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 http://archive.org/details/cu31924029354390 
 
THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
By ST AN WOOD COBB 
 
 Ayesha of the Bosphorus 
 The Real Turk 
 
THE ESSENTIAL 
 MYSTICISM 
 
 By 
 
 STANWOOD COBB 
 
 Boston 
 
 The Four Seas Company 
 
 1918 
 

 Copyright 1918, by 
 The Four Seas Company 
 
 /j7^7^T: 
 
 The Four Seas Press 
 Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 
 
 \ 
 
 '1/^- 
 
To THE Teachers of the past: who lived that we 
 
 MIGHT DIE, AND WHO DIED THAT WE MIGHT LIVE. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE chief purpose of "The Essential" 
 Mysticism" is to make clear to the lay- 
 mind some of the spiritual problems 
 of humanity — to interpret to Americans the 
 real value of that Oriental mysticism which 
 has been so much despised — to set forth the 
 mystery of the soul of man in terms not of 
 psychology but of the daily life. 
 
 There are many books on religion and 
 mysticism. Their names are legion. And 
 yet I wonder if there is one of them 
 which in completely simple, modern terms 
 makes clearVthe value and importance of 
 spirituality in the daily life of man? 
 
 For it seems so plain, so self evident a 
 fact, that spirituality works, that it is 
 not a thing apart from life but life itself and 
 the only clue to this existence; — that could 
 this idea be conveyed to the American busi- 
 ness man, so searching for efficiency in life, 
 he would never rest until he had acquired 
 spirituality. 7 
 
8 PREFACE 
 
 It were too bold, too ambitious an aim, to 
 expect to accomplish so much of good in this 
 modest volume. fBut may the writer dare to 
 hope that it will set on fire in the minds of 
 some of its readers a few trails of spiritual 
 gunpowder, which may, ultimately, cause 
 explosions within the domain of their inner 
 self resulting in a larger, freer, more far- 
 seeing life? 
 
 To the writer, the spiritual life seems the 
 only sane, reasonable development of man, 
 the only life which expresses man's whole 
 nature. That it may seem so to some who 
 have never seen it so before, is the greatest 
 wish and errand of this book."J 
 
 S. C. 
 

 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 
 Chapter 
 
 Page 
 
 I. 
 
 Introductory .... 
 
 13 
 
 II. 
 
 The Essential Mysticism . 
 
 22 
 
 III. 
 
 "The Way" .... 
 
 46 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Overcoming of Desire 
 
 61 
 
 V. 
 
 Destiny and the Soul 
 
 75 
 
 VI. 
 
 Renunciation . . . . 
 
 85 
 
 VII. 
 
 A World of Matter and a World oj 
 
 
 
 Faith ..... 
 
 95 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Doctrine of Love 
 
 "3 
 
 IX. 
 
 Nirvana ..... 
 
 127 
 
 X. 
 
 The Need of a Universal Religion 
 
 139 
 
THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 WHITMAN in his wonderful "Pass- 
 age to India" proved himself indeed 
 a seer. With his broad vision of 
 things he saw that the Suez canal meant 
 not only the commercial union of the East 
 and West but an interchange of thought, 
 customs, and civilization. 
 
 Time was when East and West were not 
 so far apart. Caravans from India brought 
 the Oriental products overland to Constan- 
 tinople and Alexandria, where they were 
 shipped to Genoa, Florence, or Venice, and 
 distributed over Europe. 
 
 The Florentine painters of the Quatro 
 Cento owe much of the brilliant pageantry 
 of their paintings to this oriental splendor 
 which passed by their doors. 
 
 But when the Turks possessed themselves 
 of Asia Minor and later of Constantinople, 
 the overland trade routes to India were 
 broken and a toilsome dangerous sea-voyage 
 
 13 
 
14 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 of many months became necessary. It was to 
 shorten this sea-route that Columbus sailed 
 out upon that great quest which was des- 
 tined to add to the world a new continent 
 and to bring into being a new race, — a race 
 of pioneers composed of the most fearless, 
 the most venturesome of all nations. Thus 
 to the Turks do we owe our national ex- 
 istence. 
 
 During four centuries merchants plied 
 their weary way by sea to India, braving 
 the Cape of Good Hope which in travesty to 
 its very name proved ruin of many enter- 
 prises and the loss of countless lives. Then 
 came that cutting of the desert, that sub- 
 duing of the earth to the will of man which 
 shortened by some seven thousand miles the 
 route to India. It was to be, so Whitman 
 saw, a wonderful link in the chain of world 
 unity. 
 
 Trade with the East made great an Em- 
 pire which in its tiny isle would have lan- 
 guished feebly but for that. But England 
 could not long monopolize the world's trade. 
 Commerce was not destined to seek only the 
 rising sun. 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 To America has been given the destiny 
 of completing the circle, not by sailing east- 
 ward but by sailing westward. The dream 
 of Columbus was at last fulfilled. Take it 
 as a mighty symbol, if you will, — that the 
 farthest west becomes east. The wonder of 
 the Suez canal pales into insignificance be- 
 fore the possibilities of Panama. Here is 
 the final link, the final cutting which en- 
 circles the earth with a ribbon of water as 
 a girdle of its maturity. 
 u-For consider, was this planet worthy to 
 be called mature while half of it was yet un- 
 known? Or while the East stayed East and 
 West stayed West? Only when the two 
 commingle — when East meets West — can 
 its civilization be said to approach perfec- 
 tion. ^ 
 
 Since fifty years or more the East and 
 West have been flowing together marvelous- 
 ly. Were Americans to realize how deeply 
 their thought life has become permeated with 
 Eastern wisdom they would, if of the unco 
 plus type described by Vedder*, become 
 
 *"The blood of the unco pius it would surely freeze. 
 To know that God in China speaks Chinese." 
 
i6 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 horrified; but/jf they were of those who 
 dream of universal brotherhood they would 
 rejoice at this tremendous progress toward 
 an understanding of the East^f 
 
 Emerson was one of the first in this coun- 
 try to delve in Oriental literature. The sa- 
 cred books of India and Persia became for 
 him a mine of thought. Indeed, he may be 
 fairly said to owe most of his philosophy to 
 the East. In his beautiful and mystic writ- 
 ings he translated for the American mind 
 the wisdom that had reposed for ages in the 
 East. 
 
 The effect of Emerson on American 
 thought has been momentous. Not that his 
 devotees are conspicuous for their numbers; 
 but they are leaders in initiating and mould- 
 ing public opinion. His influence, spreading 
 to Europe, inspired a Maeterlinck, while in 
 this country scores follow in his trail. 
 
 The next definite movement for the intro- 
 duction of Oriental thought was Theosophy. 
 Brought over into this country in 1873 by 
 Madame Blavatsky, it had a rapid growth, 
 until the American Branch became as im- 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 portant as that in England, the land of its 
 birth. 
 
 Theosophy, like Emersonianism, has had 
 an influence enormously disproportionate to 
 its mere numbers. The actual membership 
 of the society has always been small and of 
 an abnormal character, unfortunately such 
 as to bring the movement into poor repute; 
 but its ideas have permeated every depart- 
 ment of our modern thought. Owing to its 
 opportune extension of the doctrine of evolu- 
 tion — which in itself had proved the greatest 
 stretcher of men's thoughts since the world 
 began — Theosophy has tinged the minds of 
 many thinkers with its teachings. From the 
 pulpit, the lecture-platform, from books and 
 from the editorial pages of our great dailies, 
 it has and still is sending forth its message 
 of the cosmic law. And Theosophy, as all 
 must know, is but a rehabiliment of Hindu 
 thought. 
 
 Theosophy has been followed by several 
 lesser movements of a similar kind, — the 
 Vedanta Society, the Mazdasnians, and the 
 private cults of Hindu "swamis" and "gurus" 
 who have never failed to find some entour- 
 
i8 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 age in this country. Many of these teachers 
 are influenced by unworthy motives, com- 
 mercially exchanging as it were their wares 
 of ancient wisdom for food and shelter and 
 fawning adulation of wealthy American 
 women. Yet among them have been humble 
 men, true teachers; men who gave more 
 than they received and asked for nothing ex- 
 cept the opportunity to give. It is the fakirs 
 that have brought disrepute upon the whole 
 tribe of Oriental missionaries. But there is 
 as much difference here as between those of 
 our missionaries who go to India because it 
 is the easiest way in which an inefficient 
 man can make a living, and those earnest 
 Christians who go there because they yearn 
 to give their all for truth. 
 
 The greatest movement of Oriental mysti- 
 cism in this country, however, few suspect. 
 Christian Science is metaphysically almost 
 an exact replica of the Vedanta idealism as 
 taught by Cankara in India in the ninth cen- 
 tury. One can trace the resemblance point 
 by point. That this has not been previously 
 recognized may be due to the fact that no 
 real student of Christian Science has studied 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 the Vedanta; while our scholars of com- 
 parative religion who know of the Vedanta 
 teaching have not cared to spend much time 
 on Mrs. Eddy's teaching. Nothing is more 
 logical, more impregnable, than the essential 
 points of Christian Science. Because its 
 teachings are clothed in emotional and mys- 
 tial language, scholars have failed to grasp 
 it just as they have failed to grasp the mean- 
 ing of Hindu mysticism or of Laotze; 
 for the American scholar, too generally 
 materialistic in his trend of thought, passes 
 over pearls of wisdom with the insouciance 
 which Christ attributed to certain domestic 
 animals. 
 
 The contention of Christian Science is as 
 follows: — that matter does not exist; that 
 the cause of matter's seeming to exist is 
 "mortal mind"; that mortal mind in itself 
 has no reality and disappears before the 
 light of truth. 
 
 Let us look at Cankara. He too declares 
 that matter does not exist; that the cause of 
 matter's seeming to exist is Avidya or Igno- 
 rance ; that this Avidya has no real existence 
 
20 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 but disappears before the light of know- 
 ledge, which is Vidya. 
 
 Many have made fun of Christian Science, 
 thinking they punctured its logic when they 
 asked what "mortal mind" was. Had they 
 lived nine hundred years ago, they would 
 have found a worthy polemist. Cankara, on 
 being asked what Avidya was, replied: "He 
 who would seek to know what Avidya is, is 
 like one who, in order to know what darkness 
 is, should light a torch. For when one lights 
 a torch, darkness disappears. So when one 
 acquires Vidya, Avidya disappears." 
 
 Substitute for "Mortal Mind" Avidya, and 
 for "Truth" Vidya and you have converted 
 Christian Science into Vedanta^the purest 
 and most incontrovertible form of idealism 
 ever invented by the mind of man. ; 
 
 <A Vedanta teacher was once instructing 
 his pupils in the midst of a jungle. There 
 suddenly crashed through the bushes a mad 
 elephant — the most dangerous of tropic 
 beasts. The pupils, disregarding their 
 philosophy, took to the trees. When the 
 animal had passed, they found their guru 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 descending unabashed from a stout upas tree. 
 
 "Why," asked one heretical youth, "did 
 you climb a tree, if according to your teach- 
 ing matter has no existence?" 
 
 To this smart inquirer, worthy to adorn 
 the impudent ranks of American youths, he 
 answered calmly: 
 
 "There was no elephant. There was no 
 tree. I did not climb up a tree." 
 
 Such extreme form of idealism, whether 
 phrased by an Oriental, or by a Chris- 
 tian Scientist, may appear nonsense. But 
 the marvelous thing about Christian Science 
 is that it is demonstrating, palpably and 
 to the American sense, the existence of 
 something other than matter. The typical 
 American has two very good eyes, a physi- 
 cally analytical mind, and a total ineptness 
 for real thought. Hence he could never 
 arrive, of himself and unaided, at the con- 
 clusion that anything but matter exists. 
 But when his wife or favorite daughter, dis- 
 carded by all the learned physicians, is healed 
 by Christian Science, a little light permeates 
 his brain. He does not know much about 
 Christian Science, but he does know that she 
 
22 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 who was condemned to die by consultation 
 of the greatest specialists is alive again. He 
 begins to attend a Christian Science church. 
 And being a true Amerian, ardent and child- 
 hearted, he goes the whole length. He has 
 become an idealist without knowing or 
 understanding what he believes. 
 
 View it unprejudicially ! It is one of the 
 most marvelous spiritual movements at pre- 
 sent working in America. Its truths are 
 stated in childlike terms, perhaps, but it has 
 truths. 
 
 From Christian Science branched out in 
 1891 the New Thought movement, which, 
 more indefinite than Christian Science, has 
 a correspondingly larger following. New 
 Thought, in some phase or other, is familiar 
 to every person 'who reads or thinks. To it 
 is largely due that doctrine of conscious 
 optimism and good cheer which is so pop- 
 ular at present. That one can thus regulate 
 one's thoughts and feelings is to Americans a 
 stupendous discovery. The Oriental has 
 known it for ages. It is needless to say that 
 New Thought is very old thought invading 
 a new and youthful race.~{ 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 The latest expression of Eastern spiritual 
 thinking to reach these shores is the Bahai 
 movement — a universal religion named after 
 Baha UUah, its founder. Three years ago 
 Abdul Baha, the son of the founder, and the 
 present leader of the movement, visited this 
 country and spoke from many pulpits and 
 lecture platforms. The Bahai teaching is 
 eminently sane, reasonable, and progres- 
 sive. Its influence is plainly to develop a 
 sort of practical everyday mysticism in its 
 Western followers, and a wide-awake 
 modern efficiency in its Eastern followers. 
 From this, and from its definite teaching of 
 fworld brotherhood, it is one of the greatest 
 and most important movements for uniting 
 the East and WesLj A most remarkable 
 occasion was that witnessed by the writer, 
 when Abdul Baha clad in his turban and his 
 Oriental garments, conducted the Sunday 
 service from a Christian pulpit — prayer, 
 sermon and all. 
 
 An event very significant of the rapidly 
 growing Orientalism in the West was the 
 conferring of the Nobel prize on Rabindra- 
 nath Tagore, with the subsequent popularity 
 
24 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 of his work in Europe and America. He is 
 a pure mystic, singing the songs of Oriental 
 mysticism; yet his poems, published by a 
 leading house, have in two years reached 
 twelve editions, and his writings are eagerly 
 looked forward to from year to year by a 
 large reading public. This is an astounding 
 fact. The West is growing tolerant! 
 
 The East does not need a growth in reli- 
 gious tolerance, for it has always been more 
 tolerant than the West. It does not claim 
 uniqueness for its religions, nor for its foun- 
 ders of religion. 
 
 But the East does need, and sorely need, 
 a greater material efficiency. Far ahead in 
 spiritual wisdom, it is far behind in the outer 
 aspects of civilization. It has a wonderful 
 thought life but a poverty-stricken phys- 
 ical life. It has neglected the body and the 
 things of the body. It has neglected most 
 lamentably the education of the masses. So 
 that the Western invasion of the East takes 
 the form of schools, hospitals, railroads, 
 bridges, science, industry, and all those in- 
 ventions which make for sane and comfort- 
 able living. 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 The ascetic East is seeking after physical 
 luxuries, while the materialistic West is 
 growing more wise in spiritual ways. Here 
 is a fair exchange — a barter which is of great 
 profit to both sides. 
 
 It is needless to point out the many ways 
 in which the East is turning to the West for 
 help. Japan, forced into the current of 
 modern progress against its will, has made 
 its way to the fore front. China, with its four 
 hundred miUion souls, is yearning for the new 
 civilization, and is turning to America for 
 ideas and for men to carry them out. Turkey, 
 forced into a great world war by parliamen- 
 tary tricks, is managed by Germany — a sort 
 of partnership in which the "terrible Turk" 
 becomes more terrible under modern 
 methods of efficiency. India, scratched on 
 the surface by the English plough, is already 
 yielding crops of Occidentalism. Fifty years 
 ago Asia wanted nothing of the West, which 
 she scorned and despised. Today, like a wo- 
 man in despair, she is on her knees before 
 her hitherto rejected wooer. The time has 
 come for union. 
 
 Each hemisphere has its final part to play 
 
26 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 in the great world civilization which is at 
 hand. The Orient is the germinating place 
 for the soul. It is there that religions are 
 engendered. The Occident, on the contrary, 
 is the place of expansion; it gives physical 
 form and shape to the ideals of the East. 
 Nineteen hundred years ago there spread 
 from the Orient a religion whose spiritual 
 principles have enveloped one half the world 
 — a religion which the West has expanded 
 in a great civilization. But the beautiful 
 breath of mysticism which stirred hearts of 
 old at the name of the Christ has died out 
 from His Church, leaving it formal and cold. 
 Shall it be that a new breeze will blow from 
 the Orient, arousing again the hearts of men 
 to heroism, nursing into flower the buds of 
 faith atrophied under a long winter? If the 
 time has come for a great renaissance of reli- 
 gion, shall the presaging star not rise again 
 upon the eastern horizon? 
 
 Whatever favors as to mystic wisdom Des- 
 tiny has granted to the East, yet she has re- 
 served for the new and virile West the priv- 
 ilege of applying spiritual principles to life, 
 rendering efficient the glory of the mystic's 
 
INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 dream. Let no one suppose that the East is 
 to be exalted above the West. Each has its 
 place in the regard of Destiny; each is be- 
 loved of God; each is playing its great role 
 in the cosmic evolution. 
 
 Might one venture here a symbol of sex? 
 Does it not seem that the soul of the Orient 
 is feminine, while the soul of the Occident 
 is masculine, in its qualities? The Orient is 
 dreamy, mystical, poetic; the West is bold, 
 aggressive and unintuitive. The union of 
 these two temperaments will constitute the 
 greatest incentive and stimulus to humanity 
 since the days of Ancient Wisdom. For^irom 
 it will be born a new race — tender, imagina- 
 tive, mystic, — yet efficient to the highest de- 
 gree, heroic in action as in thought, bold to 
 pentrate the secrets of Nature and to subdue 
 her to its will. Thus will arrive a new civili- 
 zation, splendid in beauty and in force, sur- 
 passing even the hopes of Utopian dreamers 
 in the achievements of its mighty androgy- 
 nous genius. / 
 
 And this country — eldest child of the New 
 World — is it to be favored by Destiny as the 
 means and place of Union? Shall the fur- 
 
28 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 thest West become East? For further West 
 one cannot go without surprising the dwel- 
 ling of Phoebus as he springs up from the 
 Eastern ocean, ruddy and golden for his 
 journey across the sky's empyrean. And sa 
 here must be the final link of the chain that 
 is to girdle the earth. 
 
 And Destiny, wishing it so, has prepared 
 many a soul for such an enterprise. In this 
 country, engrossed as it is in material things, 
 mad after wealth and uncivilized to the point 
 of rudeness, here Destiny has nevertheless 
 planted souls most etherial and mystical, — 
 oriental souls, one would say to meet them. 
 And they reside not only in the physical 
 bodies of fair women, of writers and thinkers 
 and dreamers; but also in those of business 
 men and people of affairs. Were one to ga 
 through the land with seeing eyes one could 
 trace a potential trail of fire where these 
 sparks lie, — smouldering until they burst 
 forth in the Great Conflagration. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 THERE are two reasons why one can- 
 not see to the bottom of a well: it 
 may be very deep, or it may be 
 muddy. Most people, consoling themselves 
 for a spiritual myopia, prefer to think that 
 super-sensuous experiences are abnormal 
 and unworthy the consideration of a healthy 
 mind. Thus they dispose very easily of mys- 
 ticism by calling it muddiness, and of spirit- 
 uality by terming it neurasthenia. It is well 
 that some are ignorant of the enormity of 
 their ignorance. 
 
 Mysticism is defined as "obscurity of doc- 
 trine"; the mystic as "one who professes to 
 have direct intercourse with the Divine"; 
 and mystical as something "sacredly ob- 
 scure or secret; remote from human compre- 
 hension." These three definitions by Web- 
 ster are entirely satisfactory and sum up in 
 a few words the whole matter. The mystic 
 claims to have direct intercourse with the di- 
 
 29 
 
30 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 vine. How such a thing is possible is indeed 
 "remote from human comprehension." 
 
 And since most people find it comforting 
 to pooh-hoo that which they cannot under- 
 stand, they relegate all things mystical to 
 the limbo of the unclear, vague, misty, dis- 
 torted, and worthless, — a sort of clutter- 
 room to which it pleases them to consign all 
 data and experiences which would disturb 
 the neat and ordinary routine of their daily 
 lives. 
 
 Hence it is that mysticism is in poor re- 
 pute, and mystic is a term of derogation. 
 
 Let us acknowledge that the mystic lives 
 in a world all his own — it may not be any the 
 less real. That his experiences are not the 
 experiences of common men may or may not 
 indicate that they are false. 
 
 Conceive a Fiji Islander who had been 
 brought to New York, upon his return try- 
 ing to describe his experiences. That he 
 had ridden in horseless vehicles directed by 
 a magic bar of iron in the driver's hand; that 
 he had seen man-birds fly over the city; that 
 he had heard people talk three thousand 
 miles away; that he had seen a prize-fight on 
 
THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 31 
 
 a magic curtain a week after it had occurred ; 
 that he had seen water become hard enough 
 to walk on, — all such reports would properly 
 be met with a condescending incredulity. 
 The wise-acres and sceptics of his home 
 town, knowing that such things were im- 
 possible, would enjoy the traveller's vivid 
 tales and honor him as the chief prevaricator 
 of the village. 
 
 j^M^ny things become possible that have 
 been hitherto impossible ; and to the philos- 
 opher who analyses existence the impossi- 
 bility appears often to reside in the limita- 
 tions of the human mind, rather than in the 
 nature of things themselves. J 
 
 Either, then, there is a whole new world 
 into which the mystic is a pioneer; or else 
 the mystic is a conscious or unconscious liar. 
 That the analysis of spiritual experiences 
 should fall to the province of the material- 
 istic laboratory psychologist is a misfortune 
 to the lay public; because such spiritual ex- 
 periences, being foreign to the nature of the 
 psychological dogmatist, find little chance 
 of either a sympathetic or an accurate inter- 
 pretation. 
 
32 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 That these psychologists are endeavoring 
 to pigeon-hole God and X-ray the Divine, 
 does not, I imagine, greatly alter the nature 
 of that Divine, nor alarm that Creative 
 Power in which all things, even psycholo- 
 gists, subsist. 
 
 i If there is any God, then the reaching out 
 for union with Him is the only possible reli- 
 gion. To posit a divine being is not religion. 
 To believe that a god once created the uni- 
 verse is not spirituality. If there is a Spir- 
 itual Essence back of the seen and felt and 
 heard, then that Essence is the abiding pres- 
 ence in which man discovers his reality. "In 
 Him we live and move and have our being," 
 said one of the greatest mystics^ 
 f^ The true mystic, however, not content 
 with being an unconscious unit of existence, 
 seeks consciously a closer union with the 
 whole — strives to mingle his soul with the All 
 Soul, and to be penetrated daily with the very 
 Breath of LifeJ He believes in taking spir- 
 itual exercise in order to make his soul grow, 
 much as the athlete works his muscles in 
 order to build up his body. 
 
 This exercise of the mystic differs widely 
 
THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 33 
 
 in different countries and religions, but es- 
 sentially it is the same, — prayer and medita- 
 tion. The East has practised these things for 
 thousands of years. The Brahman priest, in 
 the early days of India, held his power be- 
 cause he was the "prayer maker." 
 
 Prayer in our day has fallen into dis- 
 repute. It, together with epileptic fits and 
 hysteria, is patiently analysed by the abnor- 
 mal psychologist. Not that he has any pre- 
 judices against it or would condemn it, for 
 he conceives it to be entirely harmless. 
 
 If there is no divine, nothing spiritual, no- 
 thing higher than the mind of man, then of 
 course prayer is a psychological illusion, a 
 subjective necessity at times, comforting in 
 sorrow, but needless to sturdy men. 
 
 If, however, there is a super-sensuous ex- 
 istence, if there is anything superior to the 
 mind of a modern psychologist, then prayer 
 is the natural means of communion with such 
 a world, — a sort of telepathic message which 
 miraculously bridges the gulf between mat- 
 ter and Spirit, between the created and the 
 Creative, between the limited and the Limit- 
 less. And no one who has not experimented 
 
34 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 and through prayer, uttered or unvoiced, 
 sought this union, can be deemed worthy to 
 make authoritative statements either about 
 prayer or about God. 
 
 iThe two great quests of humanity — the 
 quest for happiness, and the quest for 
 power — find in mysticism their highest ex- 
 pression. 
 
 That man lives for happiness is a truism. 
 It is the great dominant motive in Hfe, to 
 such an extent that even religions can pros- 
 per only when they offer happiness, — hap- 
 piness more abundant than falls naturally to 
 the lot of manj 
 
 The true martyr goes to the stake or the 
 arena chanting hymns of joy. This joy may 
 be in the terms of psychopathology a form of 
 hysteria; or it may be something else beyond 
 the power of materialistic analysis. But it 
 is a joy real enough to the religionist to 
 cause him to give up for it possessions and 
 home and friends, — yea, wife and children. 
 
 The search for happiness has led mankind 
 through strange adventures. The sense 
 
THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 35 
 
 world contains an immediate appeal, the il- 
 lusion of which only infinite experience of 
 suffering and disappointment can offset. 
 
 Primitive races have found in the delirium 
 of drink and of sex the acme of sense satis- 
 faction. These pleasures indeed have proved 
 so ecstatic as to appear to the naive mind 
 to be a part of religion. Soma, an alcoholic 
 drink, figured largely in the religious cult of 
 the ancient Hindus; while the juice of the 
 grape, in the Greek festivals, acquired the 
 dignity of godhead. Sex orgies figured so 
 largely in certain Greek religious rites, in- 
 fluenced from more eastern cults, that the 
 mystic brotherhood of the early Christian 
 Church fell under like suspicion. In India 
 sex has been and still is the largest element 
 in the religious rites of the lower classes, 
 and in certain sects the practises are so un- 
 usual as to forbid description. 
 
 The point to notice is this, that in the aban- 
 don of intoxication, either of alcohol or of 
 sex, unthinking man finds a spiritual quality. 
 That there is, in spite of Puritanic concep- 
 tions to the contrary, a certain spiritual qual- 
 ity in joy, may be true. 
 
36 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 \,-But the sense-world disappoints, — not 
 by its failure to give pleasure, but by its fail- 
 ure to give sustained pleasure, and by reason 
 of the depths of misery into which the sensu- 
 alist is plunged between his periods of exalta- 
 tion. If a way could be discovered to make 
 these sense satisfactions lasting, doubtless 
 the majority of mankind would be quite con- 
 tent to linger in this valley. The fact that 
 sense happiness is so fleeting, so ephemeral, 
 may indicate to the inspective mind that 
 Nature did not intend the senses to enthrall. 
 It is only when satiety, disgust, misery inter- 
 vene, that the seeker of the senses betrays 
 his loyalty to flesh and seeks elsewhere for 
 joy. 
 
 Moderation, then, becomes the foundation 
 for a higher, more delicate civilization, — per- 
 mitting the innate forces of the self to ex- 
 pand in creations of art and philosophy and 
 refinement of living. The savage reaches a 
 fierce maturity at adolescence. The races of 
 civilization, conserving more carefully their 
 emotional and sex force, prolong youth 
 through a period which sees the rise of a 
 creative will. Ambition, love of the beauti- 
 
THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 37 
 
 ful, unknown aspirations, stir the soul of 
 civilized youthjjwhile the savage is content 
 to complete at puberty his cycle of existence, 
 henceforth living but to feed and spawn. 
 
 Yet even in the mental world, the world 
 of art and thought and dreams, one finds a 
 disappointment. The most intellectual of 
 men are not always the happiest. The artist 
 is a slave to his temperament, which leads 
 him onto mountain peaks, only to cast him 
 next moment into valleys of despair. Again 
 joy is found transient, a will o' the wisp; and 
 the determined man, never relinquishing his 
 quest, strikes out into unknown fields, an 
 adventurer after happiness, a pioneer, a 
 mystic. 
 
 (^ecause the pioneer in the land of spirit 
 cannot state in terms of evident proof, to 
 the sensualist and to the man of material- 
 istic culture, the marvels of his dream world, 
 he is set apart as strange, as unveracious, as 
 psychopathic. It is easier so. One does not 
 then have to give up one's superb faith in 
 matter. For when one begins to let go of 
 solid earth, one fears the outcome.^! 
 
 So, in the day when old men dream 
 
38 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 dreams and young men see visions, the 
 materialist strengthens his grip upon things 
 earthly, and denies the soul with scalpel and 
 X-ray. 
 
 [^ Not only does the materialist have a vague 
 and inchoate fear of losing his grip upon the 
 solid flesh; but he also, humanwise, dislikes 
 to believe that others can have found some- 
 thing of which he is deprived. And so when 
 the visionary has sold all his possessions and 
 acquired the pearl of great price, the mater- 
 ialist laughs at him and rejoices to think 
 the jewel false. So, also, the materialist, to 
 be logical, laughs at Christ and pities Him 
 for his hallucinations; so he rejoices at find- 
 ing Mohammed an epileptic and St. Frkncis 
 of Assisi psychopathic. So hog-like, with 
 snout in the trough, he sniffs defiance at the 
 fairest blossoms of the world above him. 
 Were God to appear to him in flesh, yet 
 would he not believe. 
 
 Christ was a mystic, as are all the Found- 
 ers of Religions. Christ's teachings were 
 essentially mystic; yet out of the Christian- 
 ity of today has been taken all that mys- 
 ticism which is the very breath of religion, — 
 
THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 39 
 
 and there is left to the world only an empty 
 shell which is no-religion. 
 
 * * « 
 
 That the mystic finds the highest joy, the 
 niost supreme joy, the most lasting joy, that 
 mortals know, — many have proven from 
 their inner experience. To others, we trust 
 that our book as a whole may convey a dem- 
 onstration of this truth. And now we pass 
 to the next point, which is that the mystic 
 also solves the quest for power^i 
 
 Happiness would very soon pall, were 
 there nothing for man to work at, nothing 
 for him to achieve, no destiny for him to 
 carve out of the resisting material about 
 him. The will to create is as innate in man 
 as the desire for happiness; for as much as 
 he partakes of the divine, in so far is he 
 impelled to create. 
 
 In its lowest phases this thirst for creative 
 power takes the form of a desire to dominate 
 over others. He who can inspire the highest 
 degree of fear, respect, and obedience from 
 those about him is the greatest among them. 
 Not at this point in human evolution does 
 humility appear desirable, nor that mystic 
 
40 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM^ 
 
 phrase comprehensible that "he who is least 
 among them is the greatest." 
 
 This exercise of power, though selfish, ac- 
 complishes certain cosmic ends, hence is per- 
 mitted for the nonce by Destiny. By it are 
 developed organization, social and political 
 groups, and that fierce competition in which 
 the fit survive and the weak go to the wall. 
 Power is necessary to growth and progress, 
 and the only rewards which Nature offers 
 the weak are suffering and extinction. 
 
 There comes a time, however, in the Spir- 
 itual evolution of man, when the selfish are 
 deprived of power. Cruel, despotic, master- 
 ful as man can be, he cannot cope with the 
 forces of Destiny; he cannot long oppose 
 the Universal Law and prosper. 
 
 In a certain stage of evolution it is the 
 physically fit who survive; when the powers 
 of the human mind have developed, mani- 
 festing themselves in various power-pro- 
 ducing inventions, it is not the physically but 
 the mentally strong who survive; but in an 
 age in which man has so matured as to con- 
 sciously draw power from the Source of 
 Power, it is not the mentally or the physi- 
 
THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 41 
 
 cally fit, but the spiritually fit who become 
 the masters of men. (And inasmuch as spir- 
 itual man is a mystic, it is the mystic, in a 
 spiritual age, who manifests the greatest 
 power. / 
 
 This^fact is not hard to see in the realm of 
 art creation. The artist, drawing his inspir- 
 ation from a higher Source, creates forms 
 of beauty for the world. The greater his in- 
 spiration, the more selfless he is, the nearer 
 to the Creative Source, — by so much the 
 greater is his creative work. Egoism, con- 
 ceit, self-consciousness, desire for the mere 
 outer manifestations of power, — these things 
 eat like hidden cankers at the creative heart 
 of the artist, until the whole world cannot 
 fail to notice a diminution in his power. 
 
 The true artist knows that he is inspired — 
 knows that the fairy forms of beauty that 
 haunt his dreams are not the children of his 
 brain, but visions from another world. He 
 knows that he is but a channel, pouring forth 
 cheer and inspiration to the world in propor- 
 tion as he is freed from obstructions of self. 
 
 Even the greatest of men said, "Call me 
 not good. Of myself I do none of these 
 
42 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 things." And if the greatest make no claim 
 to personal power, shall the least among us 
 strut and crow with human vanity, because 
 it has been vouchsafed us to create ? 
 
 In even more practical ways man recog- 
 nizes the value and the mystic wonder of an 
 inspiration. The great inventors tell us that 
 after they have set all their superb powers of 
 intellect to work upon a given problem, the 
 final solution comes to them suddenly, un- 
 consciously, inspirationally, as a gift from 
 the blue. And so come to earth all the mar- 
 vels of modern science, — the telephone, the 
 telegraph, and mighty machinery that obeys 
 like a huge hapless slave the slightest will of 
 man. 
 
 If inspiration helps the scientist, it can 
 help the business man. True, the human 
 brain can of itself accomplish marvels of or- 
 ganization and production: but greater 
 marvels can be accomplished by those who 
 know how to grasp Ideas; who, not content 
 with imitating, would create new fields of 
 human endeavor. For the business man is 
 also a creator. 
 
 We half expect the artist to be a mystic; 
 
THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 43 
 
 we can even understand how an inventor 
 can be a little queer in this direction; but 
 it is a new and almost inconceivable thing to 
 imagine the business man as intuitive, spirit- 
 ual, and truly creative. Yet there are those 
 who have applied the principles of mysticism 
 to their business, realizing from prayer, faith, 
 and concentration a degree of power and ex- 
 ternal success corroborative of the value of 
 their efforts. 
 
 It is unfortunate that mysticism in the past 
 has been almost universally correlated with 
 asceticism, irresponsibility, withdrawal from 
 the world, — resulting in a total unproduc- 
 tiveness on the plane of the visible. The 
 ordinary mortal has no means of judging 
 the value of dreams, save as they result in 
 action and achievement; and quite rightly 
 does he measure his neighbor by results, by 
 work accomplished, rather than by rapt 
 visions and ideals. 
 
 On the other hand, a mysticism that would 
 produce a greater power and efficiency of 
 achievement would commend itself even to 
 the practical American. Can mysticism be- 
 come efficient? That is its greatest problem. 
 
44 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 In the East it has been inefficient. Yet in 
 the nature of things there is no law which 
 compels it to remain so. 
 
 It is not without reason that Destiny has 
 fostered in the West a race disdainful of 
 mere dreams and visions, a race hardy to 
 create and achieve, a race which stands 
 solidly for material efficiency. Material 
 efficiency without the spiritual vision is no 
 more accusable than a mysticism which ac- 
 complishes nothing. If we are to blame the 
 West we must also blame the East. Destiny 
 is tolerant of faults, and we may better spend 
 our effort, not in regret for a one-sided 
 development in either hemisphere, but in 
 working for a union of these two attitudes 
 toward life so vividly expressed in the Occi- 
 dental and Oriental civilizations. 
 XX-et mysticism become efficient, and let 
 efficiency become spiritual. The perfect man 
 must manifest on the material plane the 
 power which he draws from spiritual sources. 
 The ecstacy of vision must be wrought out 
 in the sweat and toil of achievement. The 
 man who creates is really spiritual, whether 
 he know it or not. But the greatest inspira- 
 
THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 45 
 
 tions come to those who know consciously 
 where to seek Power. 
 
 And so, I say, the mystic solves the prob- 
 lem of power, as he solves that of joy; and he 
 unites in his being the song with the crea- 
 tion ; rejoicing in ever new unf oldment of his 
 powers, in ever new accomplishment, work- 
 ing joyously by the side of the Friend. / 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 "THE WAY" 
 
 THIS doctrine of "The Way" appeals 
 but little to Americans, who, both 
 in theory and practice, raise the 
 ideal of strenuosity to its apotheosis. To 
 smash one's way through all opposition, to 
 fight against the heaviest obstacles, to en- 
 gage in increasing activity in order to bring 
 about desired ends, — this is the American 
 ideal. At the other pole of thought is the 
 calmness and conservatism of the Oriental, 
 who takes the line of least resistance and 
 shrinks from brutally contesting the field 
 of victory. 
 
 Each is a matter of temperament and cli- 
 mate, of racial heredity and social example. 
 That the Oriental may have something of 
 truth in his point of view is the thought 
 needed to be brought home to the strenuous 
 American, who in action — restless and too 
 often undefined — prematurely exhausts the 
 very springs of action within him. 
 
 46 
 
"THE WAY" 47 
 
 Of what use is it to do three men's work at 
 thirty if one must die as the result at forty? 
 Or to crowd five years activity into one, if 
 that one year of effort is to bankrupt the 
 store of power meant to last a Hfetime? 
 Haste! Yes, in our age of timetables and 
 alarm clocks, haste is our god! But haste 
 makes waste, and America needs a move- 
 ment to conserve, not only her physical but 
 also her human and spiritual resources. 
 
 Are we Americans the masters of our fate, 
 as Henley sang? Or but the slaves of Des- 
 tiny, — who utilizes our ill-governed energies 
 to exploit a marvelous new hemisphere? We 
 have worked hard at the task — none harder. 
 But is it not time now to sit down and take 
 account? The forests are all cleared. The 
 wolves are fled before the ax of the pioneer. 
 The Indian has subsided to a harmless ward. 
 The winds and waves are harnessed to our 
 will. And the earth contributes of her treas- 
 ures for the comfort of humanity more gen- 
 erously and more amazingly than in any pre- 
 vious age or country of the world. Let us 
 take breath and look about us. Are there 
 not other things in life than dollars and div- 
 
48 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 idends? Are there not other forms of 
 achievement than that of developing earth's 
 resources? Are there not other ideals than 
 mere physical wealth and domination? 
 
 As one w^ho struggles in the thick of the 
 fight loses his perspective of the battle, so 
 perhaps the American who is working him- 
 self to death — he knows not why — may 
 miss somewhat of true vision, may waste 
 his efforts because his efforts are unguided. 
 Not mere activity, but well directed activity 
 is regarded by the wise, 
 "r If one hour spent in calm meditation will 
 clear up a difficult problem, inspire a new 
 method, or yield a new ideal of achievement, 
 is that hour not worth days of mere work? 
 The plan must precede the action, not the 
 action the plan; and Americans rush often 
 too hot-headedly into action without taking 
 time to plan. The Great War illustrates how 
 careful planning may defeat with ease the 
 savage activity of unorganized and ill-equip- 
 ped hordes. We make a god of quantity- — 
 but quality is more important. Not how 
 much we do, but how much we do of value, 
 is what counts. ; 
 
"THE WAY" 49 
 
 It would not seem to the strenuous Oc- 
 cidental that a model school could be con- 
 ducted by a principal who spent several 
 hours a day on the roof of his house in 
 dreamy meditation. Our ideal of a head 
 master is one who is rushing here and there, 
 dictating countless letters, meeting people, 
 giving speeches, taking violent exercise, and 
 living twenty-five hours a day. Yet Rabin- 
 dranath Tagore has made his school success- 
 ful, from every point of view; and he has 
 built up his unique institution along those 
 Oriental lines of calm poise and spiritual 
 insight. 
 
 What man would value the month's work 
 of a day-laborer with the hour's achievement 
 of a genius, who in that period of time dashes 
 of¥ an immortal poem or a melody destined 
 to enchant the world? 
 
 Democracy gives a false impression of 
 average values, enviously attempting" to ob- 
 literate all distinctions of superiority in 
 brain, temperament, and insight. Hence the 
 tendency in a new, raw, and crude social or- 
 ganism such as ours, to measure a man by 
 
so THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 the amount of work he does instead of by the 
 quahty of his achievements. 
 
 The man of dreams, of meditations, of 
 visions, is ill-appreciated in a race of work- 
 ers who conceive not the power his dreams 
 may exert over their activities. 
 
 It was dreams before action that produced 
 the French Revolution, — a faineant Rous- 
 seau who set the spark to one of the greatest 
 of social and political conflagrations. 
 
 And where, pray, are born those ideas 
 which are the seed of all action, save in the 
 lonely struggle of the Self with the prob- 
 lems of the Universe? j The world's great 
 creators are ever lonely men, — men who 
 must, at times, retire from the throng in 
 order to get a clear vision of the right. They 
 — the poets, the painters, the composers — re- 
 ceive their greatest inspirations in moments 
 of peace and tranquility. From the flowers of 
 spiritual calm they distill that perfume 
 which sweetens the harshness of ourdaily lifej 
 
 But were poets alone to appreciate the 
 value of meditation, of calm, and of non-ac- 
 tivity, what a minuscule proportion of hu- 
 manity would profit by these things! It is 
 
"THE WAV 51 
 
 not to the dreamer, already meditative by 
 nature, that one wishes to appeal, but to the 
 practical business man and to the world's 
 o'er-weary workers. 
 
 Can this habit of in-drawing, of cessation 
 from activity, be applied to business? It 
 would seem impossible. Yet I know a man 
 with the smooth, boyish face of a dreamer, 
 whose business, because he took time to 
 think and be original, in a period of real de- 
 pression increased above that of any pre- 
 vious year. He is one who has the daring to 
 free himself from routine and to rid himself 
 of all petty details. He may come to his office 
 and work hard all day, he may come for 
 only an hour, or he may not come at all. And 
 following thus the guidance of his inner per- 
 sonality, he conceives ideas which are con- 
 vertible into money. Here is success, meas- 
 ured even from the most materialistic stand- 
 point, for in our country money is the final 
 test of accomplishment. 
 
 Many a business man is beginning to real- 
 ize that a mind fresh, healthy, calm, is able 
 to achieve more in an hour than a mind 
 
52 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 fatigued and too harnessed to its task can 
 do in days. 
 
 Once convince the financier that ideas are 
 worth ten times their measure of mere work, 
 and you have him playing at golf, riding 
 horse-back, daring to be at ease wJrere others 
 are making themselves idealess by over- 
 work. It is a new doctrine, but one already 
 gaining many adherents. 
 
 The greater ability a business man has, 
 the less hours he spends in his office; and 
 decisions which involve millions are made 
 in a quiet discussion of half an hour. 
 
 It is the man of small conceptions and 
 petty caliber who is always working, a slave 
 to his task. Beads of perspiration stand out 
 upon his unthinking brow, and worry and 
 anxiety reign turbulent over a mind that has 
 never learned how to create. 
 
 For the subordinate in business to rise 
 above the tyranny of routine is difficult, so 
 long as his employer demands from him 
 mere work. Yet independence, originality, 
 rebellion against the slavery of petty tasks, 
 will in time raise clerks to managers and 
 make creators out of mechanicians. Cour- 
 
"THE WAY" 53 
 
 age, boldness, and assertion are the qualities 
 that make for success against obstacles. 
 !'i I would that all men of affairs were mys- 
 tic, in the true sense of the word. Mater- 
 ialism has had its day. Many are coming 
 to realize the existence of forces other than, 
 and superior to, themselves, — forces that 
 make for progress and success. 
 
 To rely upon one's self, upon one's inner 
 powers of accomplishment, is a rare gift; 
 but to rely upon a higher Power which con- 
 trols the movements of Destiny and holds 
 in its grasp every entity in the universe, that 
 is still a rarer gift, — and' that is to be a 
 mystic. 
 
 To the materialist this is babbling non- 
 sense, for he believes in no power higher than 
 himself; and before an audience of such, 
 mysticism had best hold its tongue. But 
 fortunately there is a spiritual breeze stir- 
 ring, gently making itself felt, moving the 
 stagnant pools of scepticism and heralding 
 the hope of a new dayf/ 
 
 Are there not already a host of business 
 men who in times of stress look above and 
 bevond themselves for aid? who turn to 
 
54 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 prayer in the midst of trouble and have 
 learned how to place their hands in the 
 hands of the Friend, that they may find 
 guidance? 
 
 Call it what you will. Call it Christian 
 Science, New Thought, or call it simply 
 Christianity, — there are more men who can 
 give testimony of these things than the 
 world dreams. People are shy of speaking 
 of such experiences. Your very neighbor 
 who walks so placidly to business in a 
 week of downward drift and frequent bank- 
 ruptcies, may be gathering, in prayer and 
 inward mediations, the power and the 
 guidance which is carrying him success- 
 fully through great and anxious issues. 
 He does not claim to be a mystic — would be 
 ashamed to confess to that appelation — but 
 such he is in the truest meaning of the word. 
 
 And where, pray, is mysticism of more 
 value than in business? No department of 
 life so sternly tests one's powers, or brings 
 such an immediate and emphatic response 
 to able efifort. Meditation which revolves 
 about itself in endless cobwebs is of no value 
 to the world. More and more as I grow 
 
"THE WAY" 55 
 
 older, meditative by temperament, do I ad- 
 mire the powers of the business man to 
 achieve. There is the test ! Dreaming with- 
 out achievement is a sorry return to make 
 the universe for shelter and life. Rightly do 
 men measure ability by its success in wrest- 
 ing a living from the world. I have no ulti- 
 mate quarrel with those who admire incomes. 
 There are other kinds of success — but in nine 
 cases out of ten one's earning capacity is the 
 correct measure of one's powers. 
 
 The greatest achievement of this century 
 will be found, I believe, in the application of 
 mysticism to business, — in the miracle of 
 Spirit breaking forth into natural increase, 
 making fat the land with corn and wine and 
 prospering all who trust its guidance. That 
 spirituality is the greatest source of power, 
 is the truth now crying to be heard. 
 
 "Nature strives not, and therefore she 
 accomplishes everything." The Oriental 
 thinkers have in the course of ages drawn 
 many lessons from Nature^ — but none more 
 deep, or more pregnant for humanity than 
 this great doctrine of Laotze's. It is not 
 difficult to see what it means. Everything 
 
56 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 in nature is content to fullfil its inner des- 
 tiny, not in ways of strife and strain, but in 
 peaceful, harmonious, gradual unfolding of 
 that which is within. The seed sends forth 
 a shoot, the shoot becomes a shrub, the shrub 
 becomes a mighty oak. But where in this 
 process can one observe anxiety, strain, or 
 undue haste ? A raindrop falling on the moun- 
 tain-side joins company with other rain- 
 drops; and the tiny streamlet trickling down 
 meets with other streamlets and becomes a 
 dashing brook, meets with other brooks and 
 forms a river. And here, where power is 
 greatest and achievement at a maximum, is 
 observed the greatest tranquility and poise. 
 The little mountain brook is dashing and 
 strenuous; but the river is mighty, majestic, 
 and calm. 
 
 How impressive to watch the current 
 sweep over a large dam. Dark masses of 
 water approach with a slow power the ob- 
 stacle over which they are to pass, — but 
 there is no fretting or straining. Each drop 
 holds its place, and is swept over the dam by 
 a destiny mightier than itself. When the 
 current is too low or too feeble to flow over. 
 
"THE WAY" 57 
 
 it calmly bides its time gathering power for 
 the onward drive. This is what Laotze 
 meant when he said, "Nature never strives." 
 
 But is Nature for this reason a helpless 
 faineant? Can it be said that in this seeming 
 inactivity she accomplishes nothing? Step 
 by step, almost imperceptible to the ob- 
 servation of man, Nature in her calm way 
 has formed our globe, has prepared it for 
 living forms, and has developed all of life 
 which we see about us here today. 
 
 The sun, that mighty symbol of unstriv- 
 ing power, has by its gentle radiative force 
 nursed into being every form of activity 
 which characterizes our globe. Lightning 
 and thunder pay tribute to its majesty. Cy- 
 clones and whirlwinds wear themselves out 
 beneath its gaze. But it shines on, — never 
 dimmed, never exhausted, calm and serene in 
 an eternal influence which outlasts every 
 form of cataclysmic might. 
 
 There are in Nature, as well as among 
 men, to be found busy-bodies, — strenuous 
 little currents of activity which have their 
 place in the stupendous whole; but they are 
 only the servants of those more regal forces 
 
58 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 whose action is harmonious, tranquil, and 
 unstriving. 
 
 ^^When will mankind learn that harmony, 
 not violence, is the keynote of the universe? 
 When will they learn to trust themselves, 
 childlike, to the mighty movements of that 
 Law which has called them into being; and 
 which will, in its own time, unfold to each 
 one his or her true destiny? J 
 
 "Every thing which is in due time for thee, 
 is in due time for me, O Universe, " is the 
 lesson which life taught a pagan sage. 
 
 There are times in which to act — and times 
 in which not to act. But worry never yet 
 has accomplished anything of worth. 
 
 The strenuous American, confiding only 
 in the strength of his right hand, seeks to 
 batter down the walls that obstruct his 
 path. Gallant but futile effort! When, if 
 one were to go his way patient in his trust 
 and effort, who knows but somewhere Des- 
 tiny would open to him the gate through 
 which she has meant from the beginning 
 that he should pass? 
 
 Is there a guidance that seeks to lead us 
 to success? Of this one can speak but veil- 
 
/7 
 
 "THE WAY" 59 
 
 edly.rThe greatest truths are wasted upon 
 unbelievers. Though a hundred Christs 
 and Buddhas and Laotzes were to bring 
 their message to the world pointing the way 
 to new and more glorious triumphs for hu- 
 manity, — yet would mankind, through its 
 terrible inertia of scepticism, being for the , 
 most part of little minds, lack the courage .Al^ jS^ 
 and the will to achieve that new success'^ yjr 
 
 Of what avail to offer what few prize? 
 Or what advantage, to speak of laws which 
 as yet humanity has not evolved enough to 
 use? 
 
 Yet here and there are men who dare to 
 trust these laws, — pioneers, who hesitate to 
 claim an understanding of that which is so 
 new and strange and epochal; that guidance 
 which, from sources one knows not of, like 
 mysterious currents of the ocean sweeps 
 one's life on to success. 
 
 A power more unknown than gravity, 
 stranger than electricity, seeks to rule our 
 lives. We may not analyze it — yet we may 
 use it when we know its ways. By yielding 
 to it we can command it. By confessing 
 ourselves inferior to it, it becomes our ser- 
 
60 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 vant. By claiming that we are nothing, 
 through its aid we become great and wise. 
 By listening to its voice of warning, we in- 
 stinctively avoid the hundred little pitfalls 
 of the world. By following its guidance, we 
 achieve mighty works without anxiety or 
 strain. For we are working as Nature works, 
 — and when at last we strive to do nothing, 
 we accomplish everything.'^ 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 THE OVERCOMING OF DESIRE 
 
 EACH great religion has contributed 
 something to the world's thought. 
 The unique contribution of Buddhism 
 is its doctrine of non-desire. 
 
 Buddha, beginning life with every advan- 
 tage of birth and position, surrounded with 
 all the pleasures that wealth can bestow up- 
 on the senses, discovered that life's joy lies 
 not in such. 
 
 Seven weary years in quest of joy he wan- 
 dered, seeking it through torture and nega- 
 tion of the body. Not here, however, the 
 source of joy, as his discerning heart dis- 
 covered. 
 
 Then came the illumination — simple 
 enough, as all great truths are simple. He 
 discovered that the cause of sorrow is desire; 
 that the cure for sorrow is the overcoming 
 of desire. When this light dawned upon 
 him, he went forth among his fellow-men 
 with shining face and woke into life a spark 
 
 6i 
 
62 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 in others which made their faces also shine. 
 
 A truth which makes people's faces shine 
 is a sublime truth. Not often does it come 
 to earth. Yet when it comes, it is as natural 
 as love, cheering as rays of sunshine, and as 
 powerful as the Creative word. Nothing can 
 prevent its spreading through the hearts of 
 men till ultimately it becomes imbedded in 
 the thought-structure of humanity. We 
 cannot now doubt that Love is the key to 
 life, or that Non-Desire is the door which 
 leads to happiness. 
 
 Those truths which the Great Ones have 
 wrought out in the loneliness of their spirit- 
 ual strivings, we lesser creatures prove cor- 
 rect by the experience of years. 
 
 It is hard for the young person to realize 
 what Non-Desire means, or what its value. 
 Each earth-bound soul is born a bundle of 
 desires, and it is part of the process of 
 growth to develop these desires. Hence to 
 say to the young, "Desire nothing," is to 
 talk to them in a strange language. That 
 keen ambition of youth; that thirst for plea- 
 sure, for knowledge, for experience ; that rest- 
 less spirit of enterprise which would try all 
 
THE OVERCOMING OF DESIRE 63 
 
 things and yet not be content; that intense 
 desire for fame, for glory, for self-exalta- 
 tion; and that impelling power of sex which 
 adolescence sets in motion, — all these brook 
 ill the spiritual command, "Cease to desire!" 
 
 But some learn lessons more quickly than 
 others. It is as if, made wise by the ex- 
 perience of many lives, they understood 
 even from childhood that which Destiny is 
 aiming at. It is not necessary for them to 
 suffer so many misfortunes as others in 
 order to hear the Truths that are knocking 
 at their door. A few bitter experiences, a 
 few sense-pleasures turned to ashes, suffice 
 to teach them that the road to happiness lies 
 not in the valley of desire. 
 
 To the meditative mind life gradually 
 makes clear the truth, that all material 
 things are perishable; nay, must in the very 
 nature of their being pass away. 
 
 Wealth brings a multitude of possessions. 
 But wealth is precarious, and even when its 
 massive proportions seem to assure a per- 
 manence, the soul may turn in loathing 
 from the very things which once allured. 
 
 To the lover in the ecstasy of passion 
 
64 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 love seems immortal, a possession of the 
 soul superior to time and change, a power 
 beyond the possibility of loss or hazard. 
 Yet passion wanes as it arises, and the red 
 rose which to-day entices the nightingale 
 to-morrow is withered away. Even that 
 love which has in it some element of the 
 divine is ever haunted by the fear of separa- 
 tion. For we live in a world of change; and 
 Destiny has never assured us that the souls 
 of those we love should stay always in 
 earth-bodies. Death, or even distance, may 
 plunge the heart in gloom. In an existence 
 phased in matter, a few miles of land or sea 
 may frustrate the dearest longings of the 
 soul. 
 
 And so the philosopher consoles himself 
 with not loving much. He seeks to dis- 
 engage himself from the net of circum- 
 stance, and to become unattached to the 
 things of earth. With stoic heart he sees 
 quite placidly his friends and loved ones 
 pass away, his possessions disappear, his 
 cherished ambitions fail. Why, he says, 
 should one set one's heart on the possession 
 of a trinket which may so easily be lost or 
 
THE OVERCOMING OF DESIRE 65 
 
 taken from one; or which may cease, upon 
 possession, to attract? And by analogy he 
 applies this reasoning to life itself, and 
 ceases to desire. 
 
 No one has so well expressed or so well 
 lived the stoic life as that great Emperor 
 who, having all, sacrificed in spirit all that 
 he had; and by the power of philosophy and 
 faith severed his soul from every earthly 
 tie. 
 
 Yet the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, 
 the Stoic, is not the deepest nor the truest 
 interpretation of the doctrine of non-desire. 
 ; We should not strive to love less, but to 
 love more. We should not seek to starve 
 our hearts, but to enlarge them to embrace 
 the universe. 
 
 Renunciation is not mere negation. We 
 gain little by cutting things off from us, or 
 by cutting ourselves from the world. 
 Neither asceticism nor stoicism solve life vf 
 nor satisfy the soul of man, which is des- 
 tined to own all things, not to discard them. 
 
 If by desire we mean attachment to 
 things external to the self, then it may be 
 said that spiritual evolution is measured by 
 
66 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 'i 
 the extent to which one has overcome de- 
 sire. If by desire, however, we mean a 
 reaching out for progress, for evolution, for 
 cosmic growth, then the status of a race or 
 of an individual may be measured by the 
 amount of this desire it or he possesses. 
 
 In other words, there are two kinds of 
 desire which must be clearly differentiated, 
 — one a desire for externals, and the other, 
 a desire for self-developmenfTl In ordinary 
 life the two are so closely mingled that it is 
 difficult for the uninitiated to conceive of 
 them as separate. Hence, when one says, 
 "Overcome desire," the average person 
 points the finger of scorn at those races 
 which have most followed this doctrine, 
 conspicuous for their cultural stagnation; 
 and then points proudly to the races of the 
 Occident, which by the very burning flame 
 of their desire have forged new links of 
 progress on the chain of life. He, then, 
 who would teach the doctrine of Non- 
 Desire to the West, must needs make his 
 doctrine clear. 
 
 Whatever tends to self-development is a 
 desire not by any means to be condemned. 
 
THE OVERCOMING OF DESIRE 67 
 
 The youth who, oppressed by poverty, 
 yearns so greatly for a college education 
 that he is willing to toil and endure hard- 
 ship for his degree, is surely not to be 
 despised. The person of curious turn of 
 mind who longs to travel, is not to be con- 
 demned if by might and main he forces his 
 way about the world. The artist who feels 
 an impelling desire to create is obeying a 
 heaven-sent impulse when he subordinates 
 everything else in life to his creation. And 
 is this not desire? 
 
 But there are other directions in which 
 the soul of man destined to send out 
 spiritual raySjto radiate itself, so to speak, Jv 
 in creative activity neglectful of this des- 
 tiny spends its efforts in the mere endeavor 
 to acquire, to heap up things external to 
 itself, — such as house and lands and lux- 
 uries and wealth and fame and immortal 
 descendants. It is this desire which Buddha 
 would condemn. Not only because it leads 
 to selfish action toward others, but chiefly 
 because it leads to unhappiness and 
 frustrates the soul's growth. 
 \He who desires strongly material pos- 
 
68 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 sessions is tempted to acquire them at the 
 expense of others. That is the substance 
 of the spiritual message of a Christ or 
 Buddha. fJOesire leads to injustice, to 
 cruel competition, to brute selfishness. And 
 selfishness separates the soul from God. 
 Desire lies at the very root of the competi- 
 tive system w^hich the Leaders of Humanity 
 have tried to displace by the system of co- 
 operation. 
 
 In his vision of the Kingdom, Christ 
 portrayed a life on earth freed from aggres- 
 sion, from selfishness, from the mad clutch 
 after wealth and position. Such an ideal is 
 chimerical, Utopian, and impossible of 
 achievement, say the devotees of the com- 
 petitive system, w^hose conception of life 
 is to w^rest as much as possible from the 
 world about them. That humanity can 
 live and let live, is to them incredible. If 
 they are to succeed, it is because they hope 
 to cut off their competitors from profit. 
 
 Yet there are some, even now, who con- 
 ceive that a true bargain is one in which 
 both sides find profit; who dare to believe 
 that the earth holds enough for all; and who 
 
THE OVERCOMING OF DESIRE 69 
 
 maintain that complete civilization means a 
 point reached in human progress where the 
 welfare of society is put before the welfare 
 of the individual. 
 
 No amount of legislation, of doctrinaire, 
 or of socialistic effort, will establish co- 
 operation upon earth until men have 
 remitted somewhat their intensity of desire 
 after things external. So long as men 
 desire wealth above the ability to produce 
 wealth; so long as they strive for success 
 rather than to make themselves worthy of 
 success ; so long as worldly position means 
 more to them than personality; so long 
 will the world remain a jungle in which the 
 strong prey upon the weak, only themselves 
 to fall a prey to others stronger. 
 
 Will humanity not learn at last that 
 Destiny prefers proficiency to scheming, 
 ability to dollars, greatness of soul to social 
 sanctions? Will men not learn to trust 
 themselves to God, who desires nothing 
 more than to discover those worthy of 
 success? / 
 
 When Christ said, "Take no thought for 
 
70 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 the morrow" — "Seek ye first the kingdom 
 of heaven and all these things shall be 
 added unto you," — he was trying to teach 
 humanity that faith in Destiny which will 
 one day change the world from a contagion 
 of cruelty to a heaven of peace and love; 
 from a muddle of brute competition to a 
 mysterious provision which feeds all who 
 trust themselves to universal currents. 
 
 It takes faith! It takes discernment! 
 It takes courage! The coward fears, and 
 seizes from his neighbor's wealth enough to 
 bulwark him against distress. The spiritual 
 man comprehends that he whose attitude is 
 one of bestowal becomes the special favorite 
 of Fortune, the recipient of all worldly and 
 spiritual necessities, — which he gets with- 
 out desire, without struggle, without com- 
 petition. Because he gives all, he receives 
 all. Because he alienates himself from the 
 world of the brute, he is initiated into the 
 city of Celestial Splendors, — into which are 
 being gathered, slowly, sparsely, those of 
 humanity who perceive the Shining Ray. 
 Verily this is a mystery! And none can 
 
THE OVERCOMING OF DESIRE 71 
 
 comprehend it, save those whose hearts are 
 aflame with the love of the Kingdom. 
 
 * * ^f 
 
 The danger in desire lies in desiring con- 
 trary to the Universal plan. Such desires 
 must in their very nature fail and leave 
 their possessor plunged in sorrow. But 
 there is no law against desiring the things 
 of the spirit. Patience, gentleness, love, 
 purity, knowledge, wisdom, creative power, 
 — he who desires these things and sets his 
 heart upon them, has all the aid of the 
 heavenly powers toward their attainment. 
 For the spiritual resources are infinite; 
 and he who gains more love robs no one of 
 that gift, but adds to the store of universal 
 love. This is what the sage calls creation; 
 for it adds to, and detracts not from, the 
 Treasuries of Destiny. 
 
 And the way of such desire is the way of 
 peace. Here there is no conflict, no com- 
 petition, no brutal selfish struggle for exist- 
 ence. To the man who has gained this 
 
^2. THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 haven, it is like running from a tempest- 
 tossed sea into a harbor tranquil and safe. It 
 is the same life, lived amid the same 
 surroundings, — yet so different. Others 
 around him are still fighting, still fearing, 
 still apprehensive of failure and extinction, 
 while he alone travels securely the way of 
 Peace. 
 
 "Take no thought for the morrow!" 
 This ye cannot believe, ye of little faith, — 
 but must plan and fight and worry, striving 
 to attain that which Destiny does not desire 
 ye to attain, expecting vainly those things 
 that never come. For Destiny has its own 
 plans for you. Yea, even for thee, my friend, 
 and would not leave thee without guidance. 
 Yet how can it guide thee, who knowest not 
 how to follow guidance ! 
 
 This is the Tragedy of life, — that 
 humanity should plunge its way self-willed, 
 blindly, through brambles and briars and 
 morasses of fear, when the Path lies so clear 
 and bright for those who see. 
 
 And how for this have the Leaders of 
 Humanity wept, yea, bewailed the world's 
 needless sufferings. Standing on the 
 
THE OVERCOMING OF DESIRE 73 
 
 heights they would point the road to 
 happiness. Yet few, so few, have dared 
 to follow. And They must then return in 
 martyrdom to the Heaven of Significances 
 and report that man is not spiritually 
 mature; that like a brute he must needs 
 still fight and struggle for existence, 
 because he will not see that he is expending 
 his efforts over things of little import while 
 the great world-tasks remam undone. 
 
 Shall it be that, adolescent, as it were, we 
 humans shall suddenly develop into man- 
 hood? Are we near the epoch of maturity? 
 Is the dawning of the promised day of peace 
 and love and worship near at hand? 
 
 We know not what the Great Ones plan. 
 Yet many souls, incarnated in this age, burn 
 to teach humanity new truths; and in the 
 Realm of Causation mighty forces are work- 
 ing to hasten evolution. A spirit is brood- 
 ing over the deep, as in the first days of 
 creation; brooding to bring forth, not sea 
 and sky and land, nor fish, nor fowl, nor 
 crawling things on earth, but to bring forth 
 light and truth and grace, and the knowl- 
 edge of God. 
 
74 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 In the throes of this New Age it were well 
 that no person desire aught for himself. 
 But to be on fire with the love of God; to 
 possess insatiable yearning for the King- 
 dom; to strive night and day for spiritual 
 wisdom; — this is the true desire. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 DESTINY AND THE SOUL 
 
 IN the Orient men still believe in an 
 over-ruling God. Here such beUef has 
 gone out of fashion. Ideas of a 
 beneficent Providence once had a place in 
 our philosophy of life. Now they are held 
 only by the ignorant; for educated people 
 know too much to-day to believe in any 
 power greater than themselves. 
 
 But the Orientals are childHke. They 
 have a sublime faith in the Universe which 
 makes them oblivious to the petty cares of 
 life. They do not worry about trifles, 
 because they think that what is to happen 
 will happen anyway, and the best course is 
 to bear disappointment and sorrow with 
 resignation. 
 
 The Mohammedans are extreme fatalists, 
 believing that every event in their lives is 
 determined before birth, written in their 
 book of life, and cannot be avoided. This 
 fatalism rules their every act. In business 
 
 75 
 
76 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 they do not strive for customers as do their 
 Christian competitors. If Allah is to send 
 them customers, those customers will come 
 without being dragged in by the button- 
 hole. Hence the Turkish merchant has a 
 dignified and calm tranquility which raises 
 him above the pettiness of ordinary retail 
 business. He is the master of life and not 
 the slave of it. 
 
 The same calmness characterizes his atti- 
 tude toward death, either of himself or of 
 his friends. Since that supreme event of 
 life cannot be avoided or delayed, it is met 
 wth simple resignation and without display 
 of grief. 
 
 Even in his every-day acts the Moham- 
 medan shows that naive piety of which the 
 word "Inshallah" (God willing) is symbolic. 
 He never plans for the future without modi- 
 fying his statements by this "Inshallah," 
 signifying his resignation to God's will 
 above and beyond his own needs and plans. 
 
 The phrase "Deo Volente" used by our 
 ancestors is now obsolete, it being con- 
 sidered absurd to take into account at all 
 the will of God in making plans. We 
 
DESTINY AND THE SOUL 77 
 
 moderns are a bold and boisterous race; 
 and what we plan and determine upon we 
 are going to carry through, strenuously 
 and gloriously, whether God wills it or not. 
 We will carry it through, or die in the 
 attempt. Of course we have not become 
 quite such masters of Life as to have mas- 
 tered Death. There we succumb, crying 
 in the face of such a destiny that we are 
 "masters of our fate," meaning, I suppose, 
 that though we are mastered at the end by 
 Death, we refuse to acknowledge the fact. 
 
 Yes, the Oriental is a fatalist — deeply and 
 consistently so. From the Golden Horn to 
 the Peak of Fujiyama the belief in destiny 
 is so strong as to tinge the whole Oriental 
 philosophy of life, producing not neces- 
 sarily stagnation though such is the current 
 criticism of it. Japanese fatalism in her 
 war with China produced such a heroism in 
 the face of death, such a spirit of self- 
 sacrifice, that it proved to be a quality both 
 efficient and triumphant. 
 
 Fatalism in China, while it is open to 
 criticism as to its results to-day, when con- 
 sidered in the light of history must be 
 
78 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 credited with a large share of the stability 
 of that ancient race, which has endured the 
 shocks of destiny for ten times the number 
 of centuries that this New World has been 
 known. And China still exists — amorphous, 
 it is true — weak, helpless, it may seem, — yet 
 as I believe, destined to play still a mighty 
 part in the world's progress. 
 
 The Chinese belief in destiny is less child- 
 like and naive than that of the Mohamme- 
 dans. In a logical analysis of the theory of 
 destiny, there appears that contradiction 
 which is so inherent in any thought of a 
 divine control. If all of our actions are 
 directed by some high Destiny, where then 
 is our free will, our sense of personality? 
 And what the need of exerting oneself at all? 
 
 The Turks, being simple-minded and 
 unmetaphysical, accept the doctrine of 
 fatalism without seeing its inevitable con- 
 tradictoriness. Our ancestors, in their 
 theology, found this the greatest stumbling 
 block, — a paradox, which as Milton tells us, 
 kept the fallen angels in a rapt discussion 
 from sunrise until sunset. 
 
 No human mind has as yet solved this 
 
DESTINY AND THE SOUL 79 
 
 puzzle, or so explained the theory of destiny 
 as to unite harmoniously its apparent 
 opposites. Hence the childlike mind of the 
 Turk accepts absolutely the belief in a 
 predetermined life without free-will; and 
 the childlike mind of the American accepts 
 as absolutely the belief in utter freedom of 
 the will without an over-ruling Providence. 
 
 Is it to be expected that the riddles of 
 the universe may be made apparent to 
 the unthinking mind? In our desire to have 
 everything clear and simple in our theory 
 of life, do we not do an injustice to the 
 universe by denying the possibility of all 
 things which do not fit into our simple 
 scheme, — rejecting those ideas for which we 
 have no mental pigeon-hole? 
 
 We have for several centuries, in the 
 Occident, been trying to analyze the 
 Universe; and several schemes have been 
 suggested whereby man and the universe, 
 either with or without God, find their 
 solution. Yet one may be pardoned for 
 thinking at times that the universe is be- 
 yond our power of analysis — at least by 
 ordinary methods of cerebration. 
 
8o THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 Let us make, then, the unbelievable 
 assumption, that two contradictories may- 
 be at the same time true. Let us assume 
 that there is a Destiny which guides our 
 lives, while at the same time we are free to 
 act ; and for the moment pleading guilty tx> 
 the illogical, see how this belief works out. 
 
 The ancient Chinese had a saying, 
 "Heaven appoints a man's destiny, but he 
 himself must fulfill it." Our primitive 
 ancestors the Anglo-Saxons, great believers 
 in Destiny, reflect their theory as to Fate 
 in "Beowulf," where it is said that "the 
 Wierd (Fate) oft saveth a man, if daughty 
 his valor." 
 
 This, then, is the conception which I 
 would have the reader consider for a 
 moment. Destiny is conditional — not 
 absolute; and the condition necessary for 
 its outcome is one's own power of will and 
 of achievement. Success or failure is not 
 thrust upon us by some arbitrary power, 
 but the possibility of success along certain 
 lines is offered us by Destiny, — conditional, 
 first, upon our ability to perceive this offer; 
 
DESTINY AND THE SOUL 8i 
 
 secondly, upon our willingness to co-operate 
 with Destiny in working things out. 
 
 It is as if a king should offer to some 
 favorite a post of honor and high privilege, 
 an opportunity which the courtier might 
 or might not rise to fulfill; or as if a father 
 should destine for his son a partnership in 
 his business, yet should say not a word of 
 this to the lad, until he proved himself by 
 effort and accomplishment worthy of this 
 high place. 
 
 In such a view of Destiny there is no 
 abnegation of free will. Rather does 
 the outcome depend upon naught else but 
 the sheer power of will in the individual to 
 carve through opposition to success. 
 Never are the weak of will advanced by 
 Destiny — nor does she pour success into the 
 laps of mortals with blind favoritism. 
 
 But while achievement must depend upon 
 man's own exertions, opportunities present 
 themselves to one beloved of Destiny in 
 ways marvelous to see. No man, in one 
 sense, can be said to make his opportunities. 
 They are the favors of Fortune, brought to 
 his door that he may fulfill her scheme for 
 
82 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 him. Yet in another sense those very 
 opportunities are drawn to one by one's 
 capacity and growth. Great opportunities 
 are never sent to pigmy men. 
 
 Not only must one have reached a certain 
 capacity in order to attract large opportun- 
 ities, but one must have also the perception 
 to realize these opportunities when they 
 come. Many men of large powers are, 
 through their own conceit and hardness, 
 unperceptive of the larger opportunities 
 that pass their door, — and so fail to achieve 
 that success which Destiny would offer 
 them. 
 
 By cultivating perception, open-minded- 
 ness, adaptability, and a certain facile 
 quality of soul, one favored by Fortune can 
 be guided, as a ship by favoring winds, into 
 the very haven of success. Since man has 
 not that range of vision nor that power of 
 foreseeing which is possessed by Destiny, 
 his plans for himself must ever fall short of 
 Destiny's plans for him. Hence the neces- 
 sity for overcoming desire, for freeing one's 
 life from any fixed scheme or plan. Free- 
 dom is desired of Destiny, freedom from all 
 
DESTINY AND THE SOUL 83 
 
 human ties which would prevent her Hero 
 from following her standard. Shall one 
 from siren's song be deaf to Fortune's call? 
 Shall one through the fascination of earthly- 
 faces be blind to Fortune's beauty? Shall 
 one by human, self-made plans, be so im- 
 prisoned that one cannot take the open road 
 when Fortune points the way? Not of 
 such does Destiny appoint her workmen; 
 only from the free of heart and soul, the 
 unconfined, the severed. 
 
 It may be said, then, that the ordinary 
 individual has no destiny and receives no 
 guidance. He forms a unit undistinguished 
 from the mass, merely because he fails to 
 distinguish himself. Destiny does not see 
 him. She has no particular plans for him, 
 save as he forms a part of her larger schemes 
 for racial and planetary evolution. 
 
 For as there is a destiny for individuals, 
 so there is a destiny for nations, for races, 
 and for humanity itself, — a destiny which 
 may be achieved or failed of, according to 
 the powers of achievement, the faith, and 
 the perseverance of said race, or nation, or 
 planetary mass. 
 
84 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 In epochs when the human race is 
 spiritual, perceptive, pure, devoted to ideals, 
 faithful and amenable to guidance, Destiny 
 can achieve more for the world in a single 
 century than elsewise in milleniums. 
 
 Were humanity to-day to become aware 
 of the glorious favors destined for it — were 
 it to grow worthy of the honors with 
 which God would crown all mortals — this 
 Twentieth Century might then become the 
 greatest epoch of the whole world's history, 
 before or after; for those who know whisper 
 that this is to be the Century of Divine 
 Gifts. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 RENUNCIATION 
 
 TO most people personality, the 
 feeling of a separate existence, is 
 the most eternal reality; but to the 
 Oriental it is an illusion, such as the sun 
 would make reflected from a broken prism. 
 There are not many rays of light, but only 
 One which fills the universeTj But through 
 the error of man's eyes, which fail to focus 
 on reality, the universe seems broken up into 
 innumerable entities, each trying to absorb, 
 to crush, to dominate the rest J 
 
 Every man of genius whose early efforts 
 have been inspired by the desire to excel, to 
 shine above all others, has later in his 
 development found himself at a point where 
 desire for mere glory was an obstacle to 
 work; and if he has persisted in thus child- 
 like trying to grasp a moth, he has dis- 
 covered to his dismay, and the world 
 discovers too, that he has lost his genius. 
 For Destiny, which lends us playthings in 
 
 85 
 
86 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 our childhood in order to awaken sensibility, 
 wishes us to throw aside these toys when we 
 reach man's estate; and him who persists in 
 playing. Destiny deprives of the abihty to 
 work. 
 
 Ambition as a desire for self-unfoldment 
 Nature smiles upon; but that ambition 
 which seeks to exalt the personality to a 
 position of ostentatious tyranny must ever 
 meet the fate of Wolsey, who cried : 
 
 "Had I but served my God with half the 
 zeal I served my king, he would not in mine 
 age have left me naked to mine enemies." 
 
 Pride is the food of personality. The 
 ego feeds upon it and spawns from it a 
 loathsome brood of unlovely qualities. Pride 
 is hostile to the purposes of the Universe; 
 and pride, unless it is mercifully crushed by 
 sorrow, may in time cause the destruction 
 of the soul which fosters it. For Destiny 
 does not tolerate long that which balks its 
 progress. If one looks at the history of 
 men and nations, one finds ample evidence 
 of this truth, that the gods inflame with 
 pride those whom they wish to destroy. 
 
 Pride is the most dangerous enemy which 
 
RENUNCIATION 87 
 
 besieges the gates of the soul. It is ever 
 active in temptation. It flies the white flag 
 of truce, only to fall upon the self in new 
 and subtler attacks. 
 
 \Not great armor and weapons of massive 
 size, but the lowliness of humility and the 
 sense of universal love, overcome pride and 
 sever one from personality. He who loves 
 self loses that very self which he loves. He 
 who loses self rises sublime into that 
 inheritance of glory which awaits true 
 Manhood-/ 
 
 Personality is not the soul's maturity. 
 It is the seed out of which by transub- 
 stantiation may spring the full and ripened 
 ear. But the seed which wishes to remain 
 a seed, by that very wish cuts itself from 
 life and from the great transforming pro- 
 cesses of Nature; and, as nothing in the 
 universe stands still, since it will not grow 
 it is condemned ultimately to decay. 
 
 Life retreats from him who pursues it, 
 as a fascinating girl eludes her lover; but 
 to him who has learned the secret of 
 renunciation, life comes bearing gifts of 
 love, fulfilling all things, devoting herself to 
 
88 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 Man, her master. The most active courting 
 cannot awaken in a woman's heart that love 
 which she bestows voluntarily upon him 
 who is strong enough to command her soul. 
 And ISO in the events of Fortune, that man 
 achieves most who is seemingly indifferent 
 to success; who calmly goes his way, intent 
 upon the deed rather than upon its result; 
 self-controlled, patient, waiting as only 
 Nature can teach us how to wait, for the 
 seed to grow to blossom and the blossom to 
 bear fruit. Upon such a man Destiny 
 showers her greatest favors. Because he is 
 free from desire, all things are bestowed 
 upon him. Fortune pledges him her troth 
 and remains faithful to him so long as he 
 is spiritual enough not to be made dizzy by 
 her charms. 
 
 Such is the nature of Renunciation,; a 
 doctrine little understood by Occidentals. 
 The secret of renunciation belongs to age 
 rather than to youth. The ancient races of 
 the East, having striven hotly for the things 
 of their desire only to see desire fail, awoke 
 centuries, yea, millenniums ago to the folly 
 of setting the heart upon those things which 
 
RENUNCIATION 89 
 
 are but the floating jetsam of life's tides. 
 Solomon, having tried all, cried, "All is 
 vanity"; and the w^ise men of the East, 
 discovering these truths, evolved the doc- 
 trine of renunciation which is in a way the 
 keystone of Oriental thought. 
 
 "Submission to Allah" is the meaning of 
 the word "Islam," a submission so inter- 
 penetrating the daily life of Moslems that 
 their very forms of prayer are expressions 
 of the soul's submission to its Maker. QBut 
 submission is not renunciation. The one is 
 passive; while the other is an active, virile 
 quality of the spirit without gaining which 
 no proselyte can walk far along the path of 
 mysticism, j 
 
 How fofeign such a quality to our Viking 
 race ! A young race, lusty, ferocious, grasp- 
 ing at all things, trying the world and in 
 the first flush of manhood finding it fair! 
 To the inheritors of this Berseker rage for 
 living, not renunciation but the apotheosis 
 of the strenuous appeals. 
 
 A great musical genius of this race, as 
 great in philosophic thought as in the 
 melodies which thronged his brain, Wagner, 
 
90 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 in his "Tristan and Isolde" harmonized the 
 two ideals of the East and West, — glorious 
 red blood's rage and striving after joy with 
 as glorious ideal of renunciation. This 
 opera was written while he was in love 
 himself with one who inspired all his work, 
 yet denied him that which his love craved; 
 denied him because duty to another bade 
 her renounce the earthly form and expres- 
 sion of the soul's striving after comradeship. 
 Into "Tristan and Isolde" Wagner poured 
 forth his heart's anguish; and into its final 
 motifs wove a single golden theme. 
 Renunciation, which he had gleaned from 
 Eastern reading. 
 
 \jrrue renunciation ever comes thus after 
 striving. It lies at the end of the hot 
 pursuit of life. It is earned only by pain 
 and anguish — not an easy gift poured into 
 waiting hands. Think not that renuncia- 
 tion is a passive quality, a thing for children 
 to play with. Think not that it is loss, or 
 narrowing of life's horizon. Only when the 
 soul renounces, is it free. Only when it 
 realizes that it is no longer the slave of 
 objectivity, does it perceive the infinite 
 
RENUNCIATION 91 
 
 richness of its nature. To let go, to bravely 
 hoist the tiding anchor and set sail; then 
 free, joyous, to breast life's sea with the 
 infinite eternal horizon ever unfolding as 
 the soul progresses, such is renunciation"^ 
 
 Do we think w^e can escape sacrifice ? As 
 easily escape breathing! It is the law of 
 life. It is the necessity of choosing. To 
 angels there is no such law, as there is no 
 free will. I But to man is given freedom, a 
 soul resolute, daring, created for but one 
 effort, the effort of will. We are always 
 choosing. And every time we choose one 
 of two alternatives, we sacrifice the second. 
 There is no other way. 
 
 In choosing mundane things we sacrifice 
 the spiritual. Very well, if this gives us 
 perfect satisfaction, let us forget the soul 
 exists, let us surround ourselves with 
 objectivity, let us chase illusions. Destiny 
 would deprive none of happiness. But when 
 the things about us fail to satisfy, and we 
 begin to choose the higher spiritual things, 
 is it any sorrow to give up the lower? If it 
 were, then were the Universe unjust, then 
 were God and Man irreconcilable? Herein 
 
92 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 lies the secret of renunciation, that it gives 
 perfect joy. When we choose the things of 
 the spirit and sacrifice the things of the 
 flesh, it is without one pang of regret or else 
 our sacrifice is vain. 
 
 Those who feel that in such sacrifice they 
 are losing a possibility of pleasure are not 
 ready for this step. For renunciation is not 
 sorrowful but joyous. 
 
 The time must come in the growth of the 
 soul when all desires are renounced. A 
 distinct limit marks the boundaries of 
 individualism. So far can its power go, and 
 no farther. The greatest genius and the 
 most powerful personal will can mould 
 events, can apparently dictate the world's 
 destiny, for a time. Then the crash comes. 
 Let but Jove nod and the proud accomplish- 
 ments of years tumble down ineffective. 
 
 Humanity should now have reached the 
 point of learning that power cannot long 
 be employed personally against the supreme 
 Universal Will. The greatest characters 
 are those who have learned how to sub- 
 merge themselves in God, how to make 
 their wills but channels of the Divine Will. 
 
RENUNCIATION 93 
 
 Then there is no limit, save infinity, to their 
 power of accompUshment and their power 
 of growth.^ 
 
 This earth is about to become again a 
 battle-ground between the Divine Forces 
 and those who would use their wills for 
 personal ends. Men have suddenly awak- 
 ened to the marvelous powers of the will 
 and they amuse themselves like children in 
 playing with these powers, — hypnotizing 
 others, forcing others to their desires, sug- 
 gesting subtly their wishes upon others. 
 This is the great crime of the Twentieth 
 Century. Not physical molestation but 
 psychical brutality. Let those who would 
 thus assert their personal wills, know that 
 the punishment for such a sin equals its 
 enormity. God will not tolerate the selfish 
 expression of personality. Destruction is 
 the karma of all who oppose their wills to 
 His. 
 
 ^ut in the New Age who will rule? 
 Those who are pure channels of the Divine. 
 Those who have submerged their will in the 
 One and only Will. Those who have no 
 selfish aims and who seek not to attach their 
 
94 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 fellows as slaves to their own personal 
 desires. 
 
 Renunciation brings power, but power 
 must not be the motive of renunciatiof 
 
 )^ 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A WORLD OF MATTER AND A WORLD 
 OF FAITH 
 
 THIS is a world of matter. That such 
 is the fact, few would dispute. It 
 is the report which all our senses 
 bring us, the undeniable truth which forces 
 itself upon us in the many catastrophes and 
 suffering of life — for all our sorrows are 
 caused by this, that the soul has desires to 
 which the material world opposes obstacles. 
 
 Aristotle, milleniums ago, resolved life 
 into terms of matter and of spirit; and saw 
 that all the problems of earthly existence 
 arose from the obstinacy, the obdurance, 
 and the resisting quality of matter to the 
 will of spirit. 
 
 Reflect how matter hems us in on every 
 side; how the soul, struggHng to express 
 itself, fails because it must express itself 
 through a medium which resists, often 
 perversely it would seem, the effort to 
 
 95 
 
96 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 organize it into tei-ms harmonious with 
 spirit. 
 
 The artist has a vision, — but with paints 
 and brushes, with fingers too stiff for the 
 task, upon a cold and unresponsive canvass, 
 can but poorly reproduce the glory which 
 he saw and would make manifest. 
 
 Upon the inner eye of a sculptor is born 
 a dazzling dream of beauty, which he can 
 show the world, — how? Only by handling 
 for hours and days a form of matter 
 which represents the most material part of 
 the earth, its earthy substance. This clay 
 he moulds, as well as he may, into a form 
 corresponding to his vision. But what a 
 poor resemblance! Can clay express the 
 soul's fair dreams? 
 
 And even yet his task is not accomplished, 
 for in order to express himself in matter he 
 has been obliged to use a form of matter 
 which, though somewhat fluent and obedient 
 to his creative will, is unenduring. Now 
 that this task is finished he must begin 
 another task, — that of chiselling in marble, 
 which is durable, a form similar to that in 
 clay. Here he will have achieved something 
 
A WORLD OF MATTER AND FAITH 97 
 
 that will last and that in a measure 
 expresses his ideal. But against what 
 difficulties ! 
 
 The sculptor, perspiring at the gigantic 
 task of carving huge blocks of marble into 
 forms of spiritual conception, well sym- 
 bolizes the task the soul confronts when it 
 would mould matter to its will. 
 
 The very categories of space and time, 
 without which existence here were impos- 
 sible, are obstacles to the desires of man. 
 We long to be with a friend a thousand 
 miles away. If our will is strong enough 
 we can accomplish our desire — but at the 
 expense of money (which means labor), of 
 time, and of annoyance. 
 
 We long to see the world, to explore our 
 terrestrial habitation, — but we are confined 
 by birth and circumstances to a little 
 country town whose mental vision is no 
 broader than its tiny hill-girt horizon. 
 Here genius without will would perish like 
 a wild beast in a trap. Fortunate that 
 genius is synonomous with will, and finds a 
 way, sooner or later, to express itself — 
 
98 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 though often at the cost of health, reason, 
 and perhaps Ufe! 
 
 Even the petty annoyances of Hfe, which 
 Hke the swarming of mosquitoes make 
 miserable our daily round, are seen to rise 
 from the perversity of matter. A draft 
 upon our backs, a vile smell across the 
 street, mud in our path, hateful persons 
 thrown across our way, bacteriologic guests 
 whose presence, uninvited, causes us fever 
 and debility and irenders useless the body — 
 the only means Destiny has given the soul 
 to express itself with, — all these difficulties 
 come from living in a world of matter. 
 
 A Carlyle suffering from dyspepsia; a 
 Nietzsche gone mad; a Napoleon pacing out 
 his grim despair on St. Helena; a Mac- 
 Donald dying of starvation because his 
 music was too late appreciated; a Hamlet 
 placed in the dilemma of perpetual shame 
 or of doing that most criminal of human 
 acts, a murder, — are not these, at the 
 bottom, material tragedies, tragedies which 
 would never have existed in a world more 
 fluent to the touch of spirit? 
 
 One can conceive of another plane of 
 
A WORLD OF MATTER AND FAITH 99 
 
 existence, phased in far subtler forms of 
 matter quickly responsive to the will, where 
 the soul could live in joy and peace, sur- 
 rovmding itself with all that it desires; 
 happy in the midst of love and perfect 
 beauty; and creating, by the mere effort of 
 the subjective will, entourage and exterior 
 expression. Such, the mystic claims, is the 
 nature of the world of spirit. 
 
 Why, then, this disparity? .Why has the 
 soul of man been exiled here, in an environ- 
 ment hostile to his inner being, in a material 
 world which resists his every effort to 
 progress. 
 
 There can be but one answer. It is to 
 develop the soul's creative will that it was 
 submerged in matter. As the mystic views 
 this worldly life it is a vast school, whose 
 tasks have but one aim; to strengthen and 
 increase the will of man. Every obstacle 
 surmounted, every difficulty overcome, 
 every ingenious device by which man mas- 
 ters his environment, — magnify within 
 him the confidence and power and creative 
 greatness of his soul, rendering it akin to 
 
loo THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 the Divine in its ability to mould matter to 
 its will. 
 
 For matter is not really the harsh, 
 impossible medium that it would seem. 
 Handled by the Divinity itself, it is easily 
 fluent to His will, harmonious, obedient, 
 joyously evolving into more and more mag- 
 nificent forms of usefulness and beauty. 
 Matter has no terrors for Spirit — because 
 Spirit is causal and matter is but its creation 
 and its servant. 
 
 As man, then, develops gradually into the 
 enjoyment of his spiritual birthright, more 
 and more will he too be able to control 
 matter, to employ it, to dictate to it, and to 
 mould it harmoniously to his will. 
 
 First, in his intellectual awakening, by 
 means of science and sheer logic, man has 
 grappled with Nature and harnessed her in 
 a small way to his desires. Modern man 
 needs not to be told the marvels of science — 
 for he deifies it, worships it, exalts it to a 
 place in his heart which God alone should 
 hold. But what modern man needs is to be 
 told that material science is not all — that as 
 an expression and development of the mere 
 
A WORLD OF MATTER AND FAITH loi 
 
 brain of man, it can never equal the divine 
 science of the soul, which has a capacity to 
 create to a degree infinitely beyond the 
 capacity of reason. 
 
 Let those who doubt this statement file it 
 away and hold it in abeyance until some 
 strange, inner experience confirms its truth. 
 For the spiritual truths are always here, 
 but are perceived only by those who see. 
 
 That which causes the greatest confusion 
 of the soul towards materialism is the fact 
 that the soul is here incarnated, lodged in a 
 physical body, surrounded immediately by 
 flesh, through whose mediation only does it 
 at first become aware of existence. Hence 
 the tendency to confuse Being itself with 
 matter, and Spirit with flesh. 
 
 There are many, especially in Western 
 countries, who cannot conceive of them- 
 selves save in terms of flesh and blood. 
 The solidity of limbs and muscles, the 
 adaptability of the physical structure to the 
 demands of the will, produce in them the 
 feeling that the outer garment is the Self. 
 
 They say. "I am weak," "I am sick," 
 "I have failed," — when thev mean this of 
 
102 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 their body. Nowhere is this confusion 
 between body and soul so great, or materi- 
 ahsm so apparent, as in the phenomenon 
 of death. When those who are beloved die, 
 to the materialist they seem to perish 
 utterly and be compounded with the soil 
 from which they sprung. And in reflecting, 
 themselves, upon death, it is the destruction 
 of the body that appals them. I know a 
 woman whom reflection upon the dread 
 decay that Death might cause her fair 
 young body drove into despondency and 
 neurasthenia. 
 
 The Orient has very little of such materi- 
 alism, save where European philosophy 
 has introduced it. The Arab, Turk, Persian, 
 Hindu, do not conceive themselves as 
 merely flesh, — nor is Death feared among 
 them — Death, the Cup-bearer of the 
 Spheres, as he is poetically called. 
 
 The practice of meditation, in a formal 
 or casual way, is a great means of awaken- 
 ing the soul to a sense of its separateness 
 from flesh. The Hindu includes meditation 
 among his religious practices — as do also all 
 mystic orders among Mohammedans — a 
 
A \AORLD OF MATTER AXD FAITH 103 
 
 continuous spiritual concentration which 
 lasts from one to three hours at a time. In 
 this state the Self is felt to exist apart from 
 body. Looking down at one's limbs, one is 
 aware of them only by the sense of sight, 
 for all other sensation has been merged into 
 the mystic "Halet" which is the goal of 
 dervish and of yogi; and the sight, report- 
 ing the existence of this flesh, reports it as 
 something separate from the individual 
 personality, — an instrument which is now 
 asleep but which can be awakened by the 
 very will which sent it to sleep, and can be 
 made to serve the needs and purposes of the 
 personality to which it is attached. 
 
 A more unstudied and less conscious 
 form of meditation is instinctively prac- 
 tised by those whose lives are led in open 
 spaces — as they gaze across the vastnesses 
 of deserts, or the limitless expanse of ocean, 
 or looking up at night lose themselves in 
 reverie upon the stars and constellations 
 studding the midnight sky. Those who live 
 close to nature are never intrinsically 
 materialistic. 
 
 In Christianity there has been no formal 
 
104 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 practice of meditation, save in monasticism 
 and the mysticism of the Catholic Church. 
 When this practice was abandoned by the 
 Protestant Church, with it was lost much 
 spiritual knowledge and faith; and the seeds 
 were sown of that materialism which, 
 sweeping over cultured Europe, has pro- 
 duced a Nietzsche and a war in which the 
 soul of man seems for the time to be sub- 
 merged in animality and blood-lust. 
 
 In Protestanism the nearest we have 
 come to the practice of meditation is in the 
 thoughtful, concentrated, meditative reading 
 of the Bible or of deeply spiritual writings; 
 and in prayer. Either of these two prac- 
 tices will develop in the soul a knowledge 
 of its real aloofness from the flesh that 
 holds it — a knowledge that matter is not 
 master, even here. But without meditation 
 in one form or other, I see no possibility of 
 gaining the mystic realization. A world 
 that is too busy hunting for material com- 
 forts to sit down and think, will remain 
 enmeshed in the material net, — conscious of 
 nothing save matter expressed in terms of 
 beauty, of power, of ugliness, of crime, or of 
 
A WORLD OF MATTER AND FAITH 105 
 
 death. Life is for such a people a kalei- 
 doscopic spectacle which changes by the 
 whims of Destiny into strange and un- 
 foreseen patterns; and life's sole aim must 
 be to exhaust the pleasure of the present 
 moment, if pleasure there be in it. For 
 never again will this exact pattern be 
 repeated; and some day upon the screen will 
 fall, instead of brilliant hues of fairest gems 
 serene, the dark sombreness of Death and 
 Nothingness. 
 
 There are two movements which have 
 arisen within the last generation that have 
 greatly awakened the American mind to 
 some sense of its separateness from matter. 
 These are Hypnotism and Christian 
 Science (with its allied and inherited New 
 Thought) ; and strangely enough these 
 were at their beginning correlated, — for 
 Quimby, through whom Mrs. Eddy derived 
 her first ideas of the power of Spirit over 
 matter, was himself a delver in hypnotism; 
 and it was through the strange phenomena 
 of this weird practice rather than from any 
 intellectual or spiritual analysis of life that 
 Quimby, an uneducated clock-maker, acci- 
 
io6 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 dentally stumbled upon the most pregnant 
 and far-reaching spiritual truth yet dis- 
 covered in the West — that man's will has 
 actual control over his body, for good or 
 evil; and that as man thinks, so is he. Of 
 course Christ taught this. But for centuries 
 no one believed it, until Christian Science 
 demonstrated visibly to incredulous Occi- 
 dentals the validity of the truth known for 
 millenniums to the East, — that spirit is 
 causal, and that matter is obedient to the 
 Spirit's creative will when scientifically 
 asserted. For the knowledge how to rule 
 the body by the soul is a science, and 
 requires deep and concentrated study. 
 Orientals have developed this science by 
 practices of which I have already spoken. 
 
 During the Japanese War an American 
 surgeon operating upon a wounded Jap- 
 anese general was astounded when the 
 patient, refusing to take ether, submitted to 
 amputation of a limb without the slightest 
 sign of pain. He had, by practices of which 
 he was aware, induced self-hypnotism and 
 cut off from that limb all sensation while 
 
A WORLD OF MATTER AND FAITH 107 
 
 retaining consciousness in his higher 
 centers. 
 
 The medical profession is now making a 
 large and considerable use of suggestion 
 but only when forced to do so by its success 
 as practised amateurly in cults which this 
 same profession derides yet imitates. That 
 medicine itself is largely only a form of 
 suggestion, Homoeopathy has for some time 
 claimed; and the entering wedge of spirit- 
 ualism in the gross materialism of physio- 
 logical psychology and medicine will one 
 day cause a split, a cleavage so great 
 between the materialist and the mystic in 
 these professions that the common name of 
 "Doctor" can no longer hold them together. 
 
 It seems nothing less than a cosmic 
 destiny that has caused so many movements 
 toward a spiritual interpretation of matter 
 to spring up in America within this last gen- 
 eration. Such influences are bound to bring 
 about in time a very dififerent attitude 
 toward life than that now current; and to 
 make possible a closer "rapprochement" 
 between the East and West. 
 
 The East in general cares little for 
 
loS THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 material things — not enough to strive for 
 them; while the West supposes its whole 
 salvation to lie in matter. A harmony be- 
 tween these two extremes would constitute 
 the attitude of the ideal world citizen. 
 
 We are placed in a material environment 
 for a purpose — that we may learn how to 
 overcome it and adjust it to our spiritual 
 needs. At the same time, no amount of 
 material progress can bring the world to 
 such a state of perfection that the soul of 
 man will feel at home in an existence so 
 foreign to its nature. It is not the wish of 
 Destiny that man should be so absorbed, so 
 willingly lost in his material environment, 
 as he now is in Occidental lands. The 
 intellectual will can not avail to transform 
 the earth into a paradise — for the simple 
 reason that happiness is really a state of 
 mind, a condition of the soul in perfect 
 harmony with God, and material progress 
 of itself can never bring this to pass. 
 
 The true reform should be from within 
 outwards, and not the reverse. When the 
 soul of man reaches a station of creative 
 positiveness, of polar insularity from mat- 
 
A WORLD OF MATTER AND FAITH 109 
 
 ter, it can assert a new environment more 
 harmonious, more peaceful, and more 
 adapted to its spiritual needs; and not until 
 man has reached this station of the creator 
 can he be called truly Man. 
 
 It is the part of the beast to partake of the 
 qualities of his environment. It is the part 
 of Man to make environment partake of his 
 qualities. 
 
 When Abdul Baha w^as in this country he 
 stopped in New York at a hotel where the 
 employees were distempered and on the 
 verge of a strike, and the guests querulous 
 and ill at ease. The spiritual power of his 
 mere presence there was so great that 
 within a few days harmony and peace 
 reigned where altercation had prevailed 
 before. This change was so noticeably due 
 to Abdul Baha's presence that the man- 
 ager of the hotel urged him to make it his 
 headquarters whenever he was in New 
 York. 
 
 Discord cannot exist long within the 
 neighborhood of one spiritually adept, — for 
 harmony is the power which he radiates; 
 and like light scattering the sullen darkness 
 
no THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 before it, harmony sent out with the power 
 of creative love puts to flight the ineffectual 
 rebellious foes of wilfulness and hate. 
 
 When Buddha returned to the world of 
 man from his mighty struggle in the Spirit, 
 his face shone so that people inquired as to 
 the cause; and when he bestowed the power 
 of his new-found truth upon his followers, 
 they too went forth with a light upon their 
 faces which amazed all men. So the 
 majesty of truth spreads, as a glorious light 
 sent back from a thousand mirrors, until all 
 around shares in the golden sheen. 
 
 A Carpenter two thousand years ago sent 
 forth such influence that even now, when 
 nations war, the world asks in alarm — "Is 
 this the will of Christ?" Note that they do 
 not ask— "Would Aristotle like this?" So 
 great is the power of the spiritual will that 
 it affects not only its own times, but the 
 times to come; and creates a new environ- 
 ment, not for itself alone, but for the whole 
 human race. 
 
 Thus the great teachers of humanity 
 come to earth from a more glorious exist- 
 ence, to teach us how to mould this world 
 
A WORLD OF MATTER AND FAITH iii 
 
 into a likeness to the spiritual kingdom. 
 It is to be achieved through and by matter 
 rendered obedient to the will of the man. 
 Hence the value, in a way, of the material- 
 ism of the Occident in asserting and main- 
 taining the importance of material things in 
 life. The Oriental mystic would scatter to 
 the winds the bonds of flesh that bind him, 
 and "freely on the air of heaven ride" — 
 paying no attention to the very tasks and 
 lessons for which his soul was incarnated; 
 while the Occident, with a more solid sense 
 of things, expends his efforts in an endeavor 
 to re-form the matter in the midst of which 
 he exists. 
 
 We cannot neglect matter and condemn 
 it thus to oblivion. It will up and at us in 
 spite of a too idealistic denial of its exist- 
 ence. India may assert the illusion of 
 sense — but it perishes physically, neverthe- 
 less, to the number of millions yearly from 
 the .attack of that very matter which it 
 denies and which becomes more foul and 
 hostile from such denial and neglect. 
 
 The West has not so far to go as one 
 might think to attain perfection. It need 
 
112 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 not undo its achievements of the past. It 
 is not required of the West to raze its 
 material structures to the ground and begin 
 again at the bare level of material discom- 
 fort in which the Orient exists. All has its 
 place. The function of the Occident has 
 been to blaze new trails by means of science 
 toward that Promised Land of which all 
 dream, — the Kingdom of God on earth, or 
 in other words a condition of existence 
 staged in this inferior plane of matter 
 which shall nevertheless reflect somewhat 
 of the happiness and the glory of the 
 Supreme Concourse. 
 
 I do not condemn the West. It has 
 achieved much. But not until it goes at its 
 task with more enlightenment and with 
 the perception that spiritual means alone 
 suffice to "remould the world to its desire," 
 shall we attain the Golden Age in which 
 a world of matter has become a world of 
 faith. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE DOCTRINE OF LOVE 
 
 NO religion can be universal, and 
 no character approximate perfec- 
 tion, save w^here love rules. There 
 are many spiritual qualities, but love binds 
 them all together; and writh love absent the 
 proudest edifices of the soul's building fall 
 into disintegration. 
 
 The negative of love is selfishness, and 
 selfishness is at enmity with God — the only 
 evil in the universe, the devil w^hich lurks 
 within each one of us, seeking to destroy. 
 
 Not all of the great world reHgions 
 equally emphasize the necessity of love. Of 
 them all, the Krishna sect of Brahmanism, 
 Buddhisrii, and Christianity have most 
 exalted love. Hindu theology, in its symbol 
 of the cosmic germ "tapas," expresses the 
 mystic doctrine that God loved the world 
 into being. Or again "Purusha," the Man- 
 God, gave his body for a sacrifice of love 
 
 "3 
 
114 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 that out of it the universe with all its 
 inhabitants might be formed. 
 
 The overwhelming force of love, its burn- 
 ing fire, its power to create, make it the 
 most divine gift bestowed on man. Primitive 
 races feel this truth and make a sacrament 
 of sex. Herein lies a glory, a mystery 
 which they would deify. Is it a low ideal? 
 Only to those who conceive it so. Better 
 such a star to guide — near to passion 
 though it be — than the cold etherial depths 
 of darkness out from which burst forth the 
 golden egg, existence. 
 
 God created man and placed in him the 
 wondrous spark of life; and, marvel of all 
 marvels, gave him too the power of creating 
 life. Shall not the heart sing in ecstacy at 
 this power of creation? 
 
 But so long as man perceives in himself 
 only the forces of physical propulsion, 
 forces destined by the Divine to populate 
 the earth, — so long is he a 'mere slave to 
 nature, exploited by her for far-reaching 
 ends, himself an infinitesimal unit in the 
 mass of being. Not until a new perception 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF LOVE 115 
 
 and a new meaning of Love dawns upon 
 him, does he attain his spiritual estate. 
 
 The lotus of love, though its roots lie in 
 the mire of passion, lifts its blossoms to the 
 face of heaven. This is the love which 
 Krishna, which Buddha, which Christ 
 taught the world. Not the love that poets 
 sing of, glorious though that be. 
 
 Listen! Buddha said, "As a mother at 
 the risk of her life watches over her child, 
 her only child, turn thou with compas- 
 sionate heart toward all mankind." 
 
 This is a higher thing than sex-love, — 
 though the Teacher, trying to explain it, 
 was obliged to draw his figure from the 
 sex-life. Mother love, initiated by the sex 
 act, but at the Mount of Transfiguration 
 uplifted from the earth, — this love, most 
 selfless of all earthly loves, would Buddha 
 have us give to all mankind. 
 
 Here is a task fit for Man to cope with — 
 a task which only spiritually regenerate 
 man can achieve. How is it possible to 
 bestow upon all our fellow beings the burn- 
 ing love which in the mother springs from 
 the creative act? 
 
ii6 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 It is only possible as we become creators, 
 not in clay, but in infinite compassion. 
 Think you that those waves of love, surging 
 from a Buddha's bosom, die ineffective? 
 Ah! could one but have the spiritual vision 
 to trace those waves of love; to see them 
 spread out upon the ocean of existence; to 
 see them flood every human bay and inlet 
 with their tidal force, — then would one 
 realize what a power is love ! 
 
 "As a mother loves her child, her only 
 child" ; or as Christ puts it, "Turn thy heart 
 to God, and with that love with which He 
 endows thee, turn a brimful heart to every 
 neighbor." 
 
 This is no meek, mild trifle such as pious 
 men are wont to impugn to the Christ. 
 Lamb of God, yes! But Lion of God, too! 
 "And the lamb shall lie down with the 
 lion." Twain and inseparable, these quali- 
 ties in the truly spiritual man, love- 
 endowed, heart-bursting, partner with God 
 in creating cosmos out of chaos. 
 
 How were it possible for the Divine to 
 trust mankind with such creative power, 
 save by attaching it to love? Were one 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF LOVE 117 
 
 able to create by any other power, — -man, 
 prone to selfishness as the bat to darkness, 
 would use his powers for separative aims, 
 and like Lucifer, Sun of the Morning, deem 
 himself equal with God! 
 
 But love seeks no equality — vaunts not 
 itself — craves nothing but in union to lose 
 selfhood! It is the undying impulse in man 
 to die unto himself. Between these two 
 forces, the centripetal desire to live, and the 
 centrifugal desire to, in love, expire, spins 
 the universe upon its spiritual course. 
 
 There is no thought of self in love ! There 
 is no seeking to acquire! Only the great 
 longing to give out, the bursting of a heart 
 that is full, as the golden Egg of the Vedas 
 burst forth into the radiance of stars and 
 solar systems. 
 
 Selfishness cannot create. Its only aim 
 is to absorb, — as the sponge would fill itself 
 with water; as the octopus, thousand- 
 tentacled, would draw all to it. But from 
 the depths of such sea-dankness, lift thine 
 eyes unto the sun! Ever-conveying, pro- 
 pelling by some strange inner power its 
 fire-rays out into space, that where they 
 
ii8 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 strike inert matter, light and heat and 
 life spring up, — of such is the nature of true 
 love and such its power to create. 
 
 Love is the golden thread that joins the 
 heart of man to God. Else were religion a 
 thing of mere form and of no consequence! 
 Religion which is without love is no reli- 
 gion and souls that hide themselves from 
 these rays cease to grow. 
 
 Similarly love unites man with man. 
 The same love which one feels toward the 
 Divine, one can divinely feel toward fellow 
 men. And this is the only way in which 
 one can love all creatures. For some men, 
 nay, most of men, are unlovable, and can- 
 not in themselves awake in us the spark of 
 love. It is rather for us to bestow, "nostri 
 voluntatis," upon all we meet, agreeable or 
 disagreeable, somewhat of that warmth of 
 love which God has planted in us. To bear 
 with all people, even when they are unbear- 
 able, is the gift and power only of the 
 spiritual love. This is a compassion which 
 a Christ must die to show the world — else 
 the world had known it not. 
 
 Folly of the philosophers, to claim that 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF LOVE 119 
 
 ideals are self -evolved ! Never, in centuries 
 or in millenniums, w^ould humanity of its 
 own inherent nature have evolved the con- 
 cept of divine, forgiving love. It is human 
 to love all who are lovable and to hate all 
 who are unlovable, — and this is as far as 
 humanity, unaided, could ever have trav- 
 eled. The love that pardons all, nay, that 
 would even lose itself to save a world in 
 sin, this is not the love of man but the love 
 of God. And the mystery of all religion, 
 the secret of spiritual evolution, is that man 
 may receive and cultivate the divine love. 
 And the glory and the beauty of the law of 
 love is that from the human, selfish love 
 may blossom love divme. 
 
 Is it wrong humanly to love all who are 
 lovable? Nay, it is the beginning of the 
 path that leads to God. Not to destroy, not 
 to annihilate the human love, but to trans- 
 form it into the greater power: that is the 
 way the mystic walks. 
 
 Asceticism is false doctrine. It is not the 
 way of life. Not emptiness of life but more 
 abundance is what the Great Ones come to 
 teach us. Not to love less, but to love 
 
I20 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 more; not to starve the affections but to 
 direct them; not to stultify one's sex but to 
 command its powers so as to transcend the 
 lower needs, — this is the way of wisdom; 
 and every other way leads but to starvation 
 and decay. 
 
 See how nature grows and expands, 
 normally, joyously, by means of love! And 
 the same laws which guide the material 
 world correspondingly guide the world of 
 spirit. It is just as glorious and joyous a 
 process to grow spiritually as to grow 
 physically, just as normal, just as happy a 
 partaking of the treasuries of life. 
 
 Beware of any teaching which imposes 
 limitation, deprivation, denial of the wealth 
 of life; for it is a teaching that leads to 
 pride and selfishness, strange though this 
 statement may appear. It is the way of 
 magic and delusion, — a will-o'-the-wisp 
 that, beckoning to Power, brings in the end 
 Annihilation. 
 
 Of all the mystic doctrines to which the 
 Orient has given birth, none is more 
 beautiful or more true than the doctrine 
 of Sufiism, — that the soul, through earthly 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF LOVE 121 
 
 loves, learns how to find the love divine. 
 Born in Persia, a strange by-product of 
 Islam, it has deeply permeated India, 
 reflecting itself even to this day in the song- 
 offerings of Tagore. 
 
 Not to condemn sex love, but to expand 
 it and transmute it, till it is naught but 
 pure star-dust and God-heat! God loved 
 the w^orlds into being. The warmth of 
 sacrifice, the ruddy power of creative love, 
 in man is associated with sex. Starve the 
 sex and you starve love itself. Shut the soul 
 off from sex and you shut it off from life 
 and growth. To remove sex would solve 
 every problem of life — yes ! by bringing 
 death! To give sex to man is to bestow a 
 gift so potential, so dangerous, that only 
 a God dare do it; but it is the gift of life 
 itself, and not to bestow it were to refrain 
 from creation. 
 
 Not, then, how can we conquer sex, but 
 how can we use it; not to obliterate but to 
 employ greatly; not to despise but to 
 reverence; not to fear but heroically to 
 master the one power in us that makes us 
 
122 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 partners in creation, — this is the truth the 
 mystic knows. 
 
 All religions teach Divine Love, but none 
 to-day practise it so extensively as Chris- 
 tianity. True, Buddhism in its prime had 
 hospitals and widespread charity; was kind 
 to animals; and under its first king Asoka, 
 refrained, in the name of God, from war — 
 a development of international ethics to 
 which Christianity itself has not yet 
 reached. It is further true that China, 
 partly through the influence of Buddhism, 
 has been one of the most peaceful nations 
 known to history. Yet China itself is 
 guilty to-day of the most fiendish practices 
 of cruelty toward criminals or toward 
 political offenders. To inflict mere death 
 upon the victim is of no satisfaction to 
 Oriental malignity. Tortures worse than 
 the Inquisition have been invented by the 
 subtle Chinese mind to prolong the agony 
 of death. This same barbaric cruelty is 
 practised from the waters of the Pacific to 
 the Golden Horn, throughout the vast 
 extent of Asia, and wherever Orientalism 
 holds sway. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF LOVE 123 
 
 In more passive forms Oriental cruelty- 
 shows itself in the stoicism with which one 
 can die or watch others die. Famine and 
 pestilence sweep away their millions — while 
 the survivors go about their daily life with 
 an apathy impossible to Western people. 
 
 This indifference to death and to physical 
 suffering is in part due to the philosophy of 
 the Far East as regards existence — that it 
 is a continuous round, the soul being born 
 and reborn till it is purged of evil. Suffering 
 is the result of sin, either in this or in past 
 lives; and only by suffering can the sin be 
 expiated. Since it is useless to interfere 
 in the destiny of others, why concern our- 
 selves with the suffering of those about us 
 who through suffering are mounting the 
 path towards God? Infinite bliss, infinite 
 joy, comes not in this life, but lies at the 
 end of existence itself, in Nirvana, the goal 
 towards which all Being tends. 
 
 Orientalism, plunged into the pessimism 
 of a sad old age, conceives this world as 
 essentially one of tears and sadness. Only 
 through knowledge of life's illusion can 
 one escape life and reach Nirvana. Only 
 
124 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 through suffering can one acquire knowl- 
 edge. Therefore die or let die — it matters 
 not. 
 
 Into this fog of apathetic pessimism 
 Christianity, essentially the religion of 
 young, exuberant races, blows a fresh 
 breath of hope and love and service. True, 
 this is a world of tears — but it is our duty, 
 in Christ, to make it less so. Not only of 
 Heaven as an infinitely distant goal does the 
 Christian dream — but of a finite tiny replica 
 of Heaven established here below, the King- 
 dom of God on earth. This is the healthiest, 
 the sanest, and the most virile note that 
 religion has yet struck. Something to work 
 for here and now. Something to inspire 
 service. Some hope of progress toward 
 infinite improvement in the art of living. 
 Some vision of a Golden Age, not past but 
 coming to the world. 
 
 And the means of this achievement lie in 
 Love. Brotherly love, connubial love, 
 parental love, neighborly love, social love, 
 inter-racial love, and the love of God, — all 
 combine to form a chord the richness of 
 which, rising in crescendo, outvies the songs 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF LOVE 125 
 
 of angels and the music of the spheres. 
 For in human love lies the power of crea- 
 tion, denied even to angels and the rulers of 
 the stars. 
 
 Not that other religions have not taught 
 Love: but Christianity practises it as never 
 it w^as practised before. To the power of 
 the lowly Nazarene how many hospitals and 
 asylums, how many schools and colleges, 
 how many institutions for the happiness and 
 betterment of mankind bear witness! 
 
 Let the East copy! Not elsewise can 
 it achieve true civilization. If we have 
 much to learn from the East she has still 
 this to learn from us, — the power of love. 
 Without it all other gifts are vain, are 
 tinkling cymbals, as Paul said. For other 
 spiritual qualities, gained through wise 
 effort of the will, without love lead to pride 
 and the death of the soul. The young Occi- 
 dent, naive and simple-minded, humbly 
 expressing the love taught by Christ in 
 social service, has forged ahead of the East, 
 old in wisdom, where the fallen are left by 
 the roadside and the path of spiritual knowl- 
 edge has become the path of pride. 
 
126 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 Of even further reaches of the Love Divine, 
 the mystic dare not speak except in symbols. 
 That union w^ith the Universal which is the 
 very essence of mysticism, is expressed in 
 terms suggestive of sex love merely because 
 sex love is the highest, deepest, most ex- 
 static, and most satisfying love known to 
 man. Were man's experience along the 
 spiritual path greater, he would not need 
 to be taught these truths in such a falter- 
 ing, unclear language. For no words at 
 man's disposal can express how infinitely 
 the love of the Divine transcends the high- 
 est love that flesh is heir to. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 NIRVANA 
 
 SALVATION is the goal of most reli- 
 gions; but just what is understood by- 
 such a term depends upon the theo- 
 logical concepts of the time and place. 
 
 , In India it is salvation from rebirth that 
 is sought. In this world of sorrow life is not 
 a boon, but a sad necessity to which our 
 ignorance and illusions compel us. Wis- 
 dom and enlightenment give release not only 
 from sorrow but from the wheel of life 
 itself, around which turn in continual 
 bondage the souls of those who are not 
 saved. Freedom from existence means en- 
 trance to Nirvana; and Nirvana means not 
 eictinction, as many Western critics claim, 
 but infinite bliss. In Nirvana the Brahman 
 has a lofty conception, not of mere negation 
 but: of spiritual perfection. 
 
 ; For the Occidental, who is not as capable 
 oi grasping metaphysical abstractions as is 
 the Hindu, some simpler conception must 
 
 127 
 
128 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 suffice. Heaven, then, as a concrete 
 locality of joy and bliss, is the goal 
 toward which he aims; and the loss of 
 Heaven is that from which he seeks salva- 
 tion. How can he assure himself of an 
 eternal destiny of spiritual joy and prog- 
 ress? This is the aim of the Christian, 
 and all the practices of his religion have 
 been mainly toward this end. 
 
 As to by what methods one can be saved, 
 whether by baptism, confession of faith, 
 good acts, total immersion, acceptance of 
 the sacrificial atonement of a Christ, — these 
 things are all a matter of creed and rite, not 
 of metaphysics; and it is not our purpose 
 here to try to reconcile the irreconcilable, or 
 to harmonize the outward and so varying 
 forms of world religions. 
 
 But what is its esoteric meaning? Does the 
 word "salvation," so distasteful to educated 
 and eclectic ears, contain a germ of spiritual 
 reality? It would indeed seem that a con- 
 cept of such influence and inspiration in the 
 spiritual life of millions upon millions 
 throughout centuries of thought, must 
 stand for some reality. 
 
NIRVANA 129 
 
 From what, then, are we to be saved, be it 
 not from the domination of Nature into 
 which we are born as incarnated earthly 
 bodies? And to what does salvation initiate 
 us, unless it be to that state of spiritual 
 existence which constitutes a round of evo- 
 lution altogether distinct and separate from 
 the evolution of the flesh? 
 
 The mystic knows that even in the midst 
 of the material world another world exists 
 where all is fair and beautiful; that into 
 this strange, unseen world only those may 
 enter of pure hearts and God-like spirits; 
 that once born into this world, growth goes 
 on as in the world of matter and the spirit 
 progresses according to eternal Laws 6f 
 Destiny which know no favorites and which 
 condemn none who condemn not them- 
 selves. 
 
 •But how can one discover this undiscov- 
 erable abode of bliss? How penetrate the 
 arcana of the spirit? The way is not 
 apparent to the eye of flesh; neither can 
 carnate feet advance upon the path. To 
 enter here, to become an inhabitant of this 
 
130 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 super-world, is and has been the goal of 
 mysticism since the human race began. 
 
 To the mystic nothing else seems of im- 
 portance. Dearly as he values life, he 
 esteems it to be of little worth compared to 
 this. Possessions, emoluments, office, — 
 those are playthings which amuse child- 
 man; they are not necessary appurtenances 
 of the soul. 
 
 To discover this world of spirit is to 
 achieve the utmost which life can offer. 
 Beside such success all other successes pale 
 to insignificance. He who knew the privi- 
 lege of living in this Kingdom, Christ has 
 told us, would sell all his possessions for it — 
 and he would search as one searched for 
 life itself, to discover the secret portals. 
 
 So highly does Destiny desire for us this 
 success, that to train tis for it she would 
 sacrifice upon her altar all our earthly 
 happiness, our material possessions, nay, 
 the lives of friends, kindred, and the most 
 dearly beloved of earthly beings. From 
 those whose time has come for spiritual 
 awakening all earthly treasures flee, every 
 seeming garment vanishes, until the soul is 
 
NIRVANA 131 
 
 left naked before its maker as in the day of 
 Creation. 
 
 Then Destiny brings out new and glorious 
 raiment, fit for the soul's initiation into 
 bliss. And garbed in purity and light, up- 
 held on either side by angels of lowliness 
 and love, the spirit of man enters into 
 Salvation and dwells forever after in eter- 
 nity, though it live as yet in earthly body. 
 
 Think not that Immortality comes after 
 living, or that death is sufficient to usher 
 one into its abodes. Eternity does not \r 
 begin where earthly life leaves ofT, for 
 eternity is infinity itself and neither begins 
 nor ends. It is a state of being; and he who 
 has not perceived its values while still 
 illusioned in earth-senses, will not be born in 
 spirit-land with a capacity to see. 
 
 That is why it is so vitally important to 
 achieve salvation here and now. That is 
 why the earnest Christian would sacrifice 
 life itself to save a soul. It is the quintes- 
 sence of religion, the one good fortune that 
 can befall man. The mystic, only, sees it as 
 such. That is why he longs unspeakably to 
 open people's eyes, to tear the veils asunder, 
 
132 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 to awaken men to the glories that he before 
 them. But human language does not suf- 
 fice, nor finite thoughts capacitate, to unfold 
 this mystery. Each must tread the path 
 himself. Each must face the weary round 
 of life, until from very weariness one gives 
 up the quest for joy in terms of matter. To 
 him for whom the physical is all-glorious 
 the mystic can say nothing. Christ himself 
 could never heal of this myopia, until men 
 craved for healing. 
 
 Since we are all possessors of free will, 
 partners with the Divine in this respect. 
 Destiny must take its course; and each soul 
 must work out in fear and trembling its 
 individual salvation. 
 
 Both in Christian and in Brahmin the- 
 ology the term "twice-born" is used to 
 denote those who not only share in common 
 with others, the exoteric rites of their reli- 
 gion; but who, by some inner spiritual 
 processes, are born again, so to speak, — born 
 this time into a spiritual kingdom. 
 
 In India there is current the symbol of a 
 bird's evolution from the egg. Once it is 
 born as the egg leaves the mother; yet what 
 
NIRVANA 133 
 
 a feeble, cribbed existence is that which 
 the destined soarer-into-heaven's-blue leads 
 within its shell! Not until a further 
 development goes on and the birdling, 
 arriving at the full potentiality of hfe, 
 breaks through the shell to its real freedom, 
 can it be said to live at all, — to be really 
 that for which nature destined it. 
 
 So with man. "Verily, man is not called 
 man, until he hath put on the attributes of 
 God. He is not worthy of the name Man 
 merely because of wealth, adornment, learn- 
 ing or refinement." That is to say, un- 
 spiritual man, as yet confined within the 
 prison walls of self, is as unfree and as little 
 conscious of his real being as the unhatched 
 bird is in its thin shell. Only when he bursts 
 through sense-illusion and is born again, 
 this time into light and life, can he be said to 
 be partaker of reality. 
 
 Either the mystic's claim is true, or it is 
 not. Either the founders of religion are try- 
 ing to describe to us an actual state of being 
 — the only, to them, essential state of being; 
 or they are self-deluded, psycopathic 
 dreamers, whose teachings deserve to be 
 
134 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 ridiculed. There is no half-way ground. 
 For the whole tenor and portent of a 
 prophet's teaching lies in this very point, — 
 the mystery of soul in matter, and the 
 possibility of the incarnated soul rising 
 superior to matter. 
 
 The glory of man lies in his potentiality 
 of becoming; in his hope of attaining to 
 God-consciousness. Otherwise he is but a 
 higher type of animal, subject to nature's 
 laws and a slave to his environment. Men 
 X differ from animals not in intelligence — for 
 animals too have that — but in spiritual 
 capacity, in the possibility of rebirth, of 
 entering the Kingdom. 
 
 It follows also from these premises, that 
 intelligence can not suffice to lead the soul 
 to heaven. To the intellect there are dis- 
 tinct bounds and limits. It will carry man 
 to the height of refinement, of quickness of 
 physical and mental perception; but it will 
 never of itself convey those spiritual truths 
 and kindle that inner flame which is to light 
 the soul on its way through the darkness of 
 materialism. 
 
 Mere intellect without spirituality breeds 
 
NIRVANA 135 
 
 pride, and pride is the greatest deceiver of 
 man. He who surrounds himself with an 
 edifice of pride dwells therein safely, for a 
 time, ensconced from the storms of doubt; 
 until some day a terrible cataclysm of the 
 soul rends the walls, and they fall, like the 
 House of Usher, into the dark tarn of 
 ignorance from which they rose. For pride 
 ever builds upon ignorance and hides itself 
 from the highways of the soul. 
 
 The greatest scholar may be further off 
 from God than the meanest peasant. Christ 
 has said so, and history has proved it. It 
 matters not to me that in this age of materi- 
 alistic knowledge thinkers scoff at mysti- 
 cism; it matters not that behind their 
 barricades of doubt they would prevent the 
 spiritual cohorts from advancing to the City 
 of God. They shall in due time know their 
 weakness; and they shall inevitably suc- 
 cumb. For the soul that opposes the Divine 
 has as little chance of succeeding in rebellion 
 as an infant in its mother's arms. 
 
 It is not without reason that the Saviours 
 of the world teach men they must become 
 again as children. In the realms of spirit 
 
> 
 
 136 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 there is no place for the rebellious soul, for 
 the proud or haughty, the unbending, the 
 self-conceited, the overbearing. The quali- 
 ties of a child — its sweetness of submission; 
 its happy faith and dependence on a parent's 
 care; its naive trust in things, based not 
 upon knowledge but upon spiritual percep- 
 tion, — these are also the qualities of the 
 spiritual initiate. 
 
 And as the infant owes its birth to love, 
 so spiritual man owes his new birth to the 
 dawn of a new love, — a flame consuming his 
 very being until it leaves naught there but 
 God. "To love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart and with all thy soul and with all 
 thy mind," — this is the inevitable condition. 
 
 But how can man love God, whom he has 
 never seen? How can love, which feeds 
 upon concretion, exist for that which is 
 abstract and distant? How can the finite 
 be attached to Infinity, or the creature reach 
 union with the Creator? 
 
 Herein lies the deepest, the most sacred 
 
 mystery of life. Religion can explain it but 
 
 dimly. The mind conceives it not, but the 
 
 j^ heart knows. This is the wings with which 
 
NIRVANA 137 
 
 the Brahmin flies, the hymn the Christian 
 sings, the golden Hght of "Bhakti" which 
 has infused every great reHgion. Not adher- 
 ence to ethical abstractions, not acceptance 
 of metaphysical dogmas, — but devotion to a 
 Living Personality; yes, worship of a Love 
 gloriously impersonal, this is the road to 
 Salvation. 
 
 "Bhakti," or religion of personal devotion, 
 is repulsive to the intellect of man, offends 
 his pride, casts down his vanity, vitiates his 
 eclecticism, and deprives him apparently of 
 that freedom of will with which Destiny, in 
 giving him reason, has endowed him. But 
 so, and only so, love must come. What 
 room is there for reason in the heart that 
 bursts with love? The lover who loves so 
 coldly as to analyze is lost. Love asks for 
 no reasons; like beauty it is content to be. 
 In its very ecstasy lies a sufficiency of logic. 
 For reason has never impelled man as love 
 has; and knowledge has never looked with 
 so fair a face upon the world as looks the 
 blood-hued rose unfolding by the roadside. 
 
 So the truly spiritual man, whose heart 
 sings as sings the heart of a woman who has 
 
138 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 put her house in order and awaits her dear 
 lord, walks daily in company with the 
 Friend; and climbs the heights to Union 
 undazzled, unafraid, sublimely unconscious 
 of his greatness in being near to God. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE NEED OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION 
 
 THOUGH commerce and cultural ex- 
 change should bring the ends of 
 the world together,, East will not 
 meet West in love and confidence till they 
 are joined by the ties of a common religion. 
 For it is in and by means of these spiritual 
 ties, so deep seated in a race or an indi- 
 vidual, that real union takes place. With 
 everything else in common, diversity of reli- 
 gion opposes an insurmountable barrier to 
 mutual confidence. 
 
 It would seem that the time were near for 
 a world religion, uniting all races and creeds 
 in a common worship. Though the out- 
 ward forms of religion dififer as widely as 
 the minds and temperaments of men, yet 
 the inner spiritual truths are the same for 
 all ages, for all races, and for all persons. 
 There is but one commandment necessary 
 for the world, "Love the Lord thy God with 
 
 139 
 
I40 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 all thy soul and with all thy mind; and love 
 thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
 It makes no difference by what name the 
 Creator passes', whether He is called Allah, 
 or Buddha, or Jehovah. His essence does not 
 change, — and love for Him is one and the 
 same, whether it be born in Christian heart, 
 or in Mohammedan or Buddhist breast. 
 Does not the world's gold pass as equal 
 currency no matter what the name stamped 
 on it? It is the smallness of men's minds, 
 not the nature of spirituality, that causes 
 religion to be divided into separate and 
 hostile formulas. At the bottom, religion is 
 one and the same thing for Jew and Chris- 
 tian, Brahmin, Moslem and Confucianist. 
 The writings of the mystics reveal this 
 unity. In the tender rhapsodies of a Kabir 
 are to be found the same searchings after 
 God as in the joyous utterances of St. 
 Francis, or the deep spiritual love of the 
 Sufi mystics. Watered on different soils the 
 rose-bush bears a different tinted blossom, 
 but its perfume and its heart are ever one. 
 \ As men in different climes and races 
 reach more deeply into Ufe and find that 
 
NEED OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION 141 
 
 nearness to God which is the quintes- 
 sence of religion, they become too universal 
 to be contented with man-made creeds or 
 dogmas. The mystic is an antinomian, be- 
 cause he permits no man to make laws for 
 him, or to regulate his approach to the 
 Divine. These mystics, of whatever race or 
 whatever religion, are brothers and recog- 
 nize the family relationship. For do not 
 their features conform more and more, 
 daily, to the Divine Image and Ideal? 
 
 The nearer man gets to God, the better 
 he can dispense with benefit of clergy^ 
 Does he need to be exhorted, whose heart is 
 already aflame with the celestial fire? Or 
 can he be taught of man, who is led by the 
 Spirit? If the mystic conforms to outer 
 religion it is from courtesy and kindness, 
 and as a sign of outward reverence, so to 
 speak, to the Great Being before whom he 
 daily and hourly bows in the sanctified 
 chapel of his own heart. 
 
 The only possible universal religian, then, 
 miist needs be a religion of the inner life; 
 a religion comprising te essential truths of 
 all the world's spiritual teaching; a religion 
 
142 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 of work and efficiency; a religion of prayer 
 and mysticisrnj 
 
 The qualities of spiritual man I have tried 
 to outline in the preceding chapters. One 
 who lived a life embodying these truths 
 would soon cease to care whether he were 
 called Christian or Hebrew or Mohamme- 
 dan. To him all sacred books would fur- 
 nish food of the spirit, and his prayers 
 y would ascend to God in loving unison with 
 the prayers of all who loved God. 
 
 The time will come, and now is, when all 
 who worship God must worship him in 
 spirit and in truth; when the world will be 
 divided, not into hostile groups of nominal 
 Christians and Buddhists and Moslems, but 
 into the two great and unapproachable 
 divisions of those who love God and those 
 who do not. 
 
 How blinded are men's eyes, that they 
 look so hostilely at other worshipers of God ! 
 Did they but have the Divine Ray within 
 their hearts, they would perceive their 
 brothers in God, out of whatsoever faces 
 that Ray shone. 
 
 There must be, and there will be, brother- 
 
NEED OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION 143 
 
 hood among all who turn to God. But there 
 can never be a bond of union between those 
 who love God and those who hate Him, for 
 all who are not with Him are against Him. 
 .^ We need again rough fiery prophets to 
 preach retribution and destruction to man 
 in order to do away with the supercilious 
 eclecticism which characterizes this age — 
 the cultured tolerance and resolute indiffer- 
 ence to what concerns man's ultimate happi- 
 ness. It is no concern to you that your 
 neighbor loves not God? Will you go and 
 sojourn in a land of evil, and try to conform 
 to its usages? You who bear the name of 
 Christ-man and deny Christ daily, — know 
 you not that Earth hates you? and that 
 Destiny, patient to the last, has at last be- 
 come impatient of you? 
 
 A thousand trumpet calls are heard, en- 
 listing the cohorts of Truth against the 
 cohorts of Falsehood, of Evil, and of Car- 
 nality. Choose your ranks well and quickly, 
 for the day is not far off when the evil- 
 minded shall no longer dwell at peace and 
 ease in God's world. How will ye be found 
 when the Master of the Vineyard comes? 
 
 -X 
 
144 THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICISM 
 
 Look round about you, people of percep- 
 tion, and withdraw your garments from 
 contact with those who deny God. There 
 can be but one Religion on earth, and that 
 reHgion none may share who know not God. 
 
 SELAH ! 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 BV5082 .C65 
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