Going Beyond the Trifles of
the Hour
An Anonymous Author
The inner light which guides men to greatness, and makes them noble, is a
mystery through all time and must remain so while Time lasts for us; but there
come moments, even in the midst of ordinary life, when Time has no hold upon
us, and then all the circumstance of outward existence falls away, and we find
ourselves face to face with the mystery beyond. In great trouble, in great joy,
in keen excitement, in serious illness, these moments come. Afterwards they
seem very wonderful, looking back upon them.
What is this mystery, and why is it so veiled, are the burning questions
for anyone who has begun to realise its existence. Trouble most often rouses
men to the consciousness of it, and forces them to ask these questions when
those, whom one has loved better than oneself, are taken away into the formless
abyss of the unknown by death, or are changed, by the experiences of life, till
they are no longer recognisable as the same; then comes the wild hunger for
knowledge. Why is it so? What is it, that surrounds us with a great dim cloud
into which all loved things plunge in time and are lost to us, obliterated,
utterly taken from us?
It is this which makes life so unbearable to the emotional natures, and
which develops selfishness in narrow hearts. If there is no certainty and no
permanence in life, then it seems to the Egotist, that there is no reasonable
course but to attend to one’s own affairs, and be content with the happiness of
the first person singular.
There are many persons sufficiently generous in temperament to wish others
were happy also, and who, if they saw any way to do it, would gladly redress
some of the existing ills - the misery of the poor, the social evil, the
sufferings of the diseased, the sorrow of those made desolate by death - these
things the sentimental philanthropist shudders to think of. He does not act
because he can do so little. Shall he take one miserable child and give it
comfort when millions will be enduring the same fate when that one is dead? The
inexorable cruelty of life continues on its giant course, and those who are
born rich and healthy live in pleasant places, afraid to think of the horrors
life holds within it.
Loss, despair, unutterable pain, comes at last, and the one who has
hitherto been fortunate is on a level with those to whom misery has been
familiarised by a lifetime of experience. For trouble bites hardest when it
springs on a new victim. Of course, there are profoundly selfish natures which
do not suffer in this sense, which look only for personal comfort and are
content with the small horizon visible to one person’s sight; for these, there
is but little trouble in the world, there is none of the passionate pain
which exists in sensitive and poetic natures.
The born artist is aware of pain as soon as he is aware of pleasure; he
recognises sadness as a part of human life before it has touched on his own. He
has an innate consciousness of the mystery of the ages, that thing stirring
within man’s soul and which enables him to outlive pain and become great, which
leads him on the road to the divine life.
This gives him enthusiasm, a superb heroism indifferent to calamity; if he
is a poet he will write his heart out, even for a generation that has no eyes
or ears for him; if he desires to help others personally, he is capable of giving
his very life to save one wretched child from out a million of miserable ones.
For it is not his puny personal effort in the world that he considers - not his
little show of labour done; what he is conscious of is the over-mastering
desire to work with the beneficent forces of super-nature, to become one with
the divine mystery, and when he can forget time and circumstances, he is face
to face with that mystery. Many have fancied they must reach it by death; but
none have come back to tell us that this is so. We have no proof that man is
not as blind beyond the grave as he is on this side of it. Has he entered the
eternal thought? If not, the mystery is a mystery still.
To one who is entering occultism in earnest, all the trouble of the world
seems suddenly apparent. There is a point of experience when father and mother,
wife and child, become indistinguishable, and when they seem no more familiar
or friendly than a company of strangers. The one dearest of all may be close at
hand and unchanged, and yet is as far as if death had come between. Then all
distinction between pleasure and pain, love and hate, have vanished. A
melancholy, keener than that felt by a man in his first fierce experience of
grief, overshadows the soul. It is the pain of the struggle to break the shell
in which man has prisoned himself. Once broken then there is no more pain; all
ties are severed, all personal demands are silenced forever. The man has forced
himself to face the great mystery, which is now a mystery no longer, for he has
become part of it. It is essentially the mystery of the ages, and these have no
longer any meaning for him to whom time and space and all other limitations are
but passing experiences. It has become to him a reality, profound, indeed,
because it is bottomless, wide, indeed, because it is limitless.
He has touched on the greatness of life, which is sublime in its
impartiality and effortless generosity. He is friend and lover to all those
living beings that come within his consciousness, not to the one or two chosen
ones only - which is indeed only an enlarged selfishness. While a man retains
his humanity, it is certain that one or two chosen ones will give him more
pleasure by contact, than all the rest of the beings in the Universe and all the
heavenly host; but he has to remember and recognise what this preference is. It
is not a selfish thing which has to be crushed out, if the love is the love
that gives; freedom from attachments is not a meritorious condition in
itself.
The freedom needed is not from those who cling to you, but from those to
whom you cling. The familiar phrase of the lover “I cannot live without you”
must be words which cannot be uttered, to the occultist. If he has but one
anchor, the great tides will sweep him away into nothingness. But the natural
preference which must exist in every man for a few persons is one form of the
lessons of Life. By contact with these other souls he has other channels by
which to penetrate to the great mystery. For every soul touches it, even the darkest.
Solitude is a great teacher, but society is even greater.
It is so hard to find and take the highest part of those we love, that in
the very difficulty of the search there is a serious education. We realise when
making that effort, far more clearly what it is that creates the mystery in
which we live, and makes us so ignorant. It is the swaying, vibrating,
never-resting desires of the animal soul in man. The life of this part of man’s
nature is so vigorous and strongly developed from the ages during which he has
dwelt in it, that it is almost impossible to still it so as to obtain contact
with the noble spirit. This constant and confusing life, this ceaseless
occupation with the trifles of the hour, this readiness in surface emotion,
this quickness to be pleased, amused or distressed, is what baffles our sight
and dulls our inner senses. Till we can use these the mystery remains in its
Sphinx-like silence.
000
The
above article is reproduced from “Lucifer” magazine, September 1887 edition,
pp. 46-63. The word “Lucifer” means “light-bearer” and refers to the planet
Venus, “the star that brings the new day”. This ancient term has been distorted
by misinformed Christians.
000
In September 2016, after a careful analysis of the state of the
esoteric movement worldwide, a group of students decided to form the Independent Lodge of Theosophists,
whose priorities include the building of a better future in the different
dimensions of life.
000
