AE in the Irish TheosophistRussell, George William
Religion
AE in the Irish Theosophist
Russell, George William
Theosophy
But the student too often turns to books, to the words sent back
to him, forgetful that the best of scriptures do no more than stand
as symbols. We hear too much of study, as if the wisdom of life
and ethics could be learned like ritual, and of their application
to this and that ephemeral pursuit. But from the Golden One, the
child of the divine, comes a voice to its shadow. It is stranger
to our world, aloof from our ambitions, with a destiny not here to
be fulfilled. It says: "You are of dust while I am robed in
opalescent airs. You dwell in houses of clay, I in a temple not
made by hands. I will not go with thee, but thou must come with me."
And not alone is the form of the divine aloof but the spirit behind
the form. It is called the Goal truly, but it has no ending. It
is the Comforter, but it waves away our joys and hopes like the
angel with the flaming sword. Though it is the Resting-place, it
stirs to all heroic strife, to outgoing, to conquest. It is the
Friend indeed, but it will not yield to our desires. Is it this
strange, unfathomable self we think to know, and awaken to, by
what is written, or by study of it as so many planes of consciousness.
But in vain we store the upper chambers of the mind with such quaint
furniture of thought. No archangel makes his abode therein. They
abide only in the shining. How different from academic psychology
of the past, with its dry enumeration of faculties, reason,
cognition and so forth, is the burning thing we know. We revolted
from that, but we must take care lest we teach in another way a
catalogue of things equally unliving to us. The plain truth is,
that after having learned what is taught about the hierarchies and
various spheres, many of us are still in this world exactly where
we were before. If we speak our laboriously-acquired information we
are listened to in amazement. It sounds so learned, so intellectual,
there must need be applause. But by-and-by someone comes with quiet
voice, who without pretence speaks of the "soul" and uses familiar
words, and the listeners drink deep, and pay the applause of silence
and long remembrance and sustained after-endeavor. Our failure
lies in this, we would use the powers of soul and we have not yet
become the soul. None but the wise one himself could bend the bow
of Ulysses. We cannot communicate more of the true than we ourselves
know. It is better to have a little knowledge and know that little
than to have only hearsay of myriads of Gods. So I say, lay down
your books for a while and try the magic of thought. "What a man
thinks, that he is; that is the old secret." I utter, I know,
but a partial voice of the soul with many needs. But I say, forget
for a while that you are student, forget your name and time. Think
of yourself within as the titan, the Demi-god, the flaming hero
with the form of beauty, the heart of love. And of those divine
spheres forget the nomenclature; think rather of them as the
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