AE in the Irish TheosophistRussell, George William
Religion
AE in the Irish Theosophist
Russell, George William
Theosophy
And us, let us invoke them with joy, let us call upon them with love,
the Light we hail, or the Divine Darkness we worship with silent
breath, hymning it in our hearts with quietude and more enraptured
awe. That silence cries aloud to the Gods. Then they will approach
us. Then we may learn that speech of many colors, for they will
not speak in our mortal tongue; they will not answer to the names
of men. Their names are rainbow glories. Yet these are mysteries
and they cannot be reasoned out or argued over. We cannot speak
truly of them from report, or description, or from what another
has written. A relation to the thing in itself alone is our warrant,
and this means we must set aside our intellectual self-sufficiency
and await guidance. It will surely come to those who wait in trust,
a glow, a heat in the heart announcing the awakening of the Fire.
And, as it blows with its mystic breath into the brain, there is
a hurtling of visions, a brilliance of lights, a sound as of great
waters vibrant and musical in their flowing, and murmurs from a
single yet multitudinous being. In such a mood, when the far
becomes near, the strange familiar, and the infinite possible, he
wrote from whose words we get the inspiration:
"To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless
rings and never be quiet again."
Such a faith and such an unrest be ours: faith which is mistrust
of the visible; unrest which is full of a hidden surety and radiance.
We, when we fall into pleasant places, rest and dream our strength
away. Before every enterprise and adventure of the soul we calculate
in fear our power to do. But remember, "Oh, disciple, in thy work
for thy brother thou has many allies; in the winds, in the air,
in all the voices of the silent shore." These are the far-wandered
powers of our own nature and they turn again home at our need.
We came out of the Great Mother-Life for the purposes of soul.
Are her darlings forgotten where they darkly wander and strive?
Never. Are not the lives of all her heroes proof? Though they
seem to stand alone the eternal Mother keeps watch on them, and
voices far away and unknown to them before arise in passionate
defence, and hearts beat warm to help them. Aye, if we could look
within we would see vast nature stirred on their behalf, and
institutions shaken, until the truth they fight for triumphs, and
they pass, and a wake of glory ever widening behind them trails
down the ocean of the years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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