We make too much of the marriage ceremony and too little of the fitness for marriage. The business of the clergyman is altogether too much confined to seeing whether a couple is "respectably" bonded, and altogether too little as to whether they are spiritually united.
Possession! that is the word that spells unhappiness, in married life; each wants to possess the other; neither one tries for the spirit of union. Possession cannot be divorced from deceit.
Vows and promises challenge us to keep them, and because our pathway leads upward to freedom, we constantly find these vows and promises staring us in the face and daring us to advance. We must subst.i.tute mutual confidence for vows. Vows are childish and puerile. If we cannot keep faith without vows then are we sadly lacking in faith and should cultivate it by offering to others the freedom of action we would have ourselves. When the time comes, as it will, that a husband and wife can "talk it over" in a friendly, mutually helpful frame of mind, when either one is attracted by another, there will be no further opportunity for infidelity; and the sooner we rid the world of a belief in sin and immorality, the sooner will Love reign.
It is said of the sages of India that they can live in the jungles and the ferocious tigers will not harm them; how do they accomplish this?
They have disa.s.sociated themselves from ferocity. They do not desire to crush or kill the tiger. Their minds are so filled with love and compa.s.sion that there is no point of connection between them and the destructive instinct in the beast.
When we get away from the fear of "impure" love; when we get away from the tremendous load of belief in evil which keeps the back bent and the eyes lowered to the dust, we will be ready to meet the pure and perfect love when it comes; and when we are fit for it we will meet it and when we have found this pearl of great price, all doubt and fear, all jealousy; all dissatisfaction will vanish. There will be no fear of "losing" each other. The union is an interior one, and even though "seas divide and mountains vast, rear their proud crests "tween thee and me," the call of soul to soul will be felt and answered. Byron says:
"There are two souls of equal flow, Whose gentle streams so calmly run, That when they part--they part? Oh no, They cannot part, those souls are one."
With a sentiment such as this between two beings, what need for vows and promises, and bonds?
It is customary for writers on the s.e.x question to emphatically, even feverishly, emphasize the fact that they have no intention of implying that they would do away with the bonds of matrimony; and although this conclusion is inevitable where one"s intellect is active and the faculty of deduction brought into play, yet the false modesty that prevails and the prejudices that blind the eyes of the mult.i.tude, and above all, the tendency of the undeveloped race-mind to impute personal motives to such as would, if permitted, lead them to a freer, and consequently a purer life, impel the writer to deny that which is, finally, the very point at issue.
In the interest of Truth, we are compelled to state that we would do away with "bonds." We would subst.i.tute therefor mutual agreements, subject to renewal or repudiation within certain defined and mutually helpful conditions. Vows and bonds and oaths are the crutches of the crippled human race. We need not always walk lame.
It may be argued that man is still largely animal; yes, but the surest way to keep him so is to treat him like an animal. If we remind him that he is also a man and that he may be a G.o.d; and if we point out to him the way in which he may accomplish this trans.m.u.tation, no man has so little intelligence that he will not attempt to follow, when a.s.sured that G.o.d-hood means a bliss so great that he can hardly imagine it; that it means cessation of the "endless round of births and deaths" from which Gautama, the Buddha, sought to free himself.
Mankind has always been promised immortality through spiritual union--with what? An abstract principle called G.o.d, or Aum or any other impersonal formless all-inclusive Being?
No, but with his mate.
On this point we trust that there will not remain any obscurity. There is no higher G.o.d than Love. There is no higher love than s.e.xual-love in its highest manifestation. The more we truly love, the more love flows into and through our consciousness, until from a tiny little pearly drop of the "wine of life" we ascend to the Olympian Heights and imbibe floods of the "nectar of the G.o.ds."
Even the libertine, that pauper in the realm of Love, wants the perfect life. His soul is forever hungry for that which he gropingly tries to catch and chain and possess; and which by virtue of these same desires will evade him until he ceases thus to seek, and instead of demanding possession of the object of his desires, he asks for union. Union is interior; possession is always and ever limited to exterior contact. They who would enter the sanctuary and defile the "Holy of Holies" are saved from such a load of self-inflicted sin; they cannot if they would. There is but one key which will open the golden gate to heaven. The way chosen by the libertine is in exactly the opposite direction.
Are all marriages that are not soul-mate unions immoral? Most certainly not. Are all unions that are not married immoral. Most certainly not.
We have made an attempt to define s.e.xual immorality and we have concluded that as yet there is no absolute standard in civilized or uncivilized ethics, since, as Letourneau points out, what is immoral in Pekin or Calcutta may be moral in Paris or London. Truth is adherence to facts in whatever section of the world. Tolerance; sympathy; charity; may be clearly defined wherever we roam. s.e.xual immorality has no stable standards. We here suggest one and submit that it is the only one possible of universal concurrence. It is based upon personal freedom. Wherever the s.e.xual relation is made a convenience; or where either one marries in the face of his or her own realization that there is no love bestowed, that relationship is immoral. Thus, it will be seen that s.e.xual immorality is independent of marriage, and cannot be estimated by law. Marriage for money; for position; for convenience; for anything other than a desire for mutual helpfulness, is immoral. Indulgence in the s.e.xual act for selfish gratification without regard to the welfare of each other; for money; or pastime; or for any motive other than a reverential expression of an unselfish love, is immoral and is a prost.i.tution of the divine office of s.e.x.
But, though not all s.e.x relationships can be perfect and eternal, yet all may, if we desire, be moral. And all moral and s.e.xual relationships must, and will, lead to perfect s.e.x-union, whenever the time comes that either one is ready for the completement. This truth need not, and will not, disrupt any happy marriages.
If the Church had not made the mistake of teaching the fallacy that s.e.x-love is a strictly earthly or mortal function, divorcing s.e.x from pure love; and if the Theology had not tried to subst.i.tute the love of, and union with, an abstract Creator for love of mates in soul-union, perhaps there would be exhibited less impatience of the restraints of marriage.
But with a cat-and-dog married life on the one hand and the prospect of an inane, blank, and s.e.xless union with an abstract G.o.d-idea on the other, it is small wonder that mortal consciousness has rebelled, and has decided to take its chances with h.e.l.l, rather than to forego the happiness which is intuitively sensed as being the direct prerogative of perfect mating.
If this G.o.d-idea had not been presented as an eternal, unescapable finality, there might have been hope; but to fly about a throne endlessly, night and day, singing, "I want to be nothing; nothing; only to lie at His feet"--the prospect appalls!
Small wonder that the conclusion has been deduced that "life is too short" for anything like domestic misery, when domestic happiness is the only happiness we know, and that is to cease at death!
But, if we take the truthful view of marriage and of heaven; if we realize that mortal life is Experience; that as we learn by experience, we acquire knowledge; as we acc.u.mulate knowledge, we begin to glimpse wisdom; and that when we have sufficient Wisdom and sufficient Love, we graduate into the cla.s.sification of G.o.d-hood, immortality; and that immortality means union with our mate; s.e.x-union, in all that const.i.tutes its highest and most satisfying aspect as we know it, with infinitely more of beauty and love and bliss, there is an incentive to aspire.
Love is the only way that immortality can be attained. It cannot be "taken," like degrees of secret societies. It cannot be purloined, or feigned. Fear has never made people good. The doctrine of punishment has never deterred the sinner. Even in his apparent acceptance of the doctrine of sin and of consequent punishment, the poor sinner has known better. Humanity has progressed in spite of the fear that has dwarfed our stature.
In the new day, with hope ahead and fear trans.m.u.ted into a wise patience, this earth may yet be a "fit dwelling-place for the G.o.ds."
Leigh Hunt says: "Love is a personal proof that something good and earnest and eternal is meant us; such a bribe and foretaste of bliss being given us to keep us in the lists of time and progression; and when the world has realized what love urges it to obtain, perhaps death will cease and all the souls which love has created crowd back at its summons to inhabit their perfected world."
We are p.r.o.ne to consider such statements as only so many beautiful words--elusive, ethereal, and descriptive of something that is always in the future; but if it be always in the future it will never be ours; we cannot catch up with it; and thus it becomes a mockery. These prophetic utterances are literal truths.
Let us confide to you a little secret: We are as much spirit now as we will be when death has unloosed the bindings of our disguise--the body. The real of each of us is what we are now, in our interior nature.
While we are building the business which sustains our physical body; while we are studying law or medicine or philosophy or religion or whatsoever, we are at the same time developing the interior nature which we are now, and which we will be when the life of the body ceases. Not all business men are alike, and yet, if business were their only reality, they must needs be all the same for employing the same methods. Not all doctors are alike although they graduate from the same school of medicine. The inner ent.i.ty that we are, stands or falls in the final test, by the motives; the desires; the sentiments; the sympathies; the generosities; the forgiveness; the kind impulses; the pities; the charities; the tolerances; we feel while we are apparently engrossed in the outer life. Together, these little impulses, perhaps forgotten in the rush of the day"s seemingly important business affairs, come finally to be the ladder by which we climb to the spiritual heights where the bliss of true and perfect, melting, merging, liquid-love, of the one and only mate awaits us.
One thing more. This also is a secret. Perhaps you will not even believe it, but it is true: Poets are the practical members of our crazy civilization. Business men are practical only when they are also, and above all, idealists.
CHAPTER XI
THE LAW OF TRANs.m.u.tATION
External life is a succession of picture blocks with which we have builded our thoughts into shapes and forms manifest to the mortal senses. But back of every act there is the invisible ideal which prompted it, so that to the one who has the interior vision; one who looks at life from the citadel of his own interior nature instead of merely sensing it by external contact, every material thing tells its interior story; everything has an esoteric or occult meaning. It is said that mystic truths have been veiled in symbolical language; but to those who know the language of symbolism, there is no veil; what seems so is due to the refractory character of the mind which is limited to sense consciousness.
There are two words much used in this day of the Dawn which give the key to the trend of the cosmic cycle upon which the earth has entered.
The word "union," or its equivalent, enters into almost every phase of our busy life as well as into ethical and philosophical thought. This word, with much that it stands for, has superseded the word "agreement," or "combination" or "partnership," formerly used. Union means something more interior, than do these other words, even when applied to commercial issues.
The business man says to his partners "let us unite on this question."
They are already partners, but unless there is a unity of thought and ideals, their partnership is an unsatisfactory and unfruitful one. We have labor unions which are intended to suggest a solidarity of effort; a merging of interests; a welding together into one thought-force, of those who enter the organization. The fullness of meaning of this word "union" is not adequately expressed in the words lodge, or club, or any of the terms used to designate an organization of men in social or commercial combination.
In union there is strength; but in partnership, or in clubs, there may be no quality of union, although there is the outward bond of fellowship. "I shall look into this" we say when we want to know more of a subject than appears on the surface. We want to know the within.
We want to fathom the interior meaning; to get below the surface, or the appearance of it. This is the other word of vital import--the word _within_. We see it everywhere like a signpost directing our footsteps toward home.
The Master Jesus said that the immortal kingdom was within, but the Christian world evidently has not believed Him. He also told those who would listen to Him, that there was but one commandment that was truly spiritual, but as he did not come to destroy anything that existed, but only to trans.m.u.te it, He paid no attention to the commandments already in vogue, but contented Himself with a repet.i.tion of the one and only commandment of the Father-Mother G.o.d Principle which begat him: "That ye love one another."
Now we are being told from the housetops and from the streets and through all the channels of the physical senses to look within. That which you are--not what you appear to be to the eyes of the sense-conscious--but that which you are in your interior nature, is what counts to you. The writer who writes because he is paid to write salable stuff, harps upon the necessity for "efficiency" in the commercial game; but when the word is impartially considered efficiency consists in the long run in reliability, and reliability is measured by one"s honesty; integrity; square-dealing; wise judgment--interior qualities all. It matters not whether the skin be white or black or brown or yellow or green; whether you are of imposing stature or but four feet tall; it is what you are within that const.i.tutes true efficiency.
So the kingdom whatever it may be whether of heaven or h.e.l.l; of love; or of power; or of ambition; the kingdom is within. The source of your power is in the interior of your nature.
If we go to slang, which offers the line of least resistance to the Cosmic Law, we find that the cue has been given over and over again to those who are interiorly awake to receive it. "You are not in on this," has been said to one who was left out of some supposedly desirable thing; or "you are not _in_ it," meaning that you are not up to the required standard. Even as the walls of a building only imperfectly indicate the nature of that which is within, that which the building stands for; that which it symbolizes, so physical appearances are symbolical hieroglyphs of the inner nature.
"Learn to look into the hearts of men" admonishes the spiritual teacher. "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." The character of the heart is the test, and though a man"s lips utter words that are at variance with his inner nature, yet if we have learned to look within, we are not deceived. This then is the key to the kingdom--interior vision.
Words are like buildings; like personalities; they have their exterior and their interior message. Knowledge may be acc.u.mulated; piled up like a mountain of possessions. But knowledge may not bestow one grain of true wisdom. It is only as we extract the interior message from knowledge that we attain wisdom. We possess knowledge and we _find_ wisdom, when we have trans.m.u.ted that knowledge into its interior meaning.
The fundamental difference between mysticism and theology is a difference founded upon this axiom. The true mystic penetrates to the interior nature of manifestation and gets the message of Experience.
Mysticism excludes nothing. It includes the manifest with the interior; it penetrates the outer and seeks the interior; but never does the true mystic confound the spirit with the letter; never does he mistake the external for the Reality; the symbol for the message.
Suppose that what is generally called the practical side of life were the only reality. What would be the inevitable conclusion of the thinker if he were to consider only the outer, the manifest, the visible results of a given achievement? He would conclude that civilization is insane.
If we did not know with an intuitional grasp of truth that all this which we call "marvels of achievement" is symbolical of what Man is in his interior nature, it would be the veriest folly. What, for example, is there in a modern sky-sc.r.a.per indicative of man"s advanced civilization?
With millions of acres of unused land, it would be inconceivable folly to project into the inoffensive atmosphere twenty-eight stories of wood and iron merely to buy and sell the products of man"s brain and hands. But while our Twentieth Century feverish activities are ostensibly engaged in the external world, they are symbolizing, embodying, teaching if we will but learn, the fact of the evolution of man"s interior nature. Sky-sc.r.a.pers are indicative of the heights to which we are aspiring; to which we are climbing; air-ships only tell us that man in his interior nature--in his reality--is not a creeping, crawling Thing, chained to the earth. He may, if he will, soar into ethereal realms. He has wings, and if he so desires, he may use them.
Wireless telegraphy would be a much less consequential discovery, did it not foreshadow the coming time when mind will speak to mind regardless of desert wastes and imponderable mountains that seemingly intervene. Wireless messages are the result of vibrations set in motion by means of a dynamo and received by an instrument attuned to a corresponding rate of motion. But no dynamo ever invented has the power that is centered in the dynamic will of a human being. Brute strength is paralyzed into inactivity by the comparatively puny strength of a man. The fierceness of the lion, the tremendous force of the elephant, give way before the potent power of Man"s desire--an interior quality.