Such is the spiritual life; such the goal that every man who would
become spiritual must place before his eyes. Very different from the
psychic, and not to be confused with it--the unfolding of the divinity
in man, and not the purification and the organisation of the
vehicles. Both are good, both necessary, and I finish with the words
with which I began, that while to be psychic is no proof of
spirituality, to be spiritual is to possess every power in heaven and
on earth. Choose ye each your road. Tread whichever you will, but
beware that by the growth of your powers here, in separation, you do
not delay the growth of the spirituality which is the realisation of
the unity of the Self. For everything which divides becomes evil, by
the very fact of its dividing; every power which is shared is a wing
to carry us upwards, but every power that is kept for the lower self
is a clog that holds us down to earth.
The Place of Masters in Religions
Everyone of us who belongs to any special religion can trace back along
the line of his religion further and further into the past, until he
comes to its beginning, its first Teacher. And round that Teacher is
usually a group of men and women who to the Founder of the religion are
disciples, but to those who accept the religion later are teachers,
apostles. And this is invariably true. The Hebrew, if you ask him, will
trace back his religion to the time of the great legislator Moses, and
behind Him to a yet more heroic figure, Abraham, the "friend of God."
Look back to some yet older faith, the faith of Egypt, of Chaldea, of
Persia, of China, of India, and you will find exactly the same thing is
true. The Parsî, representative of a splendid tradition, but whose
religion, as it now, is, as has been well said, "a religion of
fragments" only--he will trace back his religion to his own great
Prophet, the Prophet of the Fire, who led the exodus from the centre of
Asia and guided His people into what we now call the land of Persia.
Egypt, if you ask her story, will show you heroic figures of her past,
and amongst them that great King and Priest, Osiris, who, slain, as the
old legend tells us, rises again, as Lord and Judge of His people.
Buḍḍhism, spread in the far East, will trace back its story to the
Buḍḍha, and will declare in addition to that, that not only is the
Buḍḍha the Teacher of that particular faith, but that a living
person still exists on the earth as Teacher, as Protector, whom they
call the Boḍhisaṭṭva, the wise and the pure. India will tell
you of a great group of teachers gathered round their Manu, the
tradition of whose laws is still preserved, and is still used as the
basis of the social legislation administered now by the English rulers.
And round that great Lawgiver of the past, wise men are gathered whose
names are known throughout the land, each of them standing at the head
of some noble Indian family, that traces its ancestry backward and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account