Entering the Kingdom/The Finding of a Principle
THE FINDING OF A PRINCIPLE
Be still, my soul, and know that peace is thine;
Be steadfast, heart, and know that strength divine
Belongs to thee; cease thy turmoil, mind,
And thou the everlasting rest shall find.
How then shall a man reach the Kingdom? By what process shall he find the light than alone can disperse his darkness? And in what way can he overcome the inward selfishness which is strong, and deeply rooted?
A man will reach the Kingdom by purifying himself; and he can do this only by pursuing a process of self-examination and self-analysis. Selfishness must be discovered and understood before it can be removed. It is powerless to remove itself, neither will it pass away of itself. As darkness ceases only when light is introduced; so ignorance can only be dispersed by Knowledge; selfishness by Love. Seeing that in selfishness there is no security, no stability, no peace, the whole process of seeking the Kingdom resolves itself into a search for a Principle: a divine and permanent Principle on which a man can stand secure, freed from himself—from the personal element, and from the tyranny and slavery which that personal self exacts and demands. A man must first of all be willing to lose his self-seeking self before he can find his divine self. He must realize that selfishness is not worth clinging to, that it is a master altogether unworthy of his service, and that divine Goodness alone is worthy to be enthroned in his heart as the supreme master of his life. This means that he must have faith; for without this equipment there can be neither progress nor achievement. He must believe in the desirability of purity, in the supremacy of righteousness, in the sustaining power of integrity; he must ever hold before him the Ideal and Perfect Goodness, and strive for its achievement with ever-renewed effort and unflagging zeal. This faith must be nurtured and its development encouraged. It must be carefully trimmed and fed and kept burning like a lamp in the heart, for without its radiating light no way will be seen in the darkness; one will find no pathway out of self. As the flame increases and burns with a steadier light, energy, resolution, and self-reliance will come to man’s aid, and with each step, his progress be accelerated until at last the Light of Knowledge will begin to take the place of the lamp of faith, and the darkness disappear before its searching splendor. Into his spiritual ken will come the Principles of the divine Life, and as he approaches them their incomparable beauty and majestic symmetry will astonish his vision and gladden his heart with a gladness hitherto unknown.
Along this pathway of self-control and self-purification—for such it is—every soul must travel on its way to the Kingdom. So narrow is this way and so overgrown with the weeds of selfishness is its entrance, that it is difficult to find; and, being found, it cannot be retained except by daily meditation. Without this the spiritual energies grow weaker, and the man loses the strength necessary to go on. As the body is sustained and invigorated by material food, so is the spirit strengthened and renewed by its own food: meditation upon spiritual things.
He, then, who earnestly resolves to find the Kingdom will commence to meditate, and rigidly to examine his heart and mind and life in the light of the Supreme Perfection that is the goal of his attainment. On his way to that goal, he must pass through the three Gateways of Surrender. The first is the Surrender of Desire; the second the Surrender of Opinion; and the third the Surrender of Self. Entering into meditation, he will commence to examine his desires, tracing them out in his mind, and following up their effects in his life and upon his character; and he will quickly perceive that without the renunciation of desire a man remains a slave both to himself and to his surroundings and circumstances. Having discovered this, the first Gate, that of the Surrender of Desire, is entered. Passing through this Gate, he adopts a process of self-discipline which is the first step in the purification of the soul. Hitherto he has lived as a slavish beast; eating, drinking, sleeping, and pursuing enjoyment at the beck and call of his lower impulses; blindly following and gratifying his inclinations without method, not questioning his conduct, and having no fixed centre from which to regulate his character and his life. Now, however, he begins to live as a man; he curbs his inclinations, controls his passions, and steadies his mind in the practice of virtue. He ceases to pursue enjoyment, but follows the dictates of his reason, and regulates his conduct in accordance with the demands of an ideal. With the introduction of this regulating factor in his life, he perceives at once that certain habits must be abandoned. He begins to select his food, and to have his meals at stated periods, no longer eating at any time that the sight of food tempts his inclination. He reduces the number of meals each day, and also the quantity of food eaten. He no longer goes to bed, by day or night, to indulge in pleasurable indolence, but rather to give his body the rest it needs; he therefore regulates his hours of sleep, rising early, and never encouraging the animal desire to indulge in dreamy indolence after waking. Such food and drink as is particularly associated with gluttony, cruelty, and animalism he will dispense with altogether, selecting the mild and refreshing sustenance which Nature provides in such rich profusion.
These preliminary steps will be at once adopted; and as the path of self-government and self-examination is pursued, a clearer and ever clearer perception of the nature, meaning, and effects of desire will be developed, until it is seen that the mere regulation of one’s desires is altogether inadequate and insufficient, and that the desires themselves must be abandoned, must be allowed to fall out of the mind and to have no part in the character and life. It is at this point that the soul of the seeker the dark Valley of Temptation; for these desires will not die without a struggle and many a fierce effort to re-assert the power and authority with which they have hitherto been invested. Here the lamp of faith must be constantly fed and assiduously trimmed, for all the light it can radiate will be required to guide and encourage the traveller in the dense gloom of this dark Valley. At first his desires, like so many wild beasts, will clamor loudly for gratification. Failing in that, they will then tempt him to struggle with them that they may overthrow him. And this last temptation is greater and more difficult to overcome than the first, for the desires will not be stilled until they are utterly ignored; until they are left unheeded, unconditionally abandoned, and allowed to perish for want of food. In passing through this Valley, the searcher will develop certain powers necessary to his further advancement; and these powers are: self-control, self-reliance, fearlessness, and independence of thought. Here also he will have to pass through ridicule and mockery and false accusation; so much so, that some of his best friends, yea, even those whom he most unselfishly loves, will accuse him of folly and inconsistency, and will do all they can to argue him back to the life of animal indulgence, self-seeking, and petty personal strife. Nearly everybody around him will suddenly discover that they know his duty better than he knows it himself, and, knowing no other and higher life than their own of mingled excitement and suffering, they will take great pains to win him back to it, imagining, in their ignorance, that he is losing much pleasure and happiness, and gaining nothing in return. At first this attitude of others toward him will arouse in him acute suffering, but he will rapidly discover that this suffering is caused by his own vanity and selfishness and the result of his own subtle desire to be appreciated, admired, and thought well of; as soon as this knowledge is arrived at, he will rise into a higher state of consciousness, where these things can no longer reach him and inflict pain. It is here that he will begin to stand firm, and to wield with effect the powers of mind already mentioned. Let him therefore press on courageously, heeding neither the revilings of his friends without nor the clamorings of his enemies within; aspiring, searching, striving; looking ever toward his Ideal with eyes of holy love; day by day ridding his mind of selfish motive, his heart of impure desire; stumbling sometimes, sometimes falling, but ever travelling onward and rising higher: and, as he records each night in the silence of his own heart the journey of the day, let him not despair if only each day, in spite of all its failures and falls, record some holy battle fought, though lost, some silent victory attempted, though unachieved. The loss of to-day will add to the gain of to-morrow for him whose mind is set on the conquest of self.
Passing along the Valley, he will at last come to the Fields of Sorrow and Loneliness. His desires, having received at his hands neither encouragement nor sustenance, have grown weak, and are now falling away and perishing. He is now climbing out of the Valley, and the darkness is less dense; but now he realizes, for the first time, that he is alone. He is like a man standing at the foot of a great mountain, and it is night. Above him towers the lofty peak, beyond which shine the everlasting stars; a short distance below him are the glaring lights of the city he has left, and from it there come up to him the noises of its inhabitants—a confused mingling of shouts, screams, laughter, rumblings of traffic, and the strains of music. He thinks of his friends, all of whom are in the city, pursuing their own particular pleasures; and he is alone upon the mountain. That city is the City of Desire and Pleasure, the mountain is the Mountain of Renunciation, and the climber now knows that he has left the world, that henceforth for him its excitements and strifes are lifeless things, and can tempt him no more. Resting awhile in this lonely place, he will taste of sorrow and learn its secret; harshness and hatred will pass from him; his heart will grow soft, and the first. faint broodings of the divine compassion that shall afterwards absorb his whole being will overshadow and inspire him. He will begin to feel with every living thing in its strivings and sufferings; gradually, as this lesson is learned, his own sorrow and loneliness will be forgotten and will pass away in his great calm love for others.
Here, also, he will begin to perceive and understand the working of the hidden laws that govern the destinies of individuals and of nations. Having risen above the lower region of strife and selfishness within himself, he can now look calmly down upon it in others and in the world. to analyze and comprehend it, and he will see how selfish striving is at the root of all the world’s suffering. His whole attitude toward others and toward the world now undergoes complete change, and compassion. and love take the place of self-seeking and self-protection in his mind; as result of this, the world alters in its attitude toward him. At this juncture he perceives the folly of competition, and ceasing from striving to overtop and get the better of others he begins to encourage them, both with unselfish thoughts and, when necessary, with loving acts; this he does even to those who selfishly compete with him, no longer defending himself against them. As a direct result of this, his worldly affairs begin to prosper as never before; many of the friends who at first mocked him commence to respect, and even to love him; and he suddenly awakens to the fact that he is coming in contact with people of a distinctly unworldly and noble type, of whose existence he had no knowledge. From many parts and from long distances these people will come to him to minister to him and that he may minister to them, spiritual fellowship and loving brotherhood will become potent factors in his life, and so he will pass beyond the Fields of Sorrow and Loneliness.
The lower competitive laws have now ceased to operate in his life, and their results, which are failure, disaster, exposure, and destitution, can no longer enter into and form part of his experience; this not merely because he has risen above the lower forms of selfishness in himself, but because also, in so rising, he has developed certain powers of mind by which he is enabled to direct and govern his affairs with a more powerful and masterly hand.
He, however, has not yet travelled far, and unless he exercise constant watchfulness he may at any time fall back into the lower world of darkness and strife, revivifying its empty pleasures, and galvanizing back to life its dead desires. Especially is there this danger when he reaches the greatest temptation through which man is called to pass—the temptation of doubt. Before reaching, or even perceiving, the second Gate, that of Surrender of Opinion, the pilgrim will come upon a great soul-desert, the Desert of Doubt. Here for a time he will wander around, while despondency, indecision, and uncertainty, a melancholy brood, surround him like a cloud, hiding from his view the way immediately in front of him. A new and strange fear, too, will overtake him, and he will begin to question the wisdom of the course he is pursuing. Again the allurements of the world will be presented to him, dressed in their most attractive garb, and the drowning din and stimulating excitement of worldly battle will once more assume a desirable aspect. “After all, am I right?” “What gain is there in this?” “Does not life itself consist of pleasure and excitement and battle, and in giving these up am I not giving up all ?” “Am I not sacrificing the very substance of life for a meaningless shadow?” “May it not be that I, after all, am a poor deluded person, and that all those around me who live the life of the senses and stand upon its solid, sure, and easily procured enjoyments are wiser than I?” By such dark doubtings and questionings will he here be tempted and troubled, until these very doubts drive him to a deeper searching into the intricacies of life, and arouse within him the feeling of necessity for some permanent Principle upon which to stand and take refuge. He will, therefore, while wandering about in this dark Desert, come into contact with the higher and more subtle delusions of his own mind, the delusions of the intellect; and, by contrasting these with his Ideal, will learn to distinguish between the real and the unreal, the shadow and substance, between effect and cause, between fleeting appearances and permanent Principles.
In the Desert of Doubt a man is confronted with all forms of illusion, not only the illusions of the senses, but also those of abstract thought and religious emotion. It is in the testing of, grappling with, and ultimately destroying these illusions that he develops still higher powers, those of discrimination, spiritual perception, steadfastness of purpose, and calmness of mind, by the exercise of which he is enabled to distinguish unerringly the true from the false, both in the world of thought and that of material appearances. Having acquired these powers, and learned how to use them as weapons against himself in his holy warfare, he now emerges from the Desert of Doubt, the mists and mirages of illusion vanish from his pathway, and there looms before him the second Gate, the Gateway of the Surrender of Opinion.
As he approaches this Gate, he sees before him the whole pathway along which he is travelling, and, for a space, obtains a glimpse of the glorious heights of attainment toward which he is moving; he sees the Temple of the Higher Life in all its majesty, and already feels within him the strength and joy and peace of conquest. With Sir Galahad he can now exclaim:
“I . . . saw the Grail,
The Holy Grail . . .
. . . And one will crown me king
Far in the spiritual city,”
for he knows that his ultimate victory is assured
He now enters upon a process of self-conquest altogether distinct from that which he has hitherto pursued. Up to the present he has been overcoming, transmuting, and simplifying his animal desires; now he commences to transmute and simplify his intellect. He has, so far, been adjusting his feelings to his Ideal; he now begins to adjust his thoughts to that Ideal, which also assumes at this point larger and more beautiful proportions; and for the first time he perceives what really constitutes a permanent and imperishable Principle. He sees that the righteousness for which he has been searching is fixed and unvariable; that it cannot be acommodated to man, but that man must reach up to and obey it; that it consists of an undeviating line of conduct, apart from all considerations of loss or gain, of reward or punishment; that, in reality, it consists in abandoning self, with all the sins of desire, opinion, and self-interest of which that self is composed, and in living the blameless life of perfect love toward all men and creatures. Such a life is fixed and perfect; it is without turning, change, or qualification, and demands a sinless and perfect conduct. It is the direct antithesis of the worldly life of self.
Perceiving this, the seeker sees that although he has freed himself from the baser passions and desires which enslave mankind, he is still in bondage to the fetters of opinion; that although he has purified himself with a purity to which few aspire, and which the world cannot understand, he is still defiled with a defilement difficult to wash away,—he loves his own opinions, and has all along been confounding them with Truth, with the Principle for which he is seeking. He is not yet free from strife, and is still involved in the competitive laws as they obtain in the higher realm of thought. He still believes that in his opinions he is right and others wrong; in his egotism he has even fallen so low as to bestow a mock pity on those who hold opinions the reverse of his own. But now, realizing this more subtle form of selfishness by which he is enslaved and perceiving all the train of sufferings that spring from it, having also acquired the priceless possession of spiritual discernment, he reverently bends his head and passes through the second Gateway toward his final peace.
Clothing his soul with the colorless Garment of Humility, he bends all his energies to the uprooting of opinions hitherto loved and cherished. He learns to distinguish between Truth, one and unchangeable, and his own and others’ opinions about Truth, which are many and changeable. He sees that his opinions about Goodness, Purity, Compassion, and Love are quite distinct from those qualities themselves, and that he must stand upon those divine Principles, and not upon his opinions. Hitherto he has regarded his own opinions as of great value and the opinions of others as worthless, but now he ceases so to elevate his own opinions and to defend them against those of others, coming to regard them as worthless. As a direct result of this attitude of mind, he takes refuge in the practice of pure Goodness, unalloyed with base desire and subtle self-love, and takes his stand upon the divine Principles of Purity, Wisdom, Compassion, and Love, incorporating them into his mind, and manifesting them in his life. He is now clothed with the Righteousness of Christ―which is incomprehensible to the world―and is rapidly becoming divine. He has not only realized the darkness of desire; he has also perceived the vanity of speculative philosophy, and so he rids his mind of all the metaphysical subtleties that have no relation to practical holiness, have hitherto encumbered his progress, and prevented him from seeing the enduring realities in life.
He casts from him his opinions and speculations one after another, and begins to live the life of perfect love toward all. With each opinion overcome and abandoned as a burden, there is an increased lightness of spirit, and he begins to realise the meaning of being free. The divine flowers of Gladness, Joy, and Peace spring up spontaneously in his heart, and his life becomes a blissful song. As the melody in his heart expands and grows more and more nearly perfect, his outward life harmonizes itself with the inward music. All the efforts he put forth being now free from strife, he obtains all that is necessary for his well-being, without pain, anxiety, or fear. He has almost entirely transcended the competitive laws, and the Law of Love is now the governing factor in his life, adjusting all his worldly affairs harmoniously, and without struggle or difficulty on his part. Indeed, the competitive laws, as they obtain in the commercial world, have here been long left behind, and have ceased to touch him at any point in his material affairs. Here, also, he enters into a wider and more comprehensive consciousness, and, viewing the universe and humanity from the higher altitudes of purity and knowledge to which he has ascended, perceives the orderly sequence of law in all human affairs. The pursuit of this Path brings about the development of still higher powers of mind, and these powers are divine patience, spiritual equanimity, non-resistance, and prophetic insight. By prophetic insight is not meant the foretelling of events, but direct perception of the hidden causes that operate in human life and, indeed, in all life, out of which spring multifarious and universal effects and events.
The man here rises above the competitive laws as they operate in the thought-world, so that their results, which are violence, ignominy, grief, humiliation, and distress and anxiety in all their forms, no more obtain in his life. As he proceeds, the imperishable Principles that form the foundation and fabric of the universe loom before him, and assume proportions more and more symmetrical For him there is no more anguish; no evil can come near his dwelling; and there breaks upon him the dawning of the abiding Peace.
He is not yet free. He has not yet finished his journey. He may rest here, and that as long as he chooses; but sooner or later he will rouse himself to the last effort, and will reach the final goal of achievement—the selfless state, the divine life. He is not yet free from self, but still clings, though with less tenacity, to the love of personal existence, and to the idea of exclusive interest in his personal possessions. When he at last realizes that these selfish elements must also be abandoned, there appears before him the third Gate: the Gateway of Surrender of Self. It is no dark portal that he now approaches, but one luminous with divine glory, one radiant with a radiance with which no earthly splendor can vie; and he advances toward it with no uncertain step. The clouds of Doubt have long been dispersed; the sounds of the voices of Temptation are lost in the valley below; and with firm gait, erect carriage, and a heart filled with unspeakable joy, he nears the Gate that guards the Kingdom of God. He has now given up all but self-interest in the things that are his by legal right, but he now perceives that he must hold nothing as his own; and as he pauses at the Gate, he hears the command which cannot be evaded or denied, “Yet lackest thou one thing; sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven.” Passing through the last great Gate, he stands glorious, radiant, free, detached from the tyranny of desire, of opinion, of self; a divine man, harmless, patient, tender, pure; he has found that for which he has been searching: the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness.
The journey to the Kingdom may be a long and tedious one, or it may be short and rapid. It may occupy a minute, or it may take ages. Everything depends upon the faith and belief of the searcher. The majority cannot “enter in because of their unbelief;” for how can men realize righteousness when they do not believe in it nor in the possibility of its accomplishment? Neither is it necessary to leave the outer world, and one’s duties therein. Nay, it can only be found through the unselfish performance of one’s duty. Some there are whose faith is so great that, when this truth is presented to them, they can let all personal elements drop out of their minds almost immediately, and enter into their divine heritage. But all who believe and aspire to achieve will sooner or later arrive at victory if, amid all their worldly duties, they faint not, keep sight of the Ideal Goodness, and continue, with unshaken resolve, to “press on to Perfection.”