FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION
Search the corpus.
Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.
35 matching pages
Page 1 of 21904 · PDF PAGE 49
THE SWORD OF SONG 42 Now who dares Call me no Christian ? And, who cares ? Read ; you will find the Master of Balliol, Discarding Berkeley, Locke, and Paley’ll Resume such thoughts and label clear “My Christianity lies here !” With such religion who finds fault ? Star, it seems foolish to exalt Religion to such heights as these, Refine the mystic agonies To nothing, lest the mystic jeer “So logic bends its line severe Back to my involuted curve !” These are my thoughts. I shall not swerve. Take them, and see what dooms deserve Their rugged gran…
1904 · PDF PAGE 42
… not avail ? Aum ! Let us meditate aright50 On that adorable One Light, Divine Savitri ! So may She Illume our minds ! So mote it be ! I find some folks think me (for one) So great a fool that I disclaim Indeed Jehovah’s hate for shame That man to-day should not be weaned Of worshipping so foul a fiend In presence of the living Sun, And yet replace him oiled and cleaned By the Egyptian Pantheon, The same thing by another name. Thus when of late Egyptian Gods Evoked ecstatic periods In verse of mine, you thought I praised Or worshipped them—I st…
1904 · PDF PAGE 45
…ion pecked ! But I remember and reflect That anger makes a person blind, And my own “Chittam” I’d neglect. Besides, it’s you, and you, I find, Are but a mode of my own mind. But then you argue, and with sense; “I have this worthy evidence That things are real, since I cease The painter’s ecstasy of peace, And find them all unchanged.” To-day I cannot brush that doubt away ; It leads to tedious argument Uncertain, in the best event : Unless, indeed, I should invoke The fourth dimension, clear the smoke Psychology still leaves. This question Need…
1904 · PDF PAGE 41
… To holy thoughts (the holy deeds Precede success) and reverent gaze Upon the Ancient One of Days, Beyond which fancy lies the Truth. To find which I have left my youth, All I held dear, and sit alone Still meditating, on my throne Of Kusha-grass,48 and count my beads, Murmer my mantra,49 till recedes The world of sense and thought—I sink 475 480 485 490 495 500 505 510 Fact replacing folklore, the Christian snig- gers. Let him beware. For I speak subtly. Results of prac- tice. The poet abandons all to find Truth.
1904 · PDF PAGE 44
PENTECOST 37 An explanation different For this particular event. Though surely I my find it queer That you should talk of self-hypnosis, When your own faith so very close is To similar experience ; Lies, in a word, beneath suspicion To ordinary common sense And logic’s emery attrition. I take, however, as before Your own opinion, and demand Some test by which to understand Huxley’s piano-talk,* and find If my hypnosis may not score A point against the normal mind. (As you are please to term it, though ! I gather that you do not know ; Merely in…
1904 · PDF PAGE 76
…se. Similarly, a single word may be a mnemonic key to an entire line of philosophical argument. If the reader chooses, in short, he will find the entire mass of Initiated Wisdom betw een the covers of this unpretending volume.
1904 · PDF PAGE 35
…e37 Or else the prey of putrefaction. This matters to the present action Little or nothing. Here’s your theories ! Think if you like : I find it wearies ! It matters little whether we With Fichte and the Brahmins preach That Ego-Atman sole must be ; With Schelling and the Buddha own No-Ego-Skandhas are alone ; With Hegel and the—Christian ? teach That which compels, includes, absorbs Both mighty unrevolving orbs In one informing masterless Master-idea of consciousness— All differences as these indeed Are chess play, conjuring. “Proceed !” Nay !…
1904 · PDF PAGE 57
… spoken of by the prophet Milton!* This is the horn of the prophet Zeruiah, and with this am I, though no Syrian, utterly pushed, till I find myself back against the dead wall of Dogma. Only now realising how dead a wall that is, do I turn and try the effect of a hair of the dog that bit me, till the orthodox “literary”† school of Buddhists, as grown at Rangoon, exclaim with Lear: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have an intellect!” How is this? Listen, and hear! I find myself confronted with the crux: that a Buddhist, convinced int…
1904 · PDF PAGE 38
… Germans said : “Ekam Advaita !”44 one, not two ! Thus East and West from A to Z Agree—Alas ! so do not you ? (It matters nothing—you, I find, Are but a mode of my own mind.) As far as normal reasoning goes, I must admit my concepts close Exactly where my worthy friend, Great Mansel, says they ought to end. But here’s the whole thing in a word : Olympus in a nutshell ! I Have a superior faculty To reasoning, which makes absurd, Unthinkable and wicked too, A great deal that I know is true ! In short, the mind is capable, Besides mere ratiocinati…
1904 · PDF PAGE 28
…ith (silent, to himself, apart) This secret : “\yhla }ya”79 See the good Psalm ! And thus, my friend ! My diatribes approach the end And find us hardly quarelling. And yet—you seem not satisfied ? The literal mistranslated thing Must not by sinners be denied. Go to your Chapel then to pray ! (I promise Mr. Chesterton80 Before the Muse and I have done A grand ap-pre-ci-a-ti-on Of Brixton on Ascension Day.) He’s gone—his belly filled enough ! This Robert-Browning-manqué stuff ! ’Twill serve—Mercutio’s scratch !—to show Where God and I are disagre…
1904 · PDF PAGE 34
…mper, soberly we’ll state The problem, and investigate In purely scientific mood The sheer Ananke of the mind, A temper for our steel to find Whereby those brazen nails subdued Against our door-post may in vain Ring. We’ll examine, to be plain, By logic’s intellectual prism The spiritual Syllogism. We know what fools (only) call Divine and Supernatural And what they name material Are really one, not two, the line By which divide they and define Being a shadowy sort of test ; A verbal lusus at the best, At worst a wicked lie devised To bind men’…
1904 · PDF PAGE 19
…ng My hand down on this table-thing,61 And that commotion widens thus And shakes the nerves of Sirius ! To calculate one hour’s result I find surpassing difficult ; 380 385 390 395 400 405 410 415 My own vague optimism. Im- possibility of tracing cause back or effect forward to the ultimate. Ethics individual.
1904 · PDF PAGE 43
…he individual case allows Some chance to operate, and thus Destroys its value quite for us. So that is why I knit my brows And think—and find no thing to say Or do, so foolish as to pray. “So much for this absurd affair52 About” validity of prayer. But back ! Let once again address Ourselves to super-consciusness ! You weary me with proof enough That all this meditation stuff Is self-hypnosis. Be it so ! Do you suppose I did not know ? Still, to be accurate, I fear The symptoms are entirely strange. If I were hard, I’d make it clear That critic…
1904 · PDF PAGE 22
…and cult, Habit and climate, health and mind, And twenty thousand other things ! So many a metaphysic sings. (I wish they did indeed : I find Their prose the hardest of hard reading.) “But if,” you cry, “the world’s designed As a mere mirage in the mind, Up jumps free will.” But all I’m pleading Is against pain and hell. Freewill Then can damn man ? No fearful mill, Grinding catastrophe, is speeding Outside—some whence, some whither ? And67 I think we easier understand Where Schelling (to the Buddha leading) Calls real not-self. In any case The…
1904 · PDF PAGE 27
…ians live and look the lie Their faith has taught them : none of these Inspire my life, disturb my peace. I go beneath the outward faith Find it a devil or a wraith, Just as my mood or temper tends ! And thus to-day that “Christ ascends,” I take the symbol, leave the fact Decline to make the smallest pact With your creative Deity, And say : The Christhood-soul in me, Risen of late, is now quite clear Even of the smallest taint of Earth. Supplanting God, the Man has birth (“New Birth” you’ll call the same, I fear,) Transcends the ordinary sphere…
1904 · PDF PAGE 16
… 1900 years ago.” I think we may concede to Crowley an Impartial attitude. And so I scorn the thousand subtle points Wherein a man might find a fulcrum (Ex utero Matris ad sepulcrum, * Vide infra “Science and Buddhism”, and the writings of Immanuel Kant and his successors. 260 265 270 275 280 285 290 295 Basis of poem to be that of the Compro- mise of 1870. Non-medical nature of poem. Crowley J. No mention will be made of the Figs and the Pigs
1904 · PDF PAGE 12
…e in England Christ still stands With iron nails in bloody hands Not pierced, but grasping ! to hoist high Children on cross of agony, I find him real for English lives. Up with my pretty pair of fives !34 I fight no ghosts. “But why revile” (You urge me) “in that vicious style The very faith whose truths you seem (Elsewhere)35 to hold, to hymn supreme In your own soul ?” Perhaps you know How mystic doctrines melt the snow Of any faith: redeem it to A fountain of reviving dew. So I with Christ: but few receive The Qabalistic Balm,36 believe Not…
1904 · PDF PAGE 25
…health—where flies my vivid will? My carcase with quinine is crammed; I wish South India were damned ; I wish I had my mother’s nursing, Find precious little use in cursing, 620 625 630 635 640 645 650 655 Death-bed o f poet. Effec t of body on mind.
1904 · PDF PAGE 46
…hich he denominated “Love.” Indeed I think the man attained By some such means—I have not strained Out mind by chance of sense or sex To find a way less iron-brained Determining direction x;57 I know not if these Hindu methods Be best (’tis no such life and death odds, Since suffering souls to save or damn Never existed). So I fall Confessing : Well, perhance I am Myself a Christian after all ! So far at least. I must concede Christ did attain in every deed ; Yet, being an illiterate man, Not his to balance or to scan, To call God stupid or unj…
1904 · PDF PAGE 7
…ly draw a com- parison between my self and the great re- formers of eighty years ago. * So it is usually supposed. Maybe I shall one day find wor ds to com bat, perhaps to over throw, this position. P.S. As, f or exam ple, the Note to this I ntroduction. As a pr omise-keeper I am the original eleven stone three Peacherine.—A.C. I must apologise (perhaps) for the new note of frivolity in m y work : due doubtless to the frivolity of m y subject : these poems being written when I was an Advaitist and could not see why —everything being an illusion…