Page:Heavenly Bridegrooms.djvu/71

 "As the sun is veiled by clouds,

"As the garments hide the body from view,

"As the egg is contained in the shell,

"And as the germ rests within the interior of the seed,

"So the sacred law has its body, its envelope, its cloud, its garment, its shell, which hide it from the knowledge of the world. * * * *

"You who, in your pride, would read the sacred scriptures without the Guru's assistance, do you even know by what letter of a word you ought to begin to read them do you know the secret of the combination by twos and threes do you know when the final letter becomes an initial and the initial becomes final?

"Woe to him who would penetrate the real meaning of things before his head is white and he needs a cane to guide his steps." (Quoted by Jacolliot Oc. in India.)

The closing paragraph becomes significant, when we reflect upon the danger which the initiates feared would accrue to those still in the heyday of manhood's passions, if they proved unworthy of the Great Secret. The expression "The secret of the combination by twos and threes" has probably a double meaning here the esoteric meaning turning upon the two kinds of marital partnership; known to the initiates; husband and wife being the "combination by two" (in the second degree); and husband, wife and God, three in one, a sacred trinity in unity, being the "combination by three" (in the third and highest degree), and they who have once realized the blessedness of this triune partnership, will move heaven and earth to make it renewable at will so much sweeter and more helpful in every way is it than the mere "combination by two."

Now, because sex is distinctly emotional in its manifestations, there is always a tendency, with failure to reach the highest, to allow the emotions to slump down, as it were, to a lower level. Few natures are so supremely self -controlled as to say, at a critical moment, "the highest or nothing. I will wait for that! And so, the types I have mentioned above as failure, the piggish man. the voluptuary and the sentimental, selfish mystic when, because of the