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Page 1 of 41904 · PDF PAGE 25
…Now that the very crystals feel !— For them no harp-reasounding court, No palm, no crown, but none the less A cross, be sure ! The worst man’s thought In hell itself, bereft of bliss, Were less unmerciful than this ! No ! for material things, I hear, Will burn away, and cease to be— (Nibbanna ! Ah ! Thou shoreless Sea !) Man, man alone, is doomed to fear, To suffer the eternal woe, Or else, to meet man’s subtle foe, God—and oh ! infamy of terror ! Be like him—like him ! And for ever ! At least I make not such an error : My soul must utterly dis…
1904 · PDF PAGE 99
…etch a cord, however fine, into a horizontal line that shall be absolutely straight.” The definition of God as infinite therefore denies man implicitly; while if he be finite, there is an end of the usual Christian reasons for worship, though I daresay I could myself discover some reasonably good ones. [I hardly expect to be asked, somehow.] The resulting equilibrium of God and man, destructive of worship, is of course absurd. We must reject it, unless we want to fall into Positivism, Materialism, or something of the sort. But if, then, we call…
1904 · PDF PAGE 46
PENTECOST 39 But as for me I have a test Of better than the very best. Respice finem ! Judge the end ; The man, and not the child, my friend ! First ecstasy of Pentecost, (You now perceive my sermon’s text.) First leap to Sunward flings you vexed By glory of its own riposte Back to your mind. But gathering strength And never, you come (ah light !) at length To dwell awhile in the caress Of that strange super-consciousness. After one memory—O abide ! Vivid Savitri lightning-eyed !— Nothing is worth a thought beside. One hint of Amrita55 to taste…
1904 · PDF PAGE 52
…le creature he had so foolishly married. Cordelia goes, and the sisters talk together. Theirs is the language of quiet sorrow for an old man’s failing mind ; yet a most righteous determination not to allow the happiness of the English people to depend upon his whims. Bad women would have rejoiced in the banish- ment of Kent, whom they already knew to be their enemy ; these truly good women regret it. “Such unconstant stars are we like to have from him as this of Kent’s banishment” (Act I. Sc. i. ll. 304-5). In Scene ii. Edmund is shown ; he fee…
1904 · PDF PAGE 98
… infinity of some substance or idea actually existing, we first come to the question of the possi- bility of the co-existence of God and man. The Christians, in the category of the ex- istent, enumerate among other things, whose consideration we may discard for the purposes of this argumen t, God, an infinite being; man; Satan and his angels; man certainly, Satan presum ably, finite beings. These are not aspects of one being, but separate and even antagonistic existences. All are equally real; we cannot accept mystics of the type of Caird as be…
1904 · PDF PAGE 41
…sons hosts confess A master, for I know and see The absolute identity Of the beholder and the vision. How easy to excite derision In the man’s mind ! Why, fool, I think I am as clever as yourself, At least as skilled to wake the elf Of jest and mockery in a wink. I can dismiss with sneers as cheap As your this fabric of mine own, One banner of my mind o’erthrown Just at my will. How true and deep Is Carroll47 when his Alice cries : “It’s nothing but a pack of cards !” There’s the true refuge of the wise ; To overthrow the temple guards, Deny re…
1904 · PDF PAGE 24
…y unmarred by pain and grief : Insult on injury heaped high In that quack-doctor infamy The Panacea of—Belief ! Only the selfish soul of man Could ever have conceived a plan Man only of all life to embrace, One planet of all stars to place Alone before the Father’s face ; Forgetful of creation’s stain, Forgetful of creation’s pain Not dumb !—forgetful of the pangs Whereby each life laments and hangs, (Now as I speak a lizard71 lies In wait for light-bewildered flies) 580 585 590 595 600 605 610 615 heaven suffers Hell’s pangs, owing to re- proa…
1904 · PDF PAGE 22
…d, And is not merely the result Of sex, environment, 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…
1904 · PDF PAGE 20
… : I line no brow With wrinkles, meditating how.) Well, but another way remains. Shall we expound the cosmic plan By symbolising God and man And nature thus? As man contains Cells, nerves, grey matter in his brains, Each cell a life, self-centred, free Yet self-subordinate to the whole For its own sake—expand !—so we Molecules of a central soul, Time’s sons, judged by Eternity. Nature is gone—our joys, our pains, Our little lives—and God remains. Were this the truth—why ! worship then Were not so imbecile for men! But that’s no Christian faith …
1904 · PDF PAGE 26
…ther, God, or the doctor, or my mother. But dare you quote my fevered word For better than my health averred ? The brainish fancies of a man Hovering on delerium’s brink : Shall these be classed his utmost span ? All that he can or ought to think ? No ! the strong man and self-reliant Is the true spiritual giant. I blame no weaklings, but decline To take their maunderings for mine. You see I do not base my thesis On your Book’s being torn to pieces By knowledge : nor invoke the shade Of my own boyhood’s agony. Soul, shudder not ! Advance the bl…
1904 · PDF PAGE 23
… the anguish and distress About him—save to him it clung And prayed. Give me omnipotence? I am no fool that I should fence That power, demanding every tongue To call me God—I would exert That power to heal creation’s hurt ; Not to divide my devotees From those who scorned me to the close : A worm, a fire, a thirst for these ; A harp-resounding heaven for those ! And though you claim Salvation sure For all the heathen68—there again New Christians give the lie to plain Scripture, those words which must endure ! (The Vedas say the same !) and thou…
1904 · PDF PAGE 14
ASCENSION DAY 7 Panel* in libel I bewail me! (Funny how English seems to fail me!) So, as a surgeon to a man, sir, Let me excise your Christian cancer Impersonally, without vanity, Just in pure love of poor humanity ! Here’s just the chance you’d have ! Behold The warm sun tint with early gold Yon spire : to-day’s event provide My text of wrath—Ascension-tide ! Oh ! ’tis a worthy day to wrest Hate’s diadem from Jesus’ Crest ! Ascends he ? ’Tis the very test By which we men may fairly judge, From the rough roads we mortals trudge Or God’s paths …
1904 · PDF PAGE 9
…uge In a tower like once Childe Roland‡ found, blind, deaf, huge, Or in that forest of two hundred thousand Trees,8 fit alike to shelter man and mouse, and— Shall I say God? Be patient, your Reverence,9 I warrant you’ll journey a wiser man ever hence ! Let’s tap (like the negro who gets a good juice of it, Cares nought if that be, or be not, God’s right use of it),10 In all that forest of verses one tree11 Yclept “Red Cotton Nightcap Country”: How a goldsmith, between the Ravishing Virgin And a leman too rotten to put a purge in, Day by day and…
1904 · PDF PAGE 124
…record those results in an intelligible, orderly form. Others deliberately set their face agains t such an attem pt. I am not of them; humanity has grown up; if the knowledge be dangerous in unexpected way s, what of bacteriology? I have obtained one result; a result striking at the very condition of consciousness; which I may formulate as follows: “If a single state of consciousness persist unchanged for a period exceeding a very few seconds, its duality is annihilated; its nature is violently overthrown; this phenomenon is accompanied by an i…
1904 · PDF PAGE 115
…culties and memo- ries arise at times, and are regarded as frag- mentary and absurd, even as the remembrance of a dream is to the waking man. Can we not conceive then of a “ dreamless” life, of 1 Mahasatipatthana (Sec. VIII.) d oes ad mit this perhaps. Yet its very object is to correct consciousness on the lines indicated by reason. which our dreams are the vague and disturbed transition to normal consciousness? The physiological evidence goes literally for nothing. Even were it proved that the recipio-motor apparatus of a “dreamless” sleeper w…
1904 · PDF PAGE 51
…enforced obedience of planetary influence ; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on ; an admirable evasion of w horemaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star ! My father compounded with my mother under the dragon’s tail, and my nativity was under ursa major ; so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. ’Sfoot ! I should have been that I am had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.” If there is one sound philosophical dictum in the play, it is this. (I am not going to argue wit…
1904 · PDF PAGE 111
…and, or its necessity on the other, form a clear idea of what are the Buddhist tenets with regard to the Cosm os; and, in particular, to man.2 IV. THE THREE CHARACTERISTICS. The Three Characteris tics (which we may predicate of all known existing things: (a) Change. Anikka. (b) Sorrow. Dukkha. (c) Absence of an Ego. Anatta. 1 Change is the great enem y, the im mediate cause of pain. Unable to arrest it, I slo w the process, and render it tem porarily painless, by eating. T his is a concession to weakness, no doubt, in one sense. Do I eat r eall…
1904 · PDF PAGE 122
… has no need to conceal the Truth—he who truly loves and who has a m alice towards none, will ever speak only fair and s oft words. By a man’s speech do we learn his nature, and that one whose Right Aspirations are b earing fruit attains to the Third Step, Right Speech, Sammaváca. S peaking only the Truth in all things, never speaking harshly or un- kindly, in his speech realising the love and pity that is in his heart—that man has attained to Stage the Third. “And becaus e of the great power of a man’s thoughts and words to change his being, b…
1904 · PDF PAGE 50
…make it plain.” NOTE TO INTRODUCTION 1 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AN APPRECIATION BY ALEISTER CROWLEY.* IT is a lamentable circumstance that so many colossal brains (W. H . Mallock, &c. ) have been hitherto thrown away in attacking what is after all a problem of mere academic interest, the authorship of the plays our fathers accepted as those of Shakespeare. To me it seems of immediate and vital importance to do for Shakespeare what Verrall has done so ably for Euripides. The third tabernacle must be filled; Shaw and “the Human” must have their Superh…
1904 · PDF PAGE 125
…se isolation is eternally perfect and can never be overcome, 1 in another s ense as sociates are pos sible and desirable. One third of humanity are Buddhists; add men of Science and we form an absolute majority ; among Buddhists a very large proportion have deliberately gone out from social life of any kind to tread t hese paths of Research. Is the Way very hard? Is the brain tired? The results slow to com e? Others are working, failing, struggling, crowned here and there with rare garlands of success. Success for ourse lves, success for othe r…