Part 19 (2/2)

each pool has cleared itself to a perfect calm, and has become a lovely mirror reflecting the trees and the clouds and the sunset and the stars.

So this mirror of the mind. Leave it alone. Let the ugly sediment of tiresome thoughts and anxieties, and of fussing over one's self-importances and duties, settle down--and presently you will look on it, and see something there which you never knew or imagined before--something more beautiful than you ever yet beheld--a reflection of the real and eternal world such is only given to the mind that rests.

Do not recklessly spill the waters of your mind in this direction and in that, lest you become like a spring lost and dissipated in the desert.

But draw them together into a little compa.s.s, and hold them still, so still;

And let them become clear, so clear--so limpid, so mirror-like;

At last the mountains and the sky shall gla.s.s themselves in peaceful beauty,

And the antelope shall descend to drink, and the lion to quench his thirst,

And Love himself shall come and bend over, and catch his own likeness in you. (1)

(1) Towards Democracy, p. 373.

Yes, there is this priceless thing within us, but hoofing along the roads in the mud we fail to find it; there is this region of calm, but the cyclone of the world raging around guards us from entering it.

Perhaps it is best so--best that the access to it should not be made too easy. One day, some time ago, in the course of conversation with Rabindranath Tagore in London, I asked him what impressed him most in visiting the great city. He said, ”The restless incessant movement of everybody.” I said, ”Yes, they seem as if they were all rus.h.i.+ng about looking for something.” He replied, ”It is because each person does not know of the great treasure he has within himself.” --------

How then are we to reach this treasure and make it our own? How are we to attain to this Stilling of the Mind, which is the secret of all power and possession? The thing is difficult, no doubt; yet as I tried to show at the outset of this discourse, we Moderns MUST reach it; we have got to attain to it--for the penalty of failure is and must be widespread Madness.

The power to still the mind--to be ABLE, mark you, when you want, to enter into the region of Rest, and to dismiss or command your Thoughts--is a condition of Health; it is a condition of all Power and Energy. For all health, whether of mind or body, resides in one's relation to the central Life within. If one cannot get into touch with THAT, then the life-forces cannot flow down into the organism. Most, perhaps all, disease arises from the disturbance of this connection. All mere hurry, all mere running after external things (as of the man after the water-streams on the mountain-top), inevitably breaks it. Let a pond be allowed calmly under the influence of frost to crystallize, and most beautiful flowers and spears of ice will be formed, but keep stirring the water all the time with a stick or a pole and nothing will result but an ugly brash of half-frozen stuff. The condition of the exercise of power and energy is that it should proceed from a center of Rest within one. So convinced am I of this, that whenever I find myself hurrying over my work, I pause and say, ”Now you are not producing anything good!” and I generally find that that is true. It is curious, but I think very noticeable, that the places where people hurry most--as for instance the City of London or Wall Street, New York--are just the places where the work being done is of LEAST importance (being mostly money-gambling); whereas if you go and look at a ploughman ploughing--doing perhaps the most important of human work--you find all his movements most deliberate and leisurely, as if indeed he had infinite time at command; the truth being that in dealing (like a ploughman) with the earth and the horses and the weather and the things of Nature generally you can no more hurry than Nature herself hurries.

Following this line of thought it might seem that one would arrive at a hopeless paradox. If it be true that the less one hurries the better the work resulting, then it might seem that by sitting still and merely twirling one's thumbs one would arrive at the very greatest activity and efficiency! And indeed (if understood aright) there is a truth even in this, which--like the other points I have mentioned--has been known and taught long ages ago. Says that humorous old sage, Lao-tze, whom I have already quoted: ”By non-action there is nothing that cannot be done.” At first this sounds like mere foolery or worse; but afterwards thinking on it one sees there is a meaning hidden. There is a secret by which Nature and the powers of the universal life will do all for you. The Bhagavat Gita also says, ”He who discovers inaction in action and action in inaction is wise among mortals.”

It is worth while dwelling for a moment on these texts. We are all--as I said earlier on--involved in work belonging to our place and station; we are tied to some degree in the bonds of action. But that fact need not imprison our inner minds. While acting even with keenness and energy along the external and necessary path before us, it is perfectly possible to hold the mind free and untied--so that the RESULT of our action (which of course is not ours to command) shall remain indifferent and incapable of unduly affecting us. Similarly, when it is our part to remain externally INACTIVE, we may discover that underneath this apparent inaction we may be taking part in the currents of a deeper life which are moving on to a definite end, to an end or object which in a sense is ours and in a sense is NOT ours.

The lighthouse beam flies over land and sea with incredible velocity, and you think the light itself must be in swiftest movement; but when you climb up thither you find the lamp absolutely stationary. It is only the reflection that is moving. The rider on horseback may gallop to and fro wherever he will, but it is hard to say that HE is acting. The horse guided by the slightest indication of the man's will performs an the action that is needed. If we can get into right touch with the immense, the incalculable powers of Nature, is there anything which we may not be able to do? If a man wors.h.i.+p the Self only as his true state,” says the Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad, ”his work cannot fail, for whatever he desires, that he obtains from the Self.” What a wonderful saying, and how infallibly true! For obviously if you succeed in identifying your true being with the great Self of the universe, then whatever you desire the great Self will also desire, and therefore every power of Nature will be at your service and will conspire to fulfil your need.

There are marvelous things here ”well wrapped up”--difficult to describe, yet not impossible to experience. And they all depend upon that power of stilling Thought, that ability to pa.s.s unharmed and undismayed through the grinning legions of the lower mind into the very heart of Paradise.

The question inevitably arises, How can this power be obtained? And there is only one answer--the same answer which has to be given for the attainment of ANY power or faculty. There is no royal road. The only way is (however imperfectly) to DO the thing in question, to practice it. If you would learn to play cricket, the only way is to play cricket; if you would be able to speak a language, the only way is to speak it. If you would learn to swim, the only way is to practice swimming. Or would you wish to be like the man who when his companions were bathing and bidding him come and join them, said: ”Yes, I am longing to join you, but I am not going to be such a fool as to go into the water TILL I KNOW HOW TO SWIM!”

There is nothing but practice. If you want to obtain that priceless power of commanding Thought--of using it or dismissing it (for the two things go together) at will--there is no way but practice. And the practice consists in two exercises: (a) that of concentration--in holding the thought steadily for a time on one subject, or point of a subject; and (b) that of effacement--in effacing any given thought from the mind, and determining NOT to entertain it for such and such a time. Both these exercises are difficult. Failure in practicing them is certain--and may even extend over years. But the power equally certainly grows WITH practice. And ultimately there may come a time when the learner is not only able to efface from his mind any given thought (however importunate), but may even succeed in effacing, during short periods, ALL thought of any kind. When this stage is reached, the veil of illusion which surrounds all mortal things is pierced, and the entrance to the Paradise of Rest (and of universal power and knowledge) is found.

Of indirect or auxiliary methods of reaching this great conclusion, there are more than one. I think of life in the open air, if not absolutely necessary, at least most important. The G.o.ds--though sometimes out of compa.s.sion they visit the interiors of houses--are not fond of such places and the evil effluvium they find there, and avoid them as much as they can. It is not merely a question of breathing oxygen instead of carbonic acid. There is a presence and an influence in Nature and the Open which expands the mind and causes brigand cares and worries to drop off--whereas in confined places foolish and futile thoughts of all kinds swarm like microbes and cloud and conceal the soul. Experto Crede. It is only necessary to try this experiment in order to prove its truth.

Another thing which corresponds in some degree to living physically in the open air, is the living mentally and emotionally in the atmosphere of love. A large charity of mind, which refuses absolutely to shut itself in little secluded places of prejudice, bigotry and contempt for others, and which attains to a great and universal sympathy, helps, most obviously, to open the way to that region of calm and freedom of which we have spoken, while conversely all petty enmity, meanness and spite, conspire to imprison the soul and make its deliverance more difficult.

It is not necessary to labor these points. As we said, the way to attain is to sincerely TRY to attain, to consistently PRACTICE attainment.

Whoever does this will find that the way will open out by degrees, as of one emerging from a vast and gloomy forest, till out of darkness the path becomes clear. For whomsoever really TRIES there is no failure; for every effort in that region is success, and every onward push, however small, and however little result it may show, is really a move forward, and one step nearer the light.

II. THE NATURE OF THE SELF

The true nature of the Self is a matter by no means easy to compa.s.s. We have all probably at some time or other attempted to fathom the deeps of personality, and been baffled. Some people say they can quite distinctly remember a moment in early childhood, about the age of THREE (though the exact period is of course only approximate) when self-consciousness--the awareness of being a little separate Self--first dawned in the mind.

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