The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

THE TWO PATHS the beautiful verses, “It is only the sorrows of others Cast their shadows over me.” The Master has learnt the first noble truth: “Everything is sorrow,” and he has learnt that there is no such thing as separate existence. Existence is one. He knows these things as facts, just as he knows that two and two make four. Consequently, although he has found the way of escape for that fraction of consciousness which he once called “I,” and although he knows that not only that consciousness, but all other consciousnesses, are but part of an illusion, yet he feels that his own task is not accomplished while there remains any fragment of con- sciousness thus unemancipated from illusion. Here we get into very deep metaphysical difficulties, but that cannot be helped, for the Master of the Temple knows that any state- ment, however simple, involves metaphysical difficulties which are not only difficult, but insoluble. On the plane of which Reason is Lord, all antinomies are irreconcilable. It is impossible for any one below the grade of Magister Templi even to begin to comprehend the resolution of them. This fragment of the imaginary ‘Book of the Golden Pre- cepts’ must be studied without ever losing sight of this fact. 3. Quoth the Teacher: The Paths are two; the great Perfections three; six are the Virtues that transform the body into the Tree of Know- ledge. The “Tree of Knowledge” is of course another euphe- mism, the “Dragon Tree” representing the uniting of the straight and the curved. A further description of the Tree under which Gautama sat and attained emancipation is unfit for this elementary comment. Aum Mani Padmen Hum. 41