The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

THE SEVEN PORTALS 43. Stern and exacting is the virtue of Vairdga. If thou its Path would’st master, thou must keep thy mind and thy perceptions far freer than before from killing action. The English is getting ambiguous. The word “killing” is, I suppose, an adjective implying ‘fatal to the purpose of the Student’. But even so, the comment appears to me out of place. On this high Path action should already have been made harmless; in fact, the second Path had this as its principal object. It is very difficult to make out what the Authoress really wants you to do. 44. Thou hast to saturate thyself with pure Alaya, be- come as one with Nature’s Soul-Thought. At one with it thou art invincible; in separation, thou becomest the play- ground of Samvritti, origin of all the world’s delusions. This means, acquire sympathy with the universal Soul of Nature. This Soul of Nature here spoken of is of course imagined as something entirely contrary to anything we really know of Nature. In fact, it would be difficult to dis- tinguish it from a pious fiction. The only reason that can be given for assuming the Soul of Nature to be pure, calm, kind, and all the other tea-party virtues, is Lucus a non lucendo. To put it in some kind of logical form, the Mani- fested is not the Unmanifested; therefore the Manifested is that which the Unmanifested is not. Nature, as we know it, is stupid, brutal, cruel, beautiful, extravagant, and above all the receptacle or vehicle of illimitable energy. However, by meditation one comes to a quite different view of Nature. Many of the stupidities and brutalities are only apparent. The beauty, the energy, and the majesty, or, if you prefer it, 105