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"selfhood must be killed" before Reality can be attained.
"Feel sin a lump, thou wottest never what, but none other thing than
thyself," says The Cloud of Unknowing. "When the I, the Me, and the Mine
are dead, the work of the Lord is done," says Kabir. The substance of that
wrongness of act and relation which constitutes "sin" is the separation of
the individual spirit from the whole; the ridiculous megalomania which
makes each man the centre of his universe. Hence comes the turning in-
wards and condensation of his energies and desires, till they do indeed
form a "lump"; a hard, tight core about which all the currents of his exist-
ence swirl. This heavy weight within the heart resists every outgoing im-
pulse of the spirit; and tends to draw all things inward and downward to
itself, never to pour itself forth in love, enthusiasm, sacrifice. "So long,"
says the Theologia Germanica, "as a man seeketh his own will and his own
highest good, because it is his, and for his own sake, he will never find it:
for so long as he doeth this, he is not seeking his own highest good, and
how then should he find it? For so long as he doeth this, he seeketh him-
self, and dreameth that he is himself the highest good& . But whosoever
seeketh, loveth, and pursueth goodness, as goodness and for the sake of
goodness, and maketh that his end for nothing but the love of good-
ness, not for love of the I, Me, Mine, Self, and the like he will find the
highest good, for he seeketh it aright, and they who seek it otherwise do
err."
So it is disinterestedness, the saint's and poet's love of things for their
own sakes, the vision of the charitable heart, which is the secret of union
with Reality and the condition of all real knowledge. This brings with it
the precious quality of suppleness, the power of responding with ease
and simplicity to the great rhythms of life; and this will only come when
the ungainly "lump" of sin is broken, and the verb "to have," which ex-
presses its reaction to existence, is ejected from the centre of your con-
sciousness. Then your attitude to life will cease to be commercial, and be-
come artistic. Then the guardian at the gate, scrutinising and sorting the
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incoming impressions, will no longer ask, "What use is this to me?" be-
fore admitting the angel of beauty or significance who demands your
hospitality. Then things will cease to have power over you. You will be-
come free. "Son," says a Kempis, "thou oughtest diligently to attend to
this; that in every place, every action or outward occupation, thou be in-
wardly free and mighty in thyself, and all things be under thee, and thou
not under them; that thou be lord and governor of thy deeds, not ser-
vant." It is therefore by the withdrawal of your will from its feverish at-
tachment to things, till "they are under thee and thou not under them,"
that you will gradually resolve the opposition between the recollective
and the active sides of your personality. By diligent self-discipline, that
mental attitude which the mystics sometimes call poverty and some-
times perfect freedom for these are two aspects of one thing will be-
come possible to you. Ascending the mountain of self-knowledge and
throwing aside your superfluous luggage as you go, you shall at last ar-
rive at the point which they call the summit of the spirit; where the vari-
ous forces of your character brute energy, keen intellect, desirous
heart long dissipated amongst a thousand little wants and preferences,
are gathered into one, and become a strong and disciplined instrument
wherewith your true self can force a path deeper and deeper into the
heart of Reality.
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Chapter 6
Love and Will
This steady effort towards the simplifying of your tangled character, its
gradual emancipation from the fetters of the unreal, is not to dispense
you from that other special training of the attention which the diligent
practice of meditation and recollection effects. Your pursuit of the one
must never involve neglect of the other; for these are the two sides one
moral, the other mental of that unique process of self-conquest which
Ruysbroeck calls "the gathering of the forces of the soul into the unity of
the spirit": the welding together of all your powers, the focussing of them
upon one point. Hence they should never, either in theory or practice, be
separated. Only the act of recollection, the constantly renewed retreat to
the quiet centre of the spirit, gives that assurance of a Reality, a calmer
and more valid life attainable by us, which supports the stress and pain
of self-simplification and permits us to hope on, even in the teeth of the
world's cruelty, indifference, degeneracy; whilst diligent character-build-
ing alone, with its perpetual untiring efforts at self-adjustment, its bra-
cing, purging discipline, checks the human tendency to relapse into and
react to the obvious, and makes possible the further development of the
contemplative power.
So it is through and by these two great changes in your attitude to-
wards things first, the change of attention, which enables you to per-
ceive a truer universe; next, the deliberate rearrangement of your ideas,
energies, and desires in harmony with that which you have seen that a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]