The Inner Life, v. I/Third Section/VII

KNOW THYSELF The old Greek saying Gnothi seauton, know thyself, is a fine piece of advice, and self-knowledge is absolutely necessary to any candidate for progress. And yet we must beware lest our necessary self-examination should degenerate into morbid introspection, as it often does with some of the best of our students. Many people are constantly worrying themselves lest unawares they should be "sliding back," as they call it. If they understood the method of evolution a little better they would see that no one can slide back when the whole current is moving steadily forward. As a torrent comes rushing down a slope, many little eddies are formed behind rocks, or perhaps where the water is whirling round and round, and therefore for the moment some of it is moving backward; but yet the whole body of water, eddies and all, is being swept on in the rush of the torrent, so that even that which is apparently moving backwards in relation to the rest of the stream is really being hurried forward along with the rest. Even the people who are doing nothing towards their evolution, and let everything go as it will, are all the while gradually evolving, because of the irresistible force of the LOGOS which is steadily pressing them onwards; but they are moving so slowly that it will take them millions of years of incarnation and trouble and uselessness to gain even a step. The method in which this is managed is delightfully simple and ingenious. All the evil qualities in man are vibrations of the lower matter of the respective planes. In the astral body, for example, selfishness, anger, hatred, jealousy, sensuality, and all qualities of this kind are invariably expressed by vibrations of the lower type of astral matter, while love, devotion, sympathy, and emotions of that class are expressed only in matter of the three higher sub-planes. From this flow two remarkable results. It must be borne in mind that each sub-plane of the astral vehicle has a special relation to the corresponding sub-plane in the mental body; or to put it more accurately, the four lower sub-planes of the astral correspond to the four kinds matter in the mental body, while the three higher correspond to the causal vehicle. Therefore it will be seen that only higher qualities can be built into the causal body, since the vibrations created by the lower can find in it no matter which is capable of responding to them. Thence it emerges that while any good which the man developes within himself records itself permanently by a change in his causal body, the evil which he does and thinks and feels cannot possibly touch the real ego, but can only cause disturbance and trouble to the mental body, which is renewed for each fresh incarnation. Of course the result of this evil does store itself in the mental and astral permanent atoms, and so the man has to face it over and over again, but that is a very different matter from taking it into the ego and making it really a part of himself. The second remarkable result produced is that a certain amount of force directed towards good produces an enormously greater effect in proportion than the same amount of force directed towards evil. If a man throws a certain amount of energy into some evil quality it has to express itself through the lower and heavier astral matter; and while any kind of astral matter is exceedingly subtle as compared with anything on the physical plane, yet as compared with the higher matter of its own plane it is just as gross as lead is on the physical plane when compared with the finest ether. If therefore a man should exert exactly the same amount of force in the direction of good, it would have to move through the much finer matter of these higher sub-planes and would produce at least a hundred times as much effect, or if we compare the lowest with the highest, probably more than a thousand times. Remember that even in addition to what has been said as to the effect of force in different grades of matter, we have the other great fact that the LOGOS Himself is by His resistless power steadily pressing the whole system onwards and upwards, and that, however slow this cyclic progression may seem to us, it is a fact which cannot be neglected, for its effect is that a man who accurately balances his good and evil comes back, not to the same actual position, but to the same relative position, and therefore even he has made some slight advance, and is as it were in a position just a little than that which he has actually deserved and made for himself. It will be clear from these considerations that, if any one is so foolish as to want to get really backwards against the stream, he will have to work hard and definitely towards evil; there is no fear of “sliding” back. That is one of the old delusions which remains from the times of the belief in the orthodox devil, who was so much stronger than God that everything in the world was working in his favour. Really the exact opposite is the case, and everything round a man is calculated to assist him, if he only understands it. So many of our most conscientious people are just like the child who has a little garden of his own, and constantly pulls up his plants to see how the roots are growing — with the result of course that nothing grows at all. We must learn not to think of ourselves personally, nor of our personal progress, but enter the path of development, go on working for others to the best of our ability, and trust our progress to take care of itself. The more a scientist thinks about himself the less mental energy he has for the problems of science; the more a devotee thinks about himself the less devotion has he to lavish upon his object. Some self-examination is necessary, but it is a fatal mistake to spend too much time in self-examination; it is like spending all one's time in oiling and tinkering at the machinery. We use what faculties we have, and in the use of them others will develope and true progress will be made. If you are learning a language, for example, it is a mistake to try to learn it from books quite perfectly before you make any attempt to speak it; you must plunge into it, and make mistakes in it, and in the effort you will learn in due course to speak without mistake. So in the course of time what is called renunciation will come naturally, and even easily. No doubt when men first attempt to live the higher life they do definitely renounce many things which are pleasures to others — which still have a strong attraction even for them; but soon the man finds that the attraction of such pleasures has ceased, and that he has neither time nor inclination for the lower enjoyments. Learn above all things not to worry. Be happy, and make the best of everything. Try to raise yourself and help others. Contentment is not incompatible with aspirations. Optimism is justified by the certainty of the ultimate triumph of good, though if we take only the physical plane into account it is not easy to maintain that position. One's attitude in this matter depends chiefly upon the level at which one habitually keeps one's consciousness. If it is centred chiefly in the physical plane one sees little but the misery, but when it becomes possible to centre it at a higher level the joy beyond always shines through. I know the BUDDHA said that life was misery, and it is quite true on the whole with regard to the manifested life down here, yet the Greeks and Egyptians managed to extract much joy even from this lower life by taking it from the philosophical point of view. We never lose anything by making the best of things, but gain very much in happiness and in the power of making others happy. As our sympathy and our love grow we shall be able to receive within ourselves all the streams of emotion and of thought which come to us from others, and yet we shall remain within ourselves unaffected, calm and joyous, like the great ocean which receives the waters of many rivers and yet remains always in equilibrium. The inner life of an aspirant ought not to be one of continual oscillation. Outer moods change constantly because they are affected by all sorts of outside influences. If you find yourself depressed, it may be due to any one of half-a-dozen reasons, none of them of any real importance. The physical body is a fertile source of such ills; a trifling indigestion, a slight congestion in the circulation, or a little over-fatigue may account for many conditions which feel quite serious. Even more frequently depression is caused by the presence of some astral entity who is himself depressed, and is hovering round you either in search of sympathy or in the hope of drawing from you the vitality which he lacks. We must simply learn to disregard depression altogether — to throw it off as a sin and a crime against our neighbors, which it really is; but, anyhow, whether we can succeed fully in dispersing its clouds or not we must learn simply to go on as though it were not there. Your mind is your own mind, into which you should allow entrance only to such thoughts as you, the ego, choose. Your astral body is also your own, and you should not allow in it any sensations except those which are good for the higher self. So you must manage these vibrations of depression, and absolutely decline to give harbourage to them. They must not be allowed to impinge upon you. If they do so impinge they must not be permitted to effect a lodgment. If, to some slight extent, in spite of your efforts, they do hang about you, then it is your duty to ignore them and to let no one else know that they even exist. Sometimes people tell me they have had moments of splendid inspiration and exaltation, and glowing devotion and joy. They do not realize that these are precisely the moments when the higher self succeeds in impressing himself upon the lower, and that all that which they feel is there all the time, but the lower self is not always conscious of it. Realize by reason and by faith that it is always there, and it becomes as though we felt it, even in the time when the link is imperfect and down here we feel it not. But many a man, while admitting the truth of this in the abstract, yet says that he cannot perpetually feel this happiness because of his own defects and constant failures. His attitude in fact is very much that adopted in the litany: “Have mercy upon us miserable sinners.” Now we are all sinners in the sense that we all fall short of what we ought to do, and constantly do what we ought not to do, and constantly do what we ought not to do but there is no need to aggravate the offense by being miserable sinners. A miserable person is a public nuisance, because he is a centre of infection, and is spreading misery and sorrow all round upon his unfortunate neighbours — a thing which no man has a right to do. Any man with just the same feelings, who contrives to keep himself reasonably happy even while making determined efforts to reform, is not injuring others in at all the same way. People who think and speak of themselves as miserable worms are going exactly the right way to make themselves miserable worms, for what a man thinks, that he is. All such talk is usually hypocrisy, as you may easily see from the fact that the man who so readily calls himself a miserable worm in church would feel distinctly insulted if anybody else called him so in ordinary daily life. And whether it is hypocritical or not it is certainly nonsense, for we passed the reptilian stage of evolution long ago, if we ever were in it. Anyone who understands at all the influence of thought will realize that a man who really thinks himself a miserable worm has already deprived himself of any power of rising out of that state, while the man who realizes strongly that he is a spark of the divine life will feel ever hopeful and joyous, because in essence the divine is always joy. It is a great mistake to waste time repentance; what is past is past, and no amount of remorse can undo it. As one of our own Masters once said, “The only repentance that is worth anything whatever is the resolve not to do it again.”