THE TWO PATHS
The subject of elimination is here further developed. The
favourite Eastern image of the Wheel of the Good Law is
difficult to Western minds, and the whole metaphor appears
to us somewhat confused.
19. True knowledge is the flour, false learning is the husk.
If thou would’st eat the bread of Wisdom, thy flour thou
hast to knead with Amrita’s clear waters. But if thou
kneadest husks with Maya's dew, thou canst create but food
for the black doves of death, the birds of birth, decay and
SOrrow.
“Amrita” means not only Immortality, but is the techni-
cal name of the Divine force which descends upon man, but
which is burnt up by his tendencies, by the forces which
make him what he is. It is also a certain Elixir which is the
Menstruum of Harpocrates.
Amrita here is best interpreted thus, for it is in opposition
to “Maya.” To interpret illusion is to make confusion more
confused.
20. If thou art told that to become Arhan thou hast to
cease to love all beings—tell them they lie.
Here begins an instruction against Asceticism, which has
always been the stumbling block most dreaded by the wise.
‘Christ’ said that John the Baptist came neither eating nor
drinking, and the people called him mad. He himself came
eating and drinking; and they called him a gluttonous man
and a wine bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. The
Adept does what he likes, or rather what he wills, and allows
nothing to interfere with it, but because he is ascetic in the
sense that he has no appetite for the stale stupidities which
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