What seek ye? An acute process of fermentation is going on. The public is being deluged with books. Scholars are poring over old manuscripts, exhausting themselves in erudition. Here and there
prophets arise; each has a warning to give, some hope to hold out. It is as if from all sides feverish efforts were being made to diffuse newlight.
The human soul is agitated and perturbed; here its vitals are allowed to parch, there they are preyed upon, so that the modicum of strength man had left to uplift him in the present time of tribulation is taken from him. Furtive hints and whisperings are abroad of something expected, something coming. Every nerve is taut with unconscious longing. But above all this unrest, an ominous cloud seems to hang.
What mischief will it bring? Confusion, despondency and ruin, unless indeed a mighty hand tear it asunder. At present a dark layer of dense ethereal matter surrounds the earth which resembles the clamminess of a slimy swamp. It absorbs every noble thought, chokes it before it matures and, like a gruesome bog, silently sucks down every feeling of goodwill in the bud, decomposing and destroying it before any good can come of it.
The seeker cries aloud for light, for he would be strong enough with help to work his way out, but the sound of his voice is lost. Impenetrable walls have been built up by assiduous workers, by those
indeed who think they are helping, but they offer stones for bread. Glance at the innumerable number of books: they weary man; they do not strengthen him. That is sufficient proof of the barrenness of what is offered. What wearies the mind is never the right thing.
Mental food (spiritual bread) refreshes. Truth rehabilitates and Light animates. The unsophisticated man must despair when he sees what walls are built up round the next world by what they call psychic science.
How can he understand the strange foreign terms and expressions? Is the transcendental worldexclusively reserved for occultists? And as to the Almighty: is it necessary to erect a university, here the qualities must first be acquired to enable one to conceive the idea of Divinity? Where is this tendency, the outcome of ambition, to lead? Like inebriates the readers and hearers stumble along from one position to another, unsteadily, not free in themselves, prejudiced and one-sided, because they are not on the right path.
Listen, all you despondent ones, lift up your eyes all you that are seeking: the way upward lies open to all. Proficiency in learning is not the gate to this path.
Did Christ, our prototype, choose his disciples from among the Pharisees and Scribes? He took them, rather, from the ranks of the plain and homely. Nor had they to depend upon mental qualities and deep
learning to find the way to the Light. This idea is utterly false. It is man's greatest enemy. Away, therefore, with all scientific research where it is a question of fully understanding what is most sacred for
man. Science is an artificial product of the human brain: it is piecework and defective and will always remain so.
Consider a moment: how should knowledge, acquired by hard study, lead to God? What after all isknowledge? Knowledge is what the brain can conceive. And how limited is the capacity of the human
brain which is fast bound by space and time. The human brain is not even able to grasp the ideas of eternity and infinity, the inseparable attributes of the Most High.
But at the thought of that inconceivable power which vitalises all being, the human brain comes to a standstill, although it derives its working power from that very source. It is an energy that we all feel, daily, hourly, every moment; that science has always recognised as existing; that we consider to be a
matter of course, and yet that knowledge and reason try in vain to understand.
Such is the inadequacy of the human brain which is the basis and instrument of science. And its limitations are naturally shared by the work it does, i. e. by all science. Hence science is only useful to explain, sort and set in order what it takes over, ready-made, from the above mentioned creative power, but so long as it persists in clinging so closely to intellect, it must inevitably be inadequate if it would lead or criticise. It follows that erudition and those who pin their faith to it, always concern themselves with details, whereas it has been given to man to understand the great inconceivable whole and to attain to the
highest and noblest ideals, without the trouble of any study.
Then away with all slavish adherence to psychic teaching! Let not our great Master's exhortation to become like children be in vain.
He who has the earnest desire for righteousness and endeavours to be pure in thought, has found the way to celestial heights. All else «shall be added unto him». He does not need books, nor must he make
Catégorie : Connaissances | article publié le : 01 janvier 2019