Living in the
World of Eternal Wisdom
John Garrigues
John Garrigues
To speak of the
formless Soul is to materialize it - is to give it a form. To speak of silence
is to abandon it. To think of the Soul in the silence is to intrude and find it
not.
Not alone the clangor of the senses makes this a world
of strife, of bafflements to meditation. It is comparatively easy to shut in
the house of life, close fast the outward portals, so that the din of kings and
commons struggling for precedence is ruled out. When this has been
intentionally done, then, indeed, does one discover that within one’s Self, and
not without, is the real field of battle.
Memory, imagination, desire, thought, and feeling, are
found to be no mere servants for the Soul’s use, but usurpers, traitors,
instinctive, rampant, quick with life of their own, which crucify him who is
seeking entrance into the silence - the “Hall of Wisdom which lies beyond”.
He who cannot command them with the sacramental phrase
“peace, be still”, must needs taste the bitterness of defeat and despair; must
needs go, indeed, into the only silence known to ordinary man, the silence of
sleep or death - from which there is no other issue than an unconscious one.
Whatever Meditation may mean to the bewildered, this is certain, that it means
a conscious entering of the silence.
Who can remain at attention while the outer and inner
warfare of the Soul goes on - may hope, yet Hope itself but lures the Soul
along one or another corridor whose only exit is once more upon the arena of
that which is not Soul.
The conscious silence which is Meditation is that
unknown world peopled by Soul alone - in which the Soul is a Spectator without
a spectacle. Yet, this is a way of speaking of the Un-speakable, in opposed commitments,
for silence is beyond any speech, as Soul is beyond all action.
To those whose heart is set on speech, to whom action
of some kind is life, Silence is empty - a void. To him whose heart is set on
the world’s end, on the journey’s end, Silence is the Soul’s habitation. Who enters the silence returns to his own
place. The Un-speakable Self there knows that Time, Space, and Causality are
but triple names for Silence - the Silence in which is woven the triple thread
of all three worlds. In that Silence the “Soul grows as does the holy flower
upon the still lagoon”.
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The above text was
first published as an anonymous note at the December 1929 edition of
“Theosophy” magazine, Los Angeles, p. 84. An analysis of its contents, style
and historical context shows the author is John Garrigues. It was reproduced
with Garrigues’ name in the December 2014 edition of “The Aquarian Theosophist”.
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On the role of the esoteric movement in the
ethical awakening of mankind during the 21st century, see the book “The Fire and Light of Theosophical Literature”, by
Carlos Cardoso Aveline.
Published in
2013 by The Aquarian Theosophist,
the volume has 255 pages and can be obtained through Amazon Books.
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