently explaining my reasons to the plant or to the weed, requesting a sacrifice for some definite, I will not necessarily say larger, good. And I have never found any lack of co-operation. Interest­ingly enough, I always feel that I must justify my actions to the life which I am thereby affecting, and for this very reason I am more than ever a vegetarian. How can I explain, how can I have the face to explain, to sheep or cattle, to birds or fishes, that I ask them to sacrifice themselves, with an inevitable accom­paniment of much suffering, simply to gratify my palate, or because I myself suffer from the delusion that I cannot live without eating flesh food? To make such a request is grossly, disgustingly selfish; and though I can behave, if I choose, like a robber or pirate, and steal by force, still there is fortunately just enough of the honourable gentleman about me, at least in this particular direction, to cause me utterly to decline to make so monstrous a demand, whereby I must inevitably lower the dignity of the kingdom to which I belong, making the subhuman kingdoms wonder what kind of evolution it is that causes those who [xiii] should know better to prey upon those who cannot resist force, whose only defence is their right to live.

From time to time I have had other visions of this glorious unity, but none so inexpressible as that which marked the opening of the doors of Nirvana to the knock I had learned to give.

One night I suddenly awoke with a most vivid remembrance of a supreme exaltation, of a marvellous expansion of consciousness, absolutely indescribable, though then and there I felt I must somehow or other record it on paper. It was about 1 a.m., and part of me was very much disinclined to take the trouble to sit up and write, even though pencil and paper were by my bedside as has been my habit for some time in case an idea came during the fruitful hours when sleep minimizes physical interference. But another part of me insisted. So I sat up and wrote that with which this book begins, and I remember hearing: “This is Nirvana.” And I knew it was Nirvana. I was immensely astonished, I confess, for I had never before given a thought to Nirvana, at all events on the physical plane. What I wrote was very [xiv] strange to me at first. My waking consci­ousness was not accustomed to reflect Nirvanic consciousness, and the process of remembrance was physically painful. However I wrote down all that came to me, and my pencil found it exceedingly difficult to travel at the rate at which the thoughts poured through. I could hardly read my own hand­writing, so fast I wrote; and certainly I hardly knew what I was writing. I wrote for hours, and was all aglow with exaltation. The whole of my being seemed re oriented. I was born again; and when the day came I found all changed. A new note had been sounded in my being, new values had come to everything, and since then I have been occupied in readjust­ment, so that I may gradually blend my old world with my new world. Practically the whole of the book had been written either between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. or between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., and many nights have been passed in the physically painful, though spiritually wonderfully uplifting, process of striving to hold a reflection of Nirvana in the physical brain and in the waking consciousness.

Needless to say, even the most beautiful description of Nirvana which could be conceived [xv] out here must inevitably be nothing less than a caricature of Nirvana as it in reality is. What then must my poor efforts be! It is almost a blasphemy to publish them, even as a feeble attempt to indicate a shadow of Nirvanic glories. They fall indescribably short of the reality. Yet it seems to be better to have even these than nothing; and many who have read some extracts have felt an upliftment. With Bishop Leadbeater’s encouragement, therefore, this book is issued as a poor sketch by an unpractised hand, conveyed through deadening media, of a world of incomparable glories. I ought to add that even the glories I know can only be those of the very lowest sub plane of Nirvana, and even then only a few of the glories of this sub-plane, for I have only just been born into Nirvana, and have yet to develop the senses appropriate to my new world.

As time passes, however, more and more of Nirvanic consciousness penetrates my being, and it is as if I had begun a stupendous journey from a great Resurrection to an Ascension the glories of which are as different from those of Nirvana as is the Sun from our Earth. [xvi]

I hope the account of my own experiences will help others to contact this royal conscious­ness of Nirvana. It is within the near reach, no doubt, of many; while some today, and many in days gone by, have known Nirvana as I can only hope to know it after long effort and concentration. My own description is not, of course, of Nirvana as it actually is, even on the lowest subplane. It is of Nirvana as it has appeared to me, of as much of Nirvana as I have been able to assimilate. Much of the description is doubtless coloured by my person­ality. Another description, totally different, might well be quite as true, possibly far more true. I can only say I have done the best I could with the powers at my disposal, and I am well aware that the narrative is in many ways made up of a number of disconnected parts. The reason for this is that I have written night after night as I was moved to write, without thought of what I had already written. Each section is, therefore, the pen impression of a particular vision of the Nirvanic landscape, just as it impressed itself upon me at the time.

GEORGE S. ARUNDALE [xvii]

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION

I AM naturally gratified that after a few months a second edition of Nirvana is demand­ed. I think the value of the little book has been more in the direction of suggestion as to lines of experiment than as a description of the conditions obtaining under the Nirvanic mode of consciousness. Frankly, the reader will find little description, for description is impossible; but he will find many impressions, and my advice to him is to pay just as much or as little attention as he feels disposed to the details of the various impressions, and to concentrate on the atmosphere of which they are particular expressions as the result of the medium, George Arundale, through which the atmosphere must needs filter. For example, I write of Lightning-standing-still. A reader might well exclaim: “Ah! I think I know what you mean. I should not call it Lightning, nor Lightning-standing-still. I should call it so and so. That would be the kind of filtration [xix] I should get from that selfsame atmosphere which we both sense, but which I should describe so differently.” Let Nirvana help you to Nirvana, be your road what it may. All I can say is that I happened to take a route which I have described as best I could in the following pages.

With this latitude open to every reader, there is one door I want to shut in his face, and that is the door of common sense. If you have nothing but common sense at your disposal I am afraid Nirvana will mean little or nothing to you. To understand either Buddhi or Nirvana a distinctly uncommon sense is needed. Common sense will not help you in these regions any more than it will help you to understand modern physics since Einstein. Bertrand Russell tells us in his A. B. C. of Relativity that a new kind of thinking must dawn upon our mental worlds as a result of the introduction of new conceptions and notions regarding physical things, even though these conceptions and notions be by no means yet entirely verified. He adjures us to start thinking in terms of these “modern physical notions rather than in terms of the notions derived from common sense and embodied [xx] in traditional physics”. That is exactly what has to be done by those who have contacted the outer fringes of Buddhi and Nirvana. It is not common sense and the tradition of the lower worlds with which they are now concerned, but rather with an un­common sense which is an extraordinarily refined sense, as yet extremely uncommon but some day to become common in its turn. Remember that the use of uncommon sense does not mean that we cease to be efficient in the lower worlds. On the contrary, we become far more efficient, for we build with stone and not with sand. We live more truly because nearer to the Real, even though in its ignor­ance and common sense the outer world may laugh, ridicule, persecute, despise. Indeed, Bertrand Russell goes further than I should have dared to go, though by no means further than I should be prepared to go, in the follow­ing startling utterance taken from the same little book:

It is possible that the desire for rational explanation may be carried too far ... every apparent law of nature which strikes us as reason­able is not really a law of nature, but a concealed convention, plastered on to nature by our love of what we, in our arrogance, choose to consider [xxi] rational. Eddington hints that a real law of nature is likely to stand out by the fact that it appears to us irrational, since in that case it is less likely that we have invented it to satisfy our intellectual taste.

A profoundly true utterance which, had it been widely appreciated in times gone by and were it widely appreciated today, would have saved many apostles of truth from persecution and martyrdom and would enable the world to derive far more benefit than it does from the researches of occultists and mystics - true pioneers, true seekers after “real laws of nature” through the “irrational” and super­rational.

I have made many corrections and a number of additions and modifications in this new edition, and I have added a new chapter­ “Further Thoughts” - containing a few results of further meditations. I hope these also will prove interesting, and provocative of pioneer­ing in the same direction.

G. S. A. [xxii]

CONTENTS  

Foreword.                                                        vii

Author’s Preface.                                             ix

Note to the Second Edition.                              xix

I.          The First Glimpse.                                1

II.         The First Readjustment.                        31

III.       The Inner Light upon Outer Things.       47

IV.       A Meditation in the Himalayas   68

V.        Some Reflections.                                 95

VI.       The Awakening of Nirvana.                  111

VII.      The Theosophical Society.                    124

VIII.     The Immanence of Light.                       133

IX.       A Further Readjustment.                       163

X.        Further Thoughts.                                 188

XI.       Mother-Light.                                       207

XII.      The Dangers of Nirvana.                       220

XIII.     The Glorious Task                                229

Envoi.                                                               241

APPENDICES           

A . .                                                                 243

B . .                                                                  248

C . .                                                                 256

D . .                                                                 264

E . .                                                                  266

CHAPTER I

THE FIRST GLIMPSE

Magnificent

The morning rose, in memorable pomp,

Glorious as ere I had beheld. In front

The sea lay laughing at a distance; near

The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds,

Green-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light;

And in the meadows and the lower grounds

Was all the sweetness of a common dawn,­ -

Dews, vapours, and the melody of birds,

And labourers going forth to till the fields.

Ah I need I say, dear Friend, that to the brim

My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows

Were then made for me; bond unknown to me

Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,

A dedicated Spirit. On I walked,

In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.

WORDSWORTH, (The Prelude, Bk. IV)

MY first remembrance is of seeing the Master K.H.* (*Those who have undergone occult training are aware how supremely magnificent as a Teacher is this Great Master. He is, of course, a high Official in the world’s education department, and apprentices from all departments have the honour to come under His inspiring guidance. I myself have had this honour, and although I do not belong to the education department, I still have the inestimable privilege of His gracious guidance. It was a great joy to me to enter the new pathway under the benevolent watchfulness of this gracious Friend, to Whom I owe so much; and it was a great joy, too, to make the entry with the help of the Master’s representa­tive in the outer world, our wonderful elder brother Bishop Leadbeater. Only those who have had C. W. L. as teacher can possibly know all that a teacher can really be. The evil-minded and the ignorant traduce him, as it is their habit to traduce others of his great line; but future generations shall rise up and call him blessed, while today there are many who count it their greatest joy to stand by his side as his persecutors yelp at his heels.) looking as I had never seen Him before.[1] Radiant He is always, supremely radiant, but now He was more than radiant, and I cannot find a word down here to describe Him in the glory in which I perceived Him with the first flash of Nirvanic consciousness. Majestic and radiant are poor words - “blinding” perhaps expresses it better, for just for a moment I was overwhelmed. I almost wanted to veil my face from sight of Him, and yet I could not keep my eyes from Him, so unfathomably splendid did He appear-only less glorious than the KING* (*The Supreme Ruler of this world, the veritable KING, within Whose consciousness all things live and move and have their being. Some there are in the world who have seen Him, but who can only gaze upon Him as He veils His glory before their feeble eyes. He is indeed the Lightning, in the Light of which Nirvana is but shadow. And as the first glimpse comes of Nirvana, there comes with it the memory of an audience of the KING-the marvellous stillness, then the blinding Presence, and then the power to see.) as I afterwards realised, though at the time no greater glory could I conceive.[2]

I summon up my courage. I feel as if He were saying to me: “Welcome to a new king­dom which you must learn to conquer.” In His power my consciousness unfolds, and I step as it were across a threshold into Nirvana. Words and phrases, however beautiful, however majestic, almost desecrate as they strive to describe conditions there. Even the faint touch of first experience of this lofty level dwarfs into insignificance all other experiences of all other planes, save only the entry into the presence of the One Initiator. I remember my first glimpse of the Buddhic plane on the occasion of admission to the ranks of the Great White Brotherhood. I recall to this day my marvelling at the vision of the Master in His Buddhic vehicle; and well do I remember in the days that followed, the wondrous sense of unity with all things, with the trees and flowers, feeling with them all, growing with them and in them, suffering and rejoicing in and with them. I remember, too, the casting off of the friend of ages - the causal body, and [3] I remember a vivid rending contrast between the moment before and the moment after the glimpse into the new kingdom. I remember how it was as if from out the sunshine I had suddenly entered a dark tunnel with a seeming­ly unending vista of blackness stretching infinitely far into a limitless beyond. Was there light at the end? I could see none. Must this blackness last for ever? Well, be it as it may, I must enter this tunnel, for I can do no other, to quote the words of Luther. Darkness enfolds me, blackness permeates me. Shall I never again know light? Yet I look forward and press onward. And at last the tunnel ends, the blackness vanishes, and I step into a light more glorious by far than the light I left. I had to let go the light I knew in order that I might enter into a light more real. It seems to be ever thus. That which we are ready to let go, to lose, we find unto life eternal. In the occultist there must be a spirit of daring, of adventure, of eagerness to risk. He must be willing to let the lesser go before he has grasp­ed the greater. And in the interspace there is a momentary loneliness which must be borne happily and joyfully, for it is in loneliness that is born the power to strive, the strength to sustain and to protect. Those who cannot [4] endure loneliness are not yet ready to be moulded into leaders of men.

But to-day the Master seems to me as One Whom I have never known before, robed in the glories of a Kingdom I am entering as a little child. The new consciousness enfolds me, and in a moment my world is full of new, strange, glorious values. All is different, supremely different, though the same. A new Divinity is open to my eyes, and unfolds to my gaze a new meaning, a new purpose. It is the Buddhic unity transcended, glorified - a more marvellous unity; in some wonderful way it is merged in a state vaster and more tremendous. There is something even more true than the truth in the unity I have so far known, some­thing more real. It seems impossible, and yet it is so.

What is the nature of that of which even Buddhic glory is but a limitation? I must use words, and words seem a terrible anti-climax. I can only say it is the Glory of a Light Transcendent, a world of Light which is the image of God’s own Eternity. Face to face do I seem to be with an “unspotted mirror” of His Power and with an image of His Goodness. And the mirror, the image, is an endless ocean of Light, in which I once again become (though [5] in one sense I already have been) merged by an apotheosis of at-one-ments on plane after plane below. It is another baptism, another immersion into the Waters of the Real. At every stage of growth a baptism, to be succeed­ed by a confirmation, to be followed some day by an ordination, a consecration to, because an identification, whether complete or not, with the Higher Self. Brotherhood in the outer world; unity in the Buddhic world; light transcendent in Nirvana. And if on the threshold I am transported by its glory, how shall it be when I begin to ascend to the summit? Description falters even before this first lifting of the veil. Thought and feeling distort and narrow infinitely. At best one can but suggest and hint. The rest is a matter of individual incommunicable experience.

This Light Transcendent is even nearer to the Real than the Buddhic Unity which hither­to had seemed the most stupendous fact in all the world. Light the beginning; Light the path; Light the future. God said: “Let there be Light,” and there was and is Light in­describable. Beautiful as is the light in the world, it is but the faint and feeble image of the Light Triumphant - the adjective somehow seems appropriate - of these regions of the Real.[6] It is the Sun-Light of the Sun ere it descends into the forms in which we know it. It is Light purified of form. It is Light which is the Life of form. It is an ever-present “intimation of immortality,” a Future within the Now, and thus Eternal. It is an - I do not say “the” - ­apotheosis and essence of the light we know. All the glory of the most wonderful dawn (and one feels nothing can be more wonderful than a perfect Eastern dawn), is brought to glorious fruition and splendid perfection in that eternal noon-day which is Nirvana. The glory of the Buddhic plane is but the dawning of a Nirvanic Day.

Yet, as I write these words, I remember knowing, as I stood awe-struck upon the threshold of Nirvana, that beyond even that, to me, supreme unfoldment lay unfathomable, immeasurable splendours, to which Nirvana itself - the noon-day of the Buddhic dawning - is but as a dawn, a promise, a shadow. I could sense this. I had to sense it to preserve my balance. I must hold fast to pro­portion even in these stupendous regions. That Unity could be transcended I knew, for was not the Light-Glory before my eyes? But there is more even than Light-Glory. Some day in the far-off future I shall know a [7] Glory that is even more than the Glory of Light.

I call this Light of Nirvana the noon-day of the Buddhic dawn. But it is only noon-day because for the time being it represents the utmost capacity of my consciousness. Same years ago the Light of Buddhi was the noon. To-day it is but dawn, glorious though it be. And there will come a time when the Light of Nirvana will be but dawn because I shall know another noon. It is because I live for the moment in the Eternal that I can thus preserve my balance. I can perceive no ultimate noon-day, even though I can perceive no other noon-day than Nirvana. I look back upon glorious dawns, and upon glorious noon­days. I see before me other noon-days before which this Nirvanic noon-day itself must pale into a dawn. Is there no limit to growth? None that I can perceive. And if I talk of dawns and noon-days, are there also evenings, even-tides, glorious evenings, evenings no less wonderful than the dawns, with light as beautiful as the light of dawn, as the light of noon-time? I think there are. There are no nights, perhaps; at least no blackness. But there comes from time to time a stillness, a hush, which is the Silence of a consummation.[8] There comes the hush, the silence, the stillness, just before a birth into a new region of Light, just before a new dawn. It is not that the noon-day light has lessened, but that a light more glorious still is beginning to shed its refulgence upon a lesser light, so that it is as if a noon-time had turned to evening by reason of contrast with the greater glory to be. And in that evening, in that hush which is the shadow of a greater glory, the neophyte gathers up reverently the powers he has gained, to use them in the conquest of the new kingdom of Light about to appear above the horizon.

God is Light, Light is God. Man is Light. All is Light. A new meaning to the ancient Egyptian exhortations: “Look for the Light!” “Follow the Light!” Perceive and learn to be at one with the Light of God in all things. I look upon the world. I see the world in terms of Light. God-Light in manifestation in man-­light, in rock-light, in tree-light, in creature­-light. All is light - a blinding glory at the centre, translated into colour-light, into sound­-light, into form-light, into substance-light as it descends into ever-increasing mani­festation. At the circumference light as we know it in the manifested universe, light [9] expressed in innumerable ways. At the centre that glory which is beyond all form, all colour, all substance. Yet the circumference is but the centre externalised, so there is the blinding glory everywhere - the God-Light - the blazing seed of futurity in each individual thing in every kingdom.* (*Compare, in this connexion, that very interesting book “Colour-Music: The Art of Light,” by A. B. Klein. (Crosby Lockwood & Son, London.)) The light-seed unfolds its essence, its being, and becomes a world, a universe.

In each kingdom of Nature, seven great pathways of Light, potential in each king­dom in the beginning, unfolding into glori­ous fruition at the close. I see the dia­mond, the ruby, the emerald, the sapphire­ - kings of the mineral kingdom - superb in the perfection of their colours. Yet at the bottom these glories exist; imprisoned, slowly being released through the evolutionary process, until they stand free and splendid as the kingdom’s jewels.

May I quote here a beautiful passage from Ruskin’s The Ethics of the Dust in which he describes the glorious pathway of evolution in the mineral kingdom, the Light in prison be­coming the Light free, thence to enter into [10] higher tabernacles to tread pathways no less glorious and virtually identical in process?

A pure or holy state of anything is that in which all its parts are helpful or consistent. The highest and first law of the universe, and the other name of life, is, therefore, ‘help’. The other name of death is ‘separation’. Government and co-operation are in all things, and eternally, the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in all things, the laws of death.

Perhaps the best, though the most familiar, example we could take of the nature and power of consistence, will be that of the possible changes in the dust we tread on.

Exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more absolute type of impurity, than the mud or slime of a damp over-trodden path, in the outskirts of a manufacturing town. I do not say mud of the road, because that is mixed with animal refuse; but take merely an ounce or two of the blackest slime of a beaten footpath, on a rainy day, near a manufacturing town. That slime we shall find in most cases composed of clay (or brickdust, which is burnt clay) mixed with soot, a little sand, and water. All these elements are at helpless war with each other, and destroy reciprocally each other’s nature and power: competing and fighting for place at every tread of your foot; sand squeezing out clay, and clay squeezing out water, and soot meddling everywhere, and defiling the whole. Let us suppose that this ounce of mud is left in perfect rest, and that its elements gather together, like to [11] like, so that their atoms may get into the closest relations possible.

Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all  foreign substance, it gradually becomes a white  earth, already very beautiful, and fit, with help of congealing fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and painted on, and be kept in kings’ palaces. But such artificial consistence is not its best. Leave it still quiet, to follow its own instinct of unity, and it becomes, not only white, but clear; not only clear, but hard; not only clear and hard, but so set that it can deal with light in a wonder­ful way, and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only, refusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire.

Such being the consummation of the clay, we give similar permission of quiet to the sand. It  also becomes, first a white earth; then proceeds to grow clear and hard, and at last arranges itself in mysterious, infinitely fine parallel lines, which have the power of reflecting, not merely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the greatest beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material whatsoever. We call it then an opal.

In next order the soot sets to work. It cannot make itself white at first; but, instead of being discouraged, tries harder and harder; and comes out clear at last; and the hardest thing in the world: and for the blackness that it had, obtains in exchange the power of reflecting all the rays of the sun at once, in the vividest blaze that any solid thing can shoot. We call it then a diamond.[12]

Last of all, the water purifies or unites itself; contented enough if it only reach the form of a dewdrop: but, if we insist on its proceeding to a more perfect consistence, it crystallises into the shape of a star. And, for the ounce of slime which we had by political economy of competition, we have, by political economy of co-operation, a sapphire, an opal, and a diamond, set in the midst  of a star of snow.

… I have asked you to hear that, children, because, from all that we have seen in the work and play of these past days, I would have you gain at least one grave and enduring thought. The seeming trouble - the unquestionable degradation - of the elements of the physical earth, must passively wait the appointed time of their repose, or their restoration. It can only be brought about for them by the agency of external law. But if, indeed, there be a nobler life in us than in these strangely moving atoms; - if, indeed there is an eternal difference between the fire which inhabits them, and that which animates us - it must be shown, by each of us in his appointed place, not merely in the patience, but in the activity of our hope; not merely by our desire, but our labour, for the time when the Dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for foundations of the gates of the city of God. The human clay, now trampled and despised, will not be - cannot be - knit into strength and light by accidents or ordinances of unassisted fate. By human cruelty and iniquity it has been afflicted; - by human mercy and justice it must be raised and, in all fear or questioning of what is or is not, the real message of creation, or of revelation, you [13] may assuredly find perfect peace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has plainly required - and content that He should indeed require no more of you - than to do Justice, to love Mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.

In every kingdom it is the same. The free time after time realizing its imprisonment because it has conquered its kingdom, and bursting its bonds afresh that a still mightier and more splendid freedom may be achieved. The flower of every kingdom an unfolded colour-glory, sound-glory, substance-glory, form­-glory, passing thence to win a nobler freedom. Of course, the word “imprisonment” is hardly accurate, for there is probably little, if any, sense of imprisonment until the prison-doors are about to be opened that the soul may enter into a bondage less restricted. Fortunately for us, we generally see our prisons only as we leave them. Until then a prison is an oppor­tunity. Let us beware of so missing our opportunities that bondage takes their place, and a veritable prison-house closes in upon us.

Another image in my consciousness is of a Light-nucleus, imprisoned lightning, charged with the spirit of Divinity, as a Sun below the horizon of the world, or of a kingdom of Nature, or of an individual member of a [14] kingdom of Nature, as the evolutionary process in each case begins. All is darkness and silently still. Life sleeps on the bosom of the Infinite. Higher and higher ascends the nucleus of Light, radiating ever upwards and outwards. Life stirs into activity, the world awakes. The dawn is at hand. A faint light glows, the rose of Light, as tenderness softly touching the eyes of the sleeping world. From out the dawn in its tenderness comes the dawn in its iridescent vigour - a wonderful aurora of colour - a veritable spectrum of Light. And then all colours bend before their Lord and Master, merging themselves in Him. The Sun has risen and passes onwards to the glory of a perfect day. The perfect Dawn is the Light which is Buddhi, but Nirvana is the Light which is the Day; not yet the Eternal Noon­tide, but a partial consummation of the dawn.

Thus my image in terms of Colour-Light. But it comes to me in terms of Sound-Light. First, the soft note expressing the Divine essence, the key-note or basic tone of the individuality whatever it may be-the note which gives the individuality. Then the mystic chord, swelling as it were out of the single sound, the nature chord of the, indivi­duality. And so on into an equally veritable [15] spectrum of sound, an aurora of music, a great and majestic symphony declaring in terms of music the new goal to be achieved. A hush of soundless silence in which the glorious music of an achievement is marvellously merged, so that the very silence has become more vibrant, the Voice of the Silence has gained articulateness. In the hush, sound stirs once more to greater ends, and as time passes unfolds from arche­typal note to mystic chord, from mystic chord  to magic symphony, and then again that silence in which the symphony is blended, which it has enriched. Can you not hear your own growth in terms of colour, in terms of music? Can you not hear the faint beginnings, can you not pre-sense the mighty ends? I have heard the beginnings of Nirvana in terms of sound, in terms of colour; and I seem to hear as if far away in deep distance the symphony of the achievement of Nirvana, as I can dimly per­ceive the apotheosis of that Light which even at the outset is so hopelessly indescribable. Is there not a note which sounds the beginning of the Birth into the Mysteries of the Real? Is there not a symphony which marks its fruition, a symphony gathered up into a silence and issuing forth therefrom as the note of a new endeavour, the note of the Baptism? Is there [16] not the note and symphony of the Transfigura­tion, the note and symphony of a Crucifixion­-Resurrection, of an Ascension, and of consecra­tions yet beyond? And so with Light. Lose yourselves, my readers, now and then at least in these reachings into the Real, bathe your­selves in these true imaginings. So do you gain a glimpse and an understanding of the Eternal, and of the inevitable, glory beyond those contrasts which seem in time so dark and dreary but which thus serve to teach us of the sunshine everlasting.

Out of sleep and dream I am awake, though to regions beyond I may still be dreaming. But the dream is true, for it is the vision of the final conquest of the kingdom of man and the standing upon the threshold of the kingdoms of the superman. Let me try to put my vision otherwise. I look upon the world, and I see our Lord the Sun expressed in myriad suns. Each monad I perceive to be a Sun in minia­ture. The Sun Divine throws off spark-suns charged with all His attributes. The process of evolution begins, and these sparks burst into colour, or rather gradually unfold in terms of colour; rainbows with sun-hearts, or nuclei or centres. God’s Light thus imprisoned in form begins its long pathway [17] of transcending form, thus acquiring self­-consciousness. Every atom of light is an atom of unconscious Divinity, slowly but surely fulfilling the will of the Sun that it shall become unfolded into self-conscious Divinity. Every atom is a Sun unconscious, and shall become a Sun self-conscious. And the Sun-Light, which is the Light that is free, shines upon the Sun-Light, which is the Light imprisoned; Light the wanderer in the darkness, until the Light within and the Light without blend into a perfect whole, earth-light kissing Heaven-Light and becoming Sun-Light.

Bathed in the Lightning-standing-still which is Nirvana, I perceive the imprisoned lightnings in all things. I perceive the Light which is dull-the savage; the Light which is bright - the man evolved; the Light which is glory - the Superman, the Master. I see colour everywhere in process of transmuta­tion, of glorification, of transcendence. There is no blackness anywhere in the sense of a negation of Light. God said: “Let there be Light.” And there was and is light everywhere. “His Light shineth even in our darkness.”

And as before I might express my vision in terms of sound, of music, in terms of [18] gloriously growing forms. For, as time passes, I begin to perceive that while my first impression found instant expression in the word “Light,” and specially in the phrase “Lightning-standing-still,” I now know that this Light conception is but a quality of Nirvana, an aspect, a facet of the diamond sphere. In truth, Nirvana is an essence of things and a flower of things. It is an Alpha and an Omega. I am gradually, though only very, very slowly, beginning to look for Nirvana in all things. I cannot say that I have found Nirvana in all things, but I think I have reached the point of at least knowing that Nirvana is there. I know, though I do not yet perceive. I may, perhaps, best describe to you this knowledge in terms of Light, or it may be in terms of Sound, or in terms of Form. But Nirvana is beyond all these. Nirvana is a Mode of Being, a Mode that transcends Light and Sound and Form, though shadowed at least in all that we can know down here of the most glorious Light, Sound and Form. Have you tried to transcend the farthest limits of your consciousness? Have you ever striven to rise, first measurably and then almost immeasur­ably, above and beyond yourself? Have you [19] ever tried to know your bondage and then to burst the bonds? Have you ever recognized your limitations, your many weaknesses, and have you then ever known yourself as having triumphed over them, so that you have become unrecognizable to yourself as well as to others? Thus do you reach after Nirvana, however long may be the road on which you have to travel. Light - yes; Sound - yes; even Form from out the Formless - yes. But Nirvana is a mighty Spiritual Essence of all these things, and you approach it by learning to transcend yourself, to be an alchemist transmuting marvellously the lower into the higher. Awake! Arise! Know that Nirvana is your very being, and therefore realise yourself.

Everywhere in God’s workshop of the world, Master-Painters, Master-Singers, Master-Sculptors, Master-Builders at work. Sun­-Light the common material. Sun-Light fashioned into forms - colour-forms, sound­-forms, forms of every kind; but all Sun­-Light. And we are apprentices to these Masters of Crafts, and fashion after them in our childish ways. Yet we, too, are some day to become Master-Craftsmen, Masters of the Light in the future as we are children of the Light to-day. From darkness our [20] Masters of the Light lead us to the Light, from the darkness and colour-divisions of unconscious divinity into the pure white radiance of Divine Self-Consciousness. But as I hold Nirvanic consciousness in the valleys of my being, as I remember the summits while living on the plains, I can for the time being transcend time. There is, as long as the Nirvanic consciousness holds, no becoming, no dawning, no colour-only a perfect Radiance, beginningless and endless. It is thus that Nirvana is Bliss, and I know now why some Great Ones enfold Themselves in it to the end of the Age. It is a supreme consummation, and opens out a Pathway of stupendous glory.

I realise, too, that here is no selfishness, there could be none, of course, in entering Nirvana and exploring it to the end, if end there be. To abide in Nirvana, not to go forth therefrom, is a form of service to the world, for to enter Nirvana is to make a channel between the world and Nirvana so that the world is one step nearer to the Nirvanic dawn, and in some indescribable way the world is drawn into Nirvana, or should I rather say becomes more “Nirvanic,” because a Son of the world abides therein.[21]

I look upon races, upon nations, upon peoples, upon faiths, upon communities - as colours in the universal spectrum, and yet each a spectrum in itself. I must study these colours, that I may the more purposefully serve. I see Australia. I see our Australian Section - the Sun-nucleus of the Australian continent. I see the colour-scheme of things everywhere. I see that colour matters infinitely, in the little things as well as in the big. For everywhere is a message as well as an individual growth. There is a message in the colour of the clothes we wear, in the colour of our furniture, of our objects of daily use, in our music and drama and painting; yes, and even in our magazine, Advance! Australia. Does its blue printing speak its message truly? Does not black print­ing convey less of God’s message than colour printing?

I know the power of Light, and therefore the power of colour. The Nirvanic Light is power, not cold power, but blazing power, at least as I sensed it. And even the word “power” is a limitation, for I know now in a measure that I can begin to understand the meaning of the three great attributes of God-­Light - Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipre­sence. I see each colour emerging from its [22] archetype, descending into darkness, ascending into Light. At first faint, dim, crude, changing from shade to shade. The swinging of the pendulum of growth between the colours of darkness and the colours of Light. Gradually, slowly, the fiercer hues of the colours of discord and of hatred mellow into the splendid shades of Love.

I know the Universes to be colour-schemes. One universe a rose scheme, another a yellow scheme, a third a blue scheme, and so on. What is our colour-scheme? Rose? Perhaps, and yet its heart is the blinding, glorious Light containing within itself all light-rates within the mighty octave of its Being.

And now, in the light of further experience, I can begin to interpret races, peoples, nations, faiths, communities, in terms other than of Light, of colour. I hear them all building their respective symphonies, resolving - slowly I am afraid - their inevitable discords into equally inevitable harmonies. And these various music-strivings go to the building of the great world Symphony, the basic note and chord of which is present in variations in every sub­division of the world whether large or small. I have written of our Universe as possibly a Rose Universe. Is our earth a yellow [23] sub-division of the general rose scheme? What is the Note of our Universe, and what is the earth’s variant thereof? This is a most fasci­nating theme for study, but as I am at present only in the region of speculation, guessing, imagining, it seems hardly profitable to pursue the investigation further. The point is that entry into Nirvana is an approach to the basic things of Being, those things which are omni­present and, from one point of view, change­less. Nirvana is omnipresent. Nirvana is present in colour, in sound, in form, in sub­stance. Nirvana is the essence of them all; or should I not rather say a form of the essence of them all, a fundamental mode of the root of their being?

I am living in a Light-Eternity. I descend into a Colour-Time. Time is the breaking up of Light-Eternal into colour; and there is the Light of the past, the Light of the present, the Light of the future. Yet all within an Eternal Now.

The world seems new with a new sacredness. The Power of the Light is in all things. Through our very physical senses we touch the Light which is Divinity. It lies about us, and in us. As we have variations round a music­-note or music-theme or motif, so is the world [24] an almost infinite number of variations upon the theme of the Universal Light. It is a Symphony of Light. It is also a Symphony of Sound, and no less a Symphony of Silence. It is a Symphony of Colour and of Form. And there are those who, hearing the Archetypal Symphony, seek to mellow the harsh notes and cruder colours and forms of ignorance so that the world orchestra, composed of all mani­fested life as the musicians, may, under the baton, the mighty Rod of Power of the world’s Supreme Conductor, make a music glorious - ­the archetype one with the actual.

The process of evolution is a process of the individualization of Light on the way to re-universalization on the plane of self-consci­ousness. Music is Light. Fire is Light. The Arts and the Sciences are Light in evolution growing under the laws of Light. The Scriptures tell us of the Light. There is a great Gospel of the Light, whence comes every faith, and to proclaim which comes every Saviour. Light is right; darkness is wrong. We grow towards the Light as do the trees and flowers.

I see our Lord the Sun in each of us. Is the heart the sun of our body-world? Does the blood reflect His rays? Are not all things Light-terms, Light-formulae?[25]

What is Nirvana? The Light Divine. I am touching, perhaps only for a moment, its lowest reaches, its densest layers. All I have written is but of the Light Divine in its lowest Nirvanic aspect. I cannot conceive down here even this Glory, but it leaves in me as I return to earth a new perception of Reality. I have taken a step nearer to the Real. There is a greater comradeship in the world than I had thought - a deeper identity, a more glorious origin, a more glorious way, and a more glorious goal. Round me everywhere and at all times are God's Sunshine Messen­gers. Every colour speaks His Word and His Voice. Every form breathes His purpose. I, dust in the Sunshine, yet am part of it, and looking upward to the Sun I see the sign of my own Divinity, and the embodied promise of my ultimate achievement. As is our Lord the Sun so shall we all be, for He has willed it so.

Light is language, thought, vesture and vehicle. A flash of light conveys for us down here a whole philosophy. The whole of this pitifully feeble amount of Nirvanic experience was doubtless within a single flash of Nirvanic Light penetrating my being, or rather perhaps stirring at last from age-long dormancy within me.[26]

Light is the Will of the Sun, the Wisdom of the Sun, the Love of the Sun. It is written in books that Nirvana is bliss. Even from that outermost region, at the frontiers, I know Nirvana to be infinitely more. Just one glimpse and all things seem to be made new, within me and without me. I remain, yet am wholly changed, and everything round me seems to be undergoing a process of re­valuation. Even now, everything means far more than before. Every object, in every kingdom, seems in one way far more a shadow of Reality than a reality, for I perceive how feeble and inadequate must be all reflections of the Light. I did not know before that they were so feeble. And yet, equally true is it that every object is far more real, far less of a shadow of Reality, than I had thought. I see the prison-opportunity of form, and I perceive the shadows. I see the unfolding splendour of the Light-Eternal, and I perceive the Real. All other worlds are shadow-worlds compared with this Nirvanic world. And yet they are more real worlds because of this Nirvanic world, for I now perceive the seal of God’s purpose set upon all things, and I must reverence all things in far deeper measure than before.[27]

Philosophers talk of pure Being. I seem to be able to sense what pure Being must be, not because I have contacted it, but because I have contacted that which is less short of pure Being than all other consciousness-states I have so far experienced. At present, speaking as a child in this new kingdom, Nirvana to me is pure Life, Life which is Light. Not that colour has faded into this Light. Colour remains, but the spectrum of Nirvana is a glorification indescribable of the colour-spectra of the planes below. It is more Light than colour. Indeed, only as I grow a little accustomed to the Light, and my sensitiveness increases, beginning to adapt itself to its new environment, do I begin to perceive that with­in Nirvanic Light are marvellous manifest­ations of colour apotheoses, of colour relation­ships, schemes and interactions. For the moment, the sense of evolution is lost in the blinding glory of the Light. As I become more at home in a Home one never thinks to own until one enters at its doors, I shall realize, as I do not yet realize, that the eternal truth remains true, and becomes more true; that to enter the Sun-Light, which is another way of saying to love God, there is only one road - the service of that Light which lighteth every man.[28]

Thus, with a new power which I shall learn to use, do I seem to enter upon a deeper service. We are children of the Sun, sparks of this glorious Sun-Light. I look up into the sky and I see my King. Sun-worshippers worship more truly, perhaps, than they know. I, in­finitesimal, ignorant and feeble, yes, even I, am a servant of the Sun. As He shines upon the whole universe, so must I shine upon my world. I must be sunshine, even as He is sunshine. It is sometimes said that we cannot see God. I think I can see Him in part, and know something of His sublimity, as I look upon the Sun. Even with my physical eyes, I know something of His glory, and the whole world around me is His glory in manifestation. But looking upon Him from the Nirvanic world, I know far, far more. Another veil is lifted, and a fuller Glory shines upon me.

No words can express my new sense of Him. It is, and must be, a mystery beyond words, beyond feeling, beyond even thought. Indeed, I must not even make the attempt; it is little short of blasphemy. But in the First Epistle General of St. John, beginning at the fifth verse of the first chapter, it is written:

This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is [29] Light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.

And again in the second chapter of the same Epistle, beginning at the ninth verse:

He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him.

A simple message, but profoundly true. “In Him is no darkness at all, neither shadow of turning.” Upon us all shines His Light per­petual. May we ever dwell in the Light through the service of our brethren.[30]

CHAPTER II

THE FIRST READJUSTMENT

I compare … man’s gradual progress in self-­knowledge to his gradual decipherment of the nature and meaning of the sunshine which reaches him as light and heat indiscernibly intermingled.

MYERS, (Human Personality and the Survival of Bodily Death).

IT is curious how, as the days pass, one becomes increasingly conscious of a readjustment to one’s surroundings, as well as of a perpetual contact with the non-physical. My relation­ships with outer things have altered. It may be that the Buddhic unity has itself become intensified, for more of reverence seems due to everything - to inanimate as much as to ani­mate objects. Indeed, I see clearly that there is nothing which is inanimate. All is animate with Sun-Light. All is alive with Sun-Sound, with Sun-Form. Even the minutest microcosm is a perfect macrocosm in miniature - the [31] pebble on the beach, the speck of dust, the least animate insect. God is not original. Having made His pattern, He never departs from it. Having chosen His pathway, He never diverges from it.

This perception of the wonderful sameness of all things, which means that in essence all things are vibrant with infinite potentiality, causes an interesting and significant physical reaction to the outer world. I must lift things more carefully, deliberately. I must touch things with more refinement in the touch. I must use things with a greater sense of the purpose to which (there is no exaggeration in the statement) they are dedicated. Nothing slipshod or careless is tolerable.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,

But more of reverence in us dwell,

That mind and soul, according well,

May make one music as before, But vaster …

There is much profound truth in these lines. Through increased reverence the music does become vaster. I perceive divinity in the fountain-pen with which I write these words. It seems unfair to the pen, indeed untrue to the essential being of the pen, if I do not try to write carefully and neatly. The pen suffers [32] other than physically if ill-treated, if used less reverently than it might be used. I seem to be under the necessity of educating, of co­operating with, my surroundings all the time, largely by my general attitude, but in no small measure by my more overt comradeship with the things that constitute them. My office tools depend upon me, look up to me. All this may be the intensification of the Buddhic principle, but it is more than this. Am I getting nearer to the truth when I suggest that the Unity of Buddhi is more an outward, forthgoing process, while the Unity of Nirvana is more an inward, indrawing process? Do I at the Buddhic stage perceive my oneness with the world, and at the Nirvanic stage perceive the potentiality of all things within me? I think there is something of this kind, for our Lord the Sun seems at the Nirvanic stage to become the centre of my being.

On further contemplation, it seems as if at the Buddhic stage one goes out to find the Unity, while at the Nirvanic stage one begins to realize it everywhere. At the Buddhic stage one travels from centre to circumference, finding the centre as much at the circumfer­ence as at the centre, if you understand what I am trying to convey. At the Nirvanic stage,[33] that which has been two and yet one in two, becomes one. All is centre, and one is on the verge of the conception that under a certain mode of consciousness a centre need have no circumference, for all is within the centre. We draw circumferences just as we draw double lines for easier writing. But we do not need them, and Nirvana is the state of doing with­out them. At the Buddhic stage there is more of realization. At the Nirvanic stage there is more of Being.

As I have already written, the Sun seems to be my King, and I realize that down here I must be a sun, the sun of my world, as He is the Sun of His system. In Him is the source of all life. In me, too, is the source of all life, because I am in Him, and of His Being. His rays pervade worlds. Do not mine, however feebly, pervade a world? I am an infinity in the becoming because I am infinity in essence. Nothing is lacking in my nature to that stu­pendous end - the word “end” is, of course, absurd. I am light even as He is Light. The Nirvanic consciousness seems to produce a cognition of oneself as a throbbing, pulsating energy or power-nucleus, slowly but surely expanding, extending its kingdom far and wide, and itself becoming more and more [34] radiant as its frontiers are pushed forward into  space. I can conceive that in the infinitely distant future my body shall be as the Sun and my kingdom a universe. I am brought face to face with my potentiality, and with its inevit­able growth into power; it is a marvellous and stupendous grandeur; omniscience, omnipo­tence, omnipresence - in the becoming. I enter my Sanctum Sanctorum. I enter the essence of my being. I perceive a burning, blinding Sun - a miniature of the Sun Himself.

It seems to me also that I am in constant contact with all outside me. This is probably a way of putting the fact that I am conscious on the plane of Universal consciousness, on which time and space are non-existent. An act of consciousness - and I contact whatever I desire to contact. It is not a question of going any­where, of projection, but rather of tuning, and not even of tuning, but rather of attending. The act of attention makes the contact.

Of course, I am only at the very beginning of this, and I express myself badly and uncertainly, because I am merely a child, and use child-language to express unfamiliar relation­ships and to describe conditions about which I know next to nothing. I am just like a baby trying to describe all it met on its first journey [35] into the streets of the town, or the roads and lanes of the country-side. I have received impressions, but these filter through, have in­deed been contacted by, undeveloped organs. Still, perhaps you sense the truth within the halting picture.

William James in one of his books has said that the nightingale of life’s eternal meaning is for ever singing in men’s hearts. From the standpoint of the Nirvanic consciousness I re­alize that this is profoundly true, but it means far more than probably he intended it to mean. The eternal meaning of life is indeed for ever singing in men's hearts, but it is not, I think, until Buddhic, and later Nirvanic, conscious­ness is opened that one begins to hear the song, or at any rate to begin to understand it. When one does begin to hear it in one’s own heart, simultaneously one seems to hear it in the hearts of all things, even though it sings as yet to ears that are deaf. And then one knows that there is but One great Song of Life echoed in the hearts of men and things, be its varia­tions infinite.

Such knowledge is it that brings one to a realization of the nature of Universal Consciousness. Hearing the Song of Life in har­mony of Glorious Light and Colour in its [36]

Nirvanic manifestation, one hears the sound of its eternal meaning in all things, and it is but an act of consciousness to hear its note in any particular individuality, and thus to contact that individuality intimately. It is, then, but a matter of tuning-in on to the wave-length required. The wireless apparatus is installed, even though very far from running smoothly, and I seem able to tune-in to all manner of things everywhere, to persons, to friends, to events, even though I may only rarely be able to hear accurately. I see the “dead” living on in other bodies, and with us all the time. I see the “living” in other parts of the world as near to me as those in physical propinquity. I can draw the whole world into me, and thus annihilate time and space. How much more than this world, so far as regards its sub-­Nirvanic states, I may be able thus to draw in, I do not know. But I am just now be­ginning to perceive that the unfolding of Nirvanic consciousness brings one into touch with other worlds than this earth of ours. Certain planets, of course, may be contacted comparatively easily without Nirvanic consciousness, but its unfoldment makes possible journeys farther afield, for on the Nirvanic plane infinitely more of our universe begins to [37] be within reach. I have not yet journeyed far afield, but I find myself in touch with influences from distant places, the nature of which is for the time being more than strange. There are mighty influences at work among us, down here in our world, influences from far away, from other universes indeed as well as from other planets. I can say no more at the moment, for all is vague. But it is very intriguing. How strange one feels in one’s new world, with its almost illimitable vistas and marvellous scenery, peopled with wonderful Presences, linking together even universes within a stupendous cosmos. It is a wonder that the physical brain can stand even the feeblest reflection of it all, for it is all so completely outside all previous experience. Clearly the physical brain could not stand the strain but for the previous Buddhic experience, which reinforced the brain, stamped it with Unity, enlarged its capacity, that it might gradually become ready for the further ex­pansion. The Nirvanic note would have been shattering but for the tuning-in the Buddhic contact achieved.

How true it is that language in this case conceals thought and meaning! I need Nirvanic language to convey the sense of [38] Nirvanic things, and my hearers need Nirvanic understanding. How impossible to convey the sense of moreness in a medium which stops short at that very moreness! Still, perhaps you have an impression of that wondrous moreness, though until you too can begin to see, my words must often seem confused and even muddled. As Myers has said so beautifully:

O, could I tell, ye surely would believe it!

O, could I only say what I have seen!

How should I tell or how can ye receive it,

How, till He bringeth you where I have been?

The more one immerses oneself in even this lowest layer of Nirvanic consciousness the greater becomes the clarification of conscious­ness on the lower planes. It is like a fresh, pure stream of energy flowing through the great channels of life and vivifying the out­look at every stage. We are continually working under the Law of Readjustment, and each expansion of consciousness involves a further readjustment to the Eternal Reality. Purer and purer becomes the refracting medium as kingdom after kingdom of consci­ousness is conquered, till at last the Light of the Real shines through undimmed, or as [39] nearly undimmed as is possible in the Universe of the Relative.

One of the most striking examples of this clarification is in the discovery that it is far more possible definitely to know God than I had supposed. Does one attain a vision of God, of the Creator, in a Form capable of being understood by human consciousness? I seem to have perceived God, not as an abstraction but as a cognisable Reality - a Universality within a limitation, but the limitation rarefied enough to reveal to me in deeper measure the nature of the Universality of God. The expression is unsatisfactory, but it is as if I had experienced the Individuality of God. And the whole experience centres round the Sun which, putting it bluntly, I perceive to be the Physical Vehicle of God whereby He creates, gives, sustains and re­generates life. The Sun is, as it were, the Countenance of God, the Light of which shines upon all things. A little more and I could describe, in so far as description is at all possible, a manner of God’s revealing of Himself on this Nirvanic Plane. Not God unveiled. I cannot see Him unveiled. The part cannot know the Whole as Whole. But I can see Him as He interposes a shadow [40] before my eyes. To me that very shadow, irridescent with God, is God, even though but a shadow. I see God in limitation. The part perceives a shadow of the Whole. The ocean of Nirvana is a Shadow of God. The ocean of every plane is God in Shadow. The higher the consciousness the more is the Shadow a true mirror of His Being.

I realize, too, more vividly the nature of Heaven, and somehow it does not seem so absurd to place Heaven in the heavens as I had thought. Of course, heaven is a State of Consciousness. There are many Heavens. Nirvana is a Heaven-world, infinitely greater than that higher mental plane to which we usually restrict the title. But is not the blue sky a Heaven in special measure? If I free myself from the bondage of earth and body restrictions, and bathe myself in the sky above the clouds, do I not experience a peace and a sense of the all-Power, the all-Wisdom and the all-Love of God, which inevitably decreases as I return to the physical level?

I seem also to be able to some extent to apply Eternity to the terms of Time. Do I not contact in some degree the Eternal Mind, or, should I say more truly, a Cosmic Mind, and then Cosmic Emotions and a Cosmic Physical [41] Plane? What is the difference between these Cosmic States and their denser counterparts? The first word that comes to me to express the difference is “Majesty”. Mind stripped of all Time-mentality, of all constituents of the mental plane as we know it. Mind filled with the spiritual counterparts, the archetypes, of the constituents of our mental plane. The Cosmic Mind is an archetypal Mind which reflects itself in the objects of the mental plane. It is not Absolute Mind, but the nearest approach to Absolute Mind that I can so far conceive. The positive and the negative, the subject and the object, have disappeared, and there is pure Mind, Mind without the contrast between I and not-I, since the one is merged in the other.

The same experience obtains on the plane of the emotions. On this Cosmic plane I contact Cosmic Emotion, which impresses me as being Power in Motion. I have since often looked at a physical plane storm and have seemed to perceive in it a likeness to the plane of Cosmic Emotion, always assuming that the physical plane storm is supremely purposeful and stormy to great and well-defined ends. Cosmic Emotion is power in motion, in spiral swirl, in vast pulsation. Again, as in the case of the [42] Cosmic Mind, I cease to sense the pairs of opposites. There is no fundamental division of love-emotions and hate-emotions; they are mutually merged in archetypal emotion. I contact pure emotion, pure feeling, but not absolute emotion or absolute feeling. I sense the difference because I perceive a beyond, though I do not know the nature of that beyond. These two Cosmic states are reservoirs which feed their corresponding lower planes, and I see how the pairs of opposites down here emerge from a Unity within or above, but I feel sure that this very Unity itself is but relative. Further still within or above there is a still deeper Unity, compared with which the Unity I now contact is a world of diversity.

I perceive an Apotheosis of Death. There is no death, only change, and always change with purpose, change to a greater end. Death is recreation, renewal, the dropping of fetters, the casting aside of a vehicle which has ceased to suffice, the taking off of an overcoat. Death is in very truth a birth into a fuller and larger life, or a dipping down into matter under the law of readjustment. Progress always, and progress towards Unity. We come ever nearer to each other and to the Real through death. If only we could realize this![43]

I see that Death is a form of Happiness, and that only our distance from happiness prevents us from realizing the gift of happiness which death confers. We grieve because a friend has gone into the next room, and there seem to be no doors between his room and ours. Yet there are doors, and we might open them if we would and keep them for ever afterwards wide open. Grief is ignorance and often selfish. The more we know the less we shall grieve, for true knowledge is eternal happiness.

I turn for a change to myself. I somehow know that my aura has undergone, or is under­going, a process of readjustment. Wherever there is an expansion of consciousness there is a modification in the aura. What modification is being brought about in my own? It seems as if it were being irradiated with Nirvanic Light. It has an electric intensity it did not before possess. The colours are in process of rearrangement, apparently in rings like the rings of Saturn. Possibly, indeed probably, this process began before, but the entry into Nirvanic consciousness has given it a great impetus. The silver light-threads of Nirvana seem to interpenetrate the whole aura, enrich­ing and purifying the colours, and encircling, interpenetrating, my whole being, with a Web [44] of Light. The aura scintillates with Sun-Light. The aura sparkles in the Sun.

I have perceived since these words were written that not only does the aura undergo a Light modification, including a re-arrangement of the colour-scheme, but that the music of my being has undergone a beautiful enrichment. I feel myself to be music. True, all is music, and has been from the beginning. But at last I am beginning to understand my music and to be able to watch myself at work in the Workshop of Sound, assembling the notes I need for the Symphony I am dedicated to express, for the Sound-Universe it is my destiny to create. Physical plane Henry Ford assembl­ing a motor car is but a reflection of innumer­able spiritual Henry Fords assembling the Universes, of which they shall be the Suns, in the Colour Workshops, in the Sound Workshops, in the Great Laboratory of Evolution. The process is at work all the time, but only as we contact Buddhi, and later Nirvana, do we begin really to know what we are doing, and thus to do it more expeditiously and with more effective skill.

Each centre (there are many centres) glows with the new life and the new promise. Am I in the springtime of a new Cosmic year, of [45] which the summer of spiritual maturity is the Fifth of the Great Initiations, to the threshold of which sooner or later I shall come? “Conquer this kingdom and you stand on the threshold of the next.” The seed of my being has thrust its Light-shoots through the soils of lower planes, and a bud is opening to the Sun in the pure Nirvanic air. Some day this bud will become a flower - a flower of earth’s humanity in the garden of God. Every root shall grow its bud as it sends up its Light shafts through the unreal into the real. As Heaven-Light kisses Earth-Light the bud takes form and slowly expands into the flower. I seem to see, as this imagery comes to me, the Flower of Earth’s Humanity - the Lord Buddha, a Flower of indescribable splendour, a radiant Lotus-form of golden Light.

CHAPTER III

THE INNER LIGHT UPON OUTER THINGS

The atom is a sun in miniature in its own

universe of the inconceivably minute.

ANNIE BESANT AND C. W. LEADBEATER (Occult Chemistry).

AS the glow comes before the fire, the dawn before the sunrise, so must the glow of dawn­ing perfection slowly but surely steal over us, body after body, as a sign that the Sun within is learning to shine as shines so gloriously the Sun without. We need to be set on fire so that we may gradually become one with the Fire Eternal. We cannot know God as He is until we become all fire, even as He is all fire. Open your hearts, then, to His Sunlight, that your whole being may some day burst into flame, and thence into many flames - flames of Power, of Wisdom, and of Love. In each one of us the spark is ready, the spark of Divinity [47] waiting to become a Fire. Nothing can extin­guish this spark, however dimly it may glow. At last the time must come for its emergence into flame, and thence into that Fire which till then has slept in the world of the potential.

We are set ready for the lighting. Let us concentrate upon ourselves the Rays of our Lord the Sun through the burning-glass of aspiration and of service, and Time, the sure and certain moulder of this burning glass, is God’s witness that the spark shall thus become the Fire. May our service and our aspiration glow with the warmth of understanding, the warmth which stimulates, with the light of wisdom, the wisdom which clarifies, with the burning of power, the burning which purifies. I seem to contact here a note of a great Ritual of Light, and Light the medicine of the future. Light the Healer, Light the Redeemer, the Creator, the Preserver, the Regenerator. The inoculations and drugs of the future will be Light-variants, and the very food we eat will be concentrated Light, the form being used to collect, in varying ways, the sustenance which is the Sunlight.

But even more than this is there not a great Ceremonial of Light, a mystery of Light? Not on this globe, perhaps, but on some other more [48] advanced than this earth there is, I think, a mighty Magic of the Light which some day we shall know and use. I think that is the life of the colony of which Dr. Besant and Bishop Lead­beater write in Man: Whence, How and Whither.  Light already begins to play a definite part, but Light is in fact the philosopher’s “stone,” the potent force of the alchemist, and some day the Science of Light will be recognized as the Science of Sciences, with its Laws, its Ritual, its Worship, its Philosophy, its Ethic and AEsthetic. I wish I had the wisdom to under­stand even a little of the Science, for it is the key to all other sciences. Some day it will be a Science intensely applicable even to the little things of everyday life. We shall become in a wonderful way children of Light because we are children of the Sun, and there will be a Eucharistic Service of the Light even more glorious, if possible, than the Eucharistic Service of our Lord the Christ.

I see our Lord the Sun distributing Himself through His universe, extending Himself through its immeasurable distances. I see His world learning gradually to use him in His myriad aspects to meet its many needs.

I see these things to be, and I see that our Lord the Sun grows because He shines. He [49] grows by shining. So must we. As we shine so we grow. And as I realize this I turn outwards from the blinding glory of Nirvana to this world of ours living and growing in relative darkness. Light-sparks everywhere, glittering and scintillating as do the lights of a seaside town when viewed in the night from passing ships. Light-sparks in every kingdom of nature, some dim indeed, feeble, looking as if the slightest breath of adverse wind would blow them out and leave a darkness blacker than ever. But no spark that God has lighted from His Divinity can ever fade. Long may it remain feeble, slight may be the change through ages of time. But it grows irresistibly. In each kingdom, sparks there are of more vivid brightness - the jewels, the fruition, of the kingdom these. In the human kingdom I perceive that the sparks have be­come flames, some small, some large. I see that some of these flames are veritable light­houses, shedding light upon the true pathway of Life, warning from the ways of ignorance and pointing towards the pathways of wisdom. They warn from the rocky places and beckon along the channels of rapid growth. These are the world’s true benefactors, seers and teachers, themselves on the threshold of those [50] kingdoms beyond the human in which are the mighty Fires growing into the semblance of the Fire of God. These are the Elder Brethren of the worlds, veritable Pillars of Fire upholding the Temple of Eternity! And all children of our Lord the Sun Whose Light lighteth all things. Do we not owe all to Him!

And here once again I compare the Buddhic plane with the Nirvanic, and I strive to distinguish. It is very difficult to express the facts at all accurately. I seem to see in the former an act of coalescence and in the latter an act of identity. I perceive the former to be the assertion, the realization, of Unity amidst, above, resolving diversity; while I perceive the latter to be a condition of receding from all diversity, with a consequent readjustment, reconfiguration, rearrangement of the Unity, so that it becomes a Oneness. Buddhi the One with the Second; Nirvana the One without a Second. Yes. I confirm my previous judg­ment. And beyond Nirvana? Even the One changes, casts aside another of the veils of the Real. Can I grope beyond this lowest sub­-plane of Nirvana and look upwards upon the higher rungs of the Nirvanic ladder? No hard and fast divisions, no Light-tight [51] compartments. Is there not perhaps an inten­sification of the Oneness, for even at the bottom I find that any qualification of the Oneness, however true, is a limitation, a negation, of Nirvanic reality? Light? Yes, you can use the word to convey an infinitesimal fraction of the truth. Music, Sound? Yes, you can use these words too. But while you are using them you know that they veil the glory, even the little shaft of glory which is all you yet perceive. But let me drop these veils. What remains all the way up? Oneness, and of this Oneness no words may be used, no expression in terms of Light or Sound or Form conveys the slightest real meaning, only a suggestion which points in the direction of the Real. I will meditate on this Oneness, live in it. So shall I begin to know it, though not to convey the sense of it. And then shall come that which I can only now describe as Transcendence. But I have said enough. I am foolish to strive to measure with words the immeasurable.

I see that we evolve under the laws of counterpart and reflection. The world of Nirvana itself is a sublimated counterpart of the world below as much as it is an archetype. The planes above Nirvana are sublimated [52] counterparts, each in its own degree, of the Nirvana below them, the quality and nature of the counterpart being determined by the Light-vibration quality of the plane.

The development of the Nirvanic conscious­ness seems to affect the spirillae in the brain, the kundalini, and the various centres generally; as also, of course, the various bodies. I am conscious of a much more intense sen­sitiveness, of being much more highly strung. I am, as it were, an extremely sensitive plate, rather over-sensitive for conditions in the outer world. Probably I shall tone down in due course, but in the earlier stages outer living becomes almost painful.* (*As a matter of fact, in the light of further growth, I do not seem to tone down. On the contrary, the sensi­tiveness increases steadily. But I have it under increasing self-control, at all events up to a certain point. Life is more difficult from the standpoint of daily contacts, and does not grow less difficult. But to counteract the growing difficulty there is also growing an inner Peace which acts, may I descend for a moment into a very material simile, as a wonderful shock-absorber. But I realize that the time must come when it will no longer be possible to live in the outer world and maintain a maximum of effectiveness. It is for this reason, for the sake of more generous service, that our Elder Brethren live away from the haunts of Their younger comrades. They prefer to give of Their all rather than to have continually to protect Themselves against the discords of immaturity, thus using power which otherwise might be free for service.) One seems to know people and things far more accurately; they [53] become impressed upon me as they are, rather than as they seem to be.

It would seem that as the causal body dis­integrates when the individual enters the Buddhic plane, so is it with the Buddhic vehicle as one enters the Nirvanic plane. This seems inevitable on what I call the plane of apotheoses, the essential plane, the plane of fundamental archetype. I notice that I do not write “archetypes,” and the reason seems to be that from one point of view there is no plurality on the Nirvanic plane. Plurality begins on the plane below, and even there it is plurality overshadowed, dominated, by Unity. Of course, as one descends, the various bodies of lower planes are re-formed out of the matter of the planes according to the vibration rate of the permanent atom. Return from Nirvana, and the Buddhic vehicle is instantaneously formed. Return from the Buddhic plane, and a causal body is immediately ready for use, though not, of course, the age-long friend which reintegrates no more.

Why cannot anyone enter Nirvana? It is a question of time, of course, and a question as to how the time is occupied. Entry into Nirvana involves an expansion of consciousness, and the lesser expansions must precede the greater.[54] It seems to be a matter of Sense of Reality. It is not enough to know what is called Truth. One must know something of what is Truth, which is generally quite another matter; and the Truth of things cannot be learned from books, or speeches, except in part. These help, as does also experience. But in some way one must not only discover Truth through experi­ence, but also through a reaching out into that which is beyond experience - gradually making experience of that beyond. Similes come into my mind. Think of one of those curious puzzle-pictures which they give to children. Each puzzle has a title, and one works to that. This piece fits in here, that piece fits in there. Gradually the picture forms and becomes com­plete. So is it with life, and with the various planes of consciousness.

For example, an individual entering into Buddhic consciousness obtains a general idea of Buddhic principles, and gradually the ex­perience fulfils the principles, so that they become built into his very being. The Buddhic picture becomes well recognizable. Buddhi has ceased to be that which it was at first, an empty circle, an unexplored vastness. He has travelled throughout the Buddhic world, has po­pulated the circle, the vastness, with experience [55]

after experience at ascending levels, until he reaches the summit and looks up to new plains, or planes of being leading to mightier summits still. The individual is ready, there­fore, for another picture - that of Nirvana. But one cannot begin on another picture until the former is on the road to completion. It is no doubt possible to imagine the stages ahead, and the effort is very useful and helpful. But one must be strenuously working at the pictures one has already in hand, deliberately and with the realisation that in each case the principles must be fulfilled in practice.

The physical-body picture, the emotions picture, the mind picture - all must be on the road to completion, and each of us who reaches this stage must be hard at work on them all. Then only is it possible for us to be allowed to begin something still further. We speak of Theosophizing our lives. The word “theoso­phizing” covers our duty, be the centre of consciousness where it may. But at each stage we must build into our lives the essence of our highest achievement. If the causal body is the highest active principle, we must see to it that we are in all things true to the experiences of which the causal body is the custodian. We must live from that body. If Buddhi has been [56] contacted, we must see to it that the spirit of that Unity ensouls each thought, each feeling, each word, each deed. So with Nirvana, and so beyond and beyond. And we must remember that nothing short of Truth suffices. Our conception of Truth is not enough, however good it may be, however useful to us it may be. Facts, not theories, are required. Not, perhaps, absolute fact - that is still beyond us; but relatively pure facts, at all events. I seem to see the water of the emotions fructifying the seed of the mind so that it bursts into being. Similarly I see the water of the mind fructi­fying Buddhi, and the water of Buddhi fructi­fying the Nirvanic seed. But the water must be pure, otherwise the seed remains potential. When the potential within the seed becomes active, it sends out Light-rays of its own quality which contact, summon to its aid, the corresponding rays of Light without, and another Light-body is in course of formation. Up till that time the Light-rays from without passed through the vehicle, hardly, if at all, affecting it. But now they find response to their stimuli, and in interaction the Light-body comes into being.

I have for some time been striving to bring down into the physical brain the means [57] whereby translation takes place into this new field of consciousness - Nirvana. So far as I can contact, the process, it depends upon the capa­city to respond on the part of the embryonic atom of Nirvanic consciousness within myself. I seem to notice that these embryonic counter­parts of the corresponding conditions without pass through stages of what I must call pre­natal development, the birth into consciousness synchronizing with an expansion of conscious­ness which is the veritable Initiation itself. There is the period of sleep, unconsciousness. There is the period of stirring, restlessness, the dawn of consciousness. Then there is the period of awareness - something less than awakening, yet a capacity intermittently to vibrate to corresponding conditions without. And finally there is the awakening itself, when the embryonic atom is not merely a nucleus, an embryo, but a vehicle, a body. The Sun shines, and takes unto Himself a world, a universe. This is Initiation.

I presume that at the fourth of the Great Initiations the stirring of the life within the Nirvanic atom, due to Buddhic and other impacts, is marvellously vitalized from without by a treat Act of Unification on the part of the One Initiator or His Deputy. A great [58] expansion takes place; the vehicle is formed whereby entry is gained into the kingdom now to be conquered. I take my abode for the first time in a Nirvanic vehicle - if the word “vehicle” be permitted - and now the task is mine to develop the senses of this new potency; just as a little child has to learn to use his senses in the physical world.

Light, of course, is the first discovery, for it is the primary, overwhelming experience. I have spoken of “lightning-standing-still”. Entry into the Nirvanic world is as into lightning, blinding, penetrating, drenching. One plunges into a sea of vibrant, vocal lightning. One cannot sink, but one has to learn to swim. One does not sink, because the light within makes one buoyant. It is impossible to conceive entry into this kingdom without the warrant of the awakened light within, but were such a conception possible I realize that the only result would be annihilation. And this shows me the relatively irresistible power of this lightning-Light. I have striven to describe its glorious beauty; I might now try to describe its awful power. Scientists speak of the mighty power within the atom, and of the tre­mendous consequences could it be released. God tempers the Light, or we should be [59] destroyed. Only as self-control grows stronger, and the Path of Purification is trodden with ever more rapid and firmer footsteps, are potentialities released within ourselves, the negative within uniting with the positive without.

At this point I have since noticed that this Resurrection into the Lightning-standing-still has been preceded by the vigil of a Crucifixion. The Crucifixion and the Resurrection, therefore, are the interdependent constituents of the Epoch of the fourth of the Great Initiations, the Resurrection unsafe without the Crucifixion. And to this end are there not indeed at every stage of life these twins of Crucifixion and Resurrection? Do you not know innumerable crucifixions, innumerable resurrections, some great, some small, some tremendous, some insignificant? Are not Crucifixions and Resur­rections distributed throughout life, in every kingdom of Nature? And are they not heralds of the supreme Crucifixion and Resurrection in the human kingdom typified by this fourth Stage on the Path of Holiness, at which takes place the Crucifixion of Selfishness, the utter sub­ordination of the lower, the offering of all one is in the service of all that lives, and the consequent Resurrection into Power – Power [60] that may now be grasped because it can only be used to the Glory of God and in the service of His worlds? I look upon those who have achieved the Resurrection and I perceive the justificatory Crucifixions, Crucifixions none the less real and effective though some who have gone through them have been conscious of no suffering. I would venture to deny that suffer­ing is an inevitable concomitant of Crucifixion, or at least of the final Crucifixion in the human kingdom. It is often present, but it need not be. It is not suffering that is indispensable, but offering, holding nothing back.

I find, then, that the capacity, aroused in the course of the ceremony of the fourth of the Great Initiations, to respond to Nirvanic consciousness, opens to me this new kingdom. If I am correctly describing the actual process of entry, I can only suggest that it is a matter of setting up, or rather intensifying, certain potentialities of vibration, so that all that vibrates differently falls away, or at least goes out of perspective. Do these other rates of vibration, which we may call the lower bodies, either retire into a kind of body-­formula or, if they remain actually corporeal, do they lose for the time practically all save the elemental life? I start vibrating at the [61] Nirvanic rate, and find myself in the Nirvanic consciousness. I sound the Nirvanic note, which I heard definitely for the first time during the course of the Initiation (though an echo of it may have come to me now and then before), and the portals open to my summoning.

I shall soon find - indeed, I am beginning now to find - that it is not in the least neces­sary to be physically asleep in order to contact this consciousness. It may be contacted in full waking consciousness, and I am now striving to learn to do that. But if I try to examine this further step I seem to be using the physical brain in a new way, or through new brain channels. Part of the process consists in getting temporarily out of focus, out of perspective, so far as lower planes are concerned; but this is done as in a flash.* (*As experience grows, even this stage of getting out of focus is hardly noticeable. The only simile at all appro­priate is that of the jelly-fish which breathes in and out, so that its body opens out and withdraws, expands and contracts. This is what seems to take place as one uses Nirvanic consciousness. One expands to outer things, contacts them in all their parts, interpenetrates them. This is how the Oneness is experienced. Can you follow me when I describe my consciousness unfolding and contacting outer things? On every plane of consciousness this can and must be done, so that one contacts Buddhically, Nirvanically, and so on.)[62] Being very infantile in this new world I find it difficult to hold the ordinary waking con­sciousness simultaneously with the Nirvanic. I notice a tendency to drop off to sleep - to get out of the physical body. One curious effect is that I seem to “see” (the word does not at all suit) with the whole of myself, and not with any one organ. It is more contact than perception, more attitude than sight.* (*This is the method of all planes except the physical. It is so even in astral consciousness, but it becomes more noticeable as one rises higher. And at these superior levels one learns to see every object or entity from with­in as well as from outside - to see it as part of one self, or rather of the Great Self in which one is now merged. This is what our author expresses in his next paragraph. - C. W. L.)

I observe that Nirvanic consciousness is not a consciousness apart; it is in a supreme degree one with the world in which we live. It is all-penetrating, and in its light there is a marvellous readjustment to Reality for every­thing. A similar readjustment happened in a lesser degree in the case of the lower stages; and I perceive the great expansions of con­sciousness which mark the dividing lines bet­ween the kingdoms of nature to be similar readjustments to Reality. There is nothing in the world not amenable to the Light of Nir­vana, for in it things are perceived infinitely [63] more as they are than as they seem to be. The Light of Nirvana is as a great tuning­-fork. External objects, human and non­human, vibrate more or less in accord. Hence it becomes far more possible for one who has heard the Nirvanic Sound to gauge the relation between the things of the outer worlds and the Nirvanic Real. Either they ring true, or not true; less real, or more real. In any case, there is unbroken relationship between all planes of consciousness. Below is a reflection, a shadow, of the above. That there is distor­tion is obvious, but this is because the lower has not yet learned to reflect, within the measure of its capacity, perfectly. With increasing density is increasing limitation; yet on every plane the limitation must gradual­ly conform to the minimum rather than to that, maximum density with which it began.

This brings me to a point which strikes me as of considerable importance. I perceive that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is not merely a truth in relation to the ceremony of the Holy Eucharist, but one of the great laws of Nature, one of the great processes of evolu­tion. I perceive that all growth is in large measure a process of transubstantiation; not, necessarily the abandonment of the lower, but [64] rather the substitution, in increasing measure, of the more real for the less real as the motive power behind or within, or shall I say the disclosure, in increasing measure, of the substans, of the essence, as the Life of all the shadowing forms? Taking Nirvanic conscious­ness as an example, I seem to perceive that in my own being a process of transubstantiation has taken place. I still live in the outer world, and go through the routine of daily life. I think, I feel, I act, I speak. I use the senses of my various bodies. To outward appearances I am not at all changed. I am as much recognizable as George Arundale as ever; and the mere superficial observer will detect no changes. Yet a transubstantiation has taken place, the old background has given way to, has become merged in, a new background. A greater reality has been substituted for a lesser reality as the ensouling power of my being.

In the case of the Bread and the Wine of the Eucharist, there, appears no change of outer form. Yet the consecration causes in each the substitution of the Christ-principle for the lower principles normal to these two substances. A supreme Reality has been sub­stituted for a relatively insignificant reality.[65]

The Unity of all Life makes this possible, and indeed not merely possible but inevitable. The whole of life is a process of gradual transubstantiation, and in the Holy Eucharist we are given a striking reminder of this essential fact. Unfortunately, we do not generally realize that the ceremony of the Eucharist is an epitome of the whole ceremony of Life. Life is a constant process of sub­stitution and transubstantiation, these being specially marked and sharply defined at every one of the great stages on the Path of Holi­ness. The expansion of consciousness that takes place at each of the great Initiations is nothing less than a transubstantiation; and the same is true of all lesser expansions of consciousness. But in each case the earlier transubstantiation must be fulfilled ere a deeper transubstantiation can take its place, leaving it potential but merged, as the lesser merges in the greater.

I notice in myself many interesting effects of the transubstantiation connected with the awakening of Nirvanic consciousness. I notice, for instance, a great clarification of issues. Many problems in life cease to be problems; the solution of them is ob­vious. Many things which I go on doing I do [66] differently, or with other intent. The whole of daily life becomes, or is to become, an offering to the newly-realized higher. Daily life must forsake the lesser Gods for the newly-perceived greater Gods. At various stages in my existence I have been living as unto this, that or the other standard. I may have been living as unto myself, my lower self; I may have been living as unto men, or as unto a code or creed. Now I must live as unto some­thing beyond. Perhaps, to some small extent, I have all the while been living as unto the Lord - very haltingly and feebly of course. But now I must live as unto Him less haltingly and feebly because He has condescended to enter more closely into relationship with me through a veritable process of transubstanti­ation, which is the same as saying a process of self-realisation.[67]

CHAPTER IV

A MEDITATION IN THE HIMALAYAS

Northwards soared

The stainless ramps of huge Himala’s wall,

Ranged in white ranks against the blue­ - untrod,

Infinite, wonderful - whose uplands vast,

And lifted universe of crest and crag,

Shoulder and shelf, green slope and icy horn,

Riven ravine, and splintered precipice

Led climbing thought higher and higher, until

It seemed to stand in heaven and speak with gods.

Beneath the snows dark forests spread, sharp-­laced

With leaping cataracts and veiled with clouds

Lower grew rose-oaks and the great fir groves

Where echoed pheasant’s call and panther’s cry,

Clatter of wild sheep on the stones, and scream

Of circling eagles: under these the plain

Gleamed like a praying-carpet at the foot

Of those divinest altars.

Th