Voyage Of Discovery

The pupil did not know it before, but he has had the experience He will now set himself the seemingly impossible task. He will tell his mind to think on God, Truth, Reality Self, Consciousness, the Absolute. There is no gas for this ballooning; nothing on earth or in the mind can help him He must make no comparisons or contrasts, no definitions no categories. He must use his own jet-power to ride over all these things. In his practice he can use words (I) to keep other thoughts out of the picture, and (2) to act as boats for the voyage of discovery. These are not words of definition but words of discovery.

He will find that he has to perform this feat by an act (or acts) of being. He will know the being, because the being has its own knowing, which is direct, without any intermediate or mediating thing or thought. This act of being is sustained by his will. He has set his face towards the fulfillment pf the twill. After all, all his doing and having in the past has only been operated to serve his experience of being. We do not fundamentally want to have and to do, we only want to lie, and we use the having and doing for that purpose. Further, our will to be is not content with anything it seeks its goal beyond the irksome limits of having and doing. Man will not be really happy until he is consciously one wit God, and shares the freedom of that one Reality.

 There in the will is indeed another seed, but it is the seed no of anything in the world or in the min d, but of the Beyond which alone account for the here. The will never change alone accounts for the 'here'. The will never changes; it always points to that true North. The mind is of the mud of earth, except in this one fact. Therein is that spark of original power and being, even in the midst of the mind and the body. Man cannot master other things, because all have the right to master themselves; but man can master himself and be without fear. He can learn that all things serve him and he them, and that nothing in his life happens contrary to his will, which is so little known by the rest of his mind, which yet can come to know and thus enter that glorious service, and will come to know this through the asamprajrnata samadhi. 'Man is the mirror of the universe', it has been said. Yes, and in this point of joyous vision and service the mirror of God and his freedom, reality, truth, self, and all. Thus he will find God here, even in the mind, and be able to say from experience, 'He who cannot find God here cannot find him anywhere'.

In some of the preceding paragraphs I have mentioned meditation and contemplation together. The reason for this is that concentration, meditation, and contemplation form a sequence, always together. The act or practice begins with concentration, which then continues inside or behind the meditation. It goes on with meditation and then continues in or behind the contemplation, which remains within its scope

Still, nothing goes on forever, and the upward way is like a stair, not an inclined plane: Each stair or platform prepares for the next. In childhood we develop mostly our bodies and senses. Later, when these are mature and have practically stopped growing we develop especially our emotions. Later still, our thoughts, and at last some synthetic wisdom. Therein lies the doctrine of the archetypes. It would not do for our bodies to grow a hundred feet tall; the leverages would be wrong, say the biologists. Yet there is some degree that can be called perfect body. When it reaches that, it stops. So also with emotions and mind. The archetype is not a blueprint, a prototype, but a limit. It is not perfection in the abstract.