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Page 79 of 831929 · PDF PAGE 474
…relled about philosophy and physics. His mind was intensely positive, brutally matter-of-fact, but capable of appreciating subtlety, and far more open to new facts and theories than most of his opponents supposed. His arrogance was, to a great extent, the Freudian protection against his own uncertainty. He knew psychology, he knew men; he understood business; and in his capacity of instructor at Harvard, he had acquired the habit of forming and directing minds. So much I knew, and I pictured my duel with him in romantic terms of Sherlock Holmes…
1904 · PDF PAGE 118
…psy chologist of any standing will quarrel with this.1 Reasoning in fact leads us to this analysis; the Buddhist goes further only in so far as h e may be said to knock down the scaffolding of reasoning processes, and to assimilate t he actual truth of the matter. It is the difference between the schoolboy who painfully construes “Balbus murum ædi- ficavit,” and the Roman who announces that historic fact without a thought of his grammer. I have called this m editation the most famous of the Buddhist meditations, b ecause it is stated by the Bud…
1906 · PDF PAGE 278
…hies, which if they were subtly and slowly worked out, &c., &c.,” he is simply thrown away on Nonconformity; and I trust I do not go too far, as the humblest member of the Rationalist Press Association, when I suggest that that diabolical body would be delighted to bring out a sixpenny edition of his book. Iam not fighting pious opinions. But there are perfectly definite acts which encroach upon the freedom of the individual: indefensible in themselves, they seek apology in the Bible, which is now to be smuggled through as a ‘‘ poem.” If I may …
1929 · PDF PAGE 164
…ays. On the other hand, one is even more despised if one fails to visit intentional misbehaviour with the full penalty of the law. I was far from well. Various symptoms of malaria kept on cropping up and I was in constant pain with pityriasis versicolor, which is a form of the {281} so-called dhobi itch (a dhobi is a laundryman). One puts on clothes which seem spotlessly clean, but they contain the spores of a fungus which grows in the axilla and the groin. This got worse and worse. I was idiot enough to put myself in the hands of the doctor. I…
1929 · PDF PAGE 556
…ecil James Alexander, rejecting with contumacy the suggested alternative Caoutchouc. He grew in stature and in favour of God and man, so far as research had hitherto been able to determine. But he was subject to amiable delusions, one of which took the sinister shape of Cacoethes Scribendi. In the Great War he joined the army and became a real "capting". Advised of this fact, the Germans wisely refrained from entering Edinburgh. His next step was to become a dipsomaniac and lose his teeth. During this period he suffered from hydrophobia and did…
1929 · PDF PAGE 203
…a snob. In Dublin, Sir William Wilde was somebody in society; but when Oscar reached Oxford, he discovered that a medical knighthood, so far from being a distinction, was little better than a badge of servility. A family even of commoners could afford to sneer at his acceptance of a trumpery honour at the hands of a Hanoverian hausfrau. Wilde could not bear to be despised by brainless dukes, so he had sought hegemony in the hierarchy by the only means available, as a socially sensitive swineherd might aspire to the papacy. He determined to beco…
1929 · PDF PAGE 543
…aracter changed completely; he began to intrigue against me secretly and even to rob me, or rather the Order, outright. I cannot say how far he was abetted by the solicitors of the Order but they, no less than he, evaded rendering any account of the property of the Order. I was ultimately compelled to appeal to the police. Under this pressure he sent a balance sheet. The cat was out of the bag. The Order had been systematically defrauded. Let me instance only one item. A sum of five hundred pounds was entered twice. It was the most barefaced ou…
1929 · PDF PAGE 392
…to others. The traveller must train his senses to the finest possible point. His life may depend on his seeing a shadow flit across some far off slope of a sand dune, and thereby divining an ambush. The circles of the vulture must enable him to calculate his course. Nothing too trivial to be his teacher, too insignificant to be of infinite import! As one becomes familiar with the wilderness, nature herself reveals reality in a sense which one had never suspected. The complexity of experience in civilized countries prevents one from examining an…
1929 · PDF PAGE 563
…w, that you are innocent of crimes, the witnesses to which are unavailable, and whose very nature translates the court into a wonderland far more weird than anything in the adventures of Alice?" My second stay in Paris was short. Everything pointed to my trying my luck in London. One of the most amusing results of the wholesale robbery of my money and effects was that I had no single suit of clothes fit to wear in London. I had worn out what I had taken with me to America and had never had enough spare cash to replenish my wardrobe. All the clo…
1929 · PDF PAGE 374
…manage what was after all their own affair and not mine. I refrained from pushing my criticism. I took the general sense of the Book, so far as I understood it, as at once the starting point and the summit of my Magick. This change of attitude was tremendous. I had always been tongue-tied in the matter of expressing my spiritual self in poetry and my lyrics had been comparatively unimportant. The dealt only with certain aspects of the matter. I could point to nothing which really represented my personality as a whole or brought the events of my…
1929 · PDF PAGE 364
…is was not too difficult, he being a professed agnostic. But the second point was to train him in the technique. This was well enough as far as Magick was concerned, for he naturally possessed the poetic and dramatic instincts, the sense of the fitness of gesture, and so on: and, more important than all, it came natural to him to arouse in himself the right kind of enthusiastic energy in the right way. In addition, he possessed a peculiar faculty which I have only found in anything like the same degree in one other man in my life. He was a mate…
1929 · PDF PAGE 518
… by the frightful circumstance which must next be recorded. The city of New Orleans is divided into two main sections by a broad thoroughfare. On one side is the Spanish quarter, on the outskirts of which was a large and picturesque red light section; one of the most interesting places of its kind that I have ever seen. In fact, if we except Cairo, it would have been hard to beat. Across the main street was the modern commercial Americanized section where hardly a brick but screamed an obscene blasphemy against everything that might delight a p…
1929 · PDF PAGE 579
… The one exception was Betty and her actions did not affect the abbey. She had to go outside for sympathy in such affairs. Two events of far-reaching influence upon the course of events occurred about the New Year. I received a long cable from my old friend Bill Seabrook asking me for photographs and other material to assist him in composing a serial on the subject of myself, opinions and adventures. He hoped to syndicate this widely throughout America by means of simultaneous publication in a large number of Sunday papers. The plan prospered. …
1929 · PDF PAGE 69
… arms but just above the hips. Having thus arranged for the respect due to his cloth, I went to the top of the rock and sat sufficiently far back to be unable to see what was happening on the face. When he came off, as the rope was fastened so low, he turned upside down. I pretended to misunderstand and jerked him up and down for several minutes before finally hauling him up, purple in the face and covered {132} with scratches. I had not failed in the respect due to his cloth. But quite a number of people were sufficiently lacking in taste to l…
1906 · PDF PAGE 254
…le (by reason) to consciousness may be known (by concentration) to super-consciousness, the difficulty vanishes. I think Huxley goes too far in speaking of a man ‘‘ self-hypnotised into cataleptic trances” without medical evidence of a large number of cases. Edward Carpenter, who has met Yogis, and talked long and learnedly with them, tells a different story. Even had we a large body of evidence from Anglo-Indian medical men, the proof. would still be lacking. They might not be the real men. The Indian native would take intense. delight in brin…
1929 · PDF PAGE 232
…y on my part to accept "divine" interference in my affairs. There was, on the contrary, the bitterest opposition from me. I even went so far as to make unintelligible and false additions to my diary, with the deliberate {386} intention of confusing the record, and perhaps even of making people think me untrustworthy in this stupendous circumstance. But the gods beat me all round. They took care that the event should not depend on my goodwill; should be beyond the power of my ill-will to thwart. More yet; they have made it evident that they purp…
1929 · PDF PAGE 454
…thus able, to some extent, to go fearlessly into the presence of the Secret Chiefs who had chosen me to carry out their plans for the welfare of mankind, and say with upright head that I had not wholly proved unworthy of their trust. Yet withal, there was a certain sadness such as, I suppose, every man feels when he comes to the end of a definite stage in his career. Nevertheless, I knew that those who had thus far used me would not now throw me aside; that higher and holier service would be found for me. During the autumn and until the solstic…
1929 · PDF PAGE 169
…05 and took him with me across China. His subordinates were all good men in their way and we had not trouble with them. Our transport as far as Askole, the last village, depended on local coolies or ponies, a hundred and fifty of one or fifty of the other. Occasionally the same set would make two or three marches with us, but as a rule they were changed every day. Except on one or two occasions when the ignorance and bad manners of the Austrians let to misunderstanding, everything went smoothly. The naivety of the natives was sometimes very amu…
1929 · PDF PAGE 352
…ions possible are becoming very rare in the world. Despite all its drawbacks, there was never a better social system than the feudal, so far as it derived from the patriarchal. In getting rid of its abuses, we have also got rid of the noblest springs of action and the most congenial code of manners. The war destroyed this relation altogether. The Bourciers ended by being as disgusting as any other French people. In April I wandered from Paris to Deal and played golf enthusiastically. Rose was going from bad to worse. I had begun to learn to det…
1929 · PDF PAGE 569
…se she needed a long period of care to replace the vital capacity which she had spent in the service of the Great Work. I, too, was very far from well. My desperate situation, my anxiety about the welfare of those for whom I had made myself responsible, unremitting overwork and the eternal disappointments were beginning to break me down. At this moment a letter was forwarded to me from Cefalu addressed to me by Betty Dartnell. Her crazy husband had taken her and his daughter to British Columbia, I think about 1913. The new conditions had transf…