Chapter I

We come up through many slaveries into freedom. It is the end of a considerable road to be able to stand against the morning sun, saying: "I want nothing but to give----" ... To be able to say this without an answering laugh of mockery in the heart, where old King Desire sits with his dogs.

To be free--that is to be irresistible. Do you want love? You only spoil it when you stipulate what the return shall be--how the proffering of the return shall be ordered and arranged. The great love is giving; great love is incandescence. One must be radiant to be happy. It is so literally. It is so, fold within fold....

One sees gold, looking up from below, and its attraction becomes eminent among all desires for the time. We pass it by and look down, as the spirit of man should look down upon gold, and it becomes a mineral merely. You can enjoy it as you enjoy other people's roses. It bestows itself. Others seek to bestow it upon you.

Hold to nothing in matter. It is slavery. Give yourself laughingly to your work for daily bread without thought of result. Then, and not until then, are you inimitable in your task. Order the performance of your task with mere brain and attach it to your ambitions--you but do what the many accomplish. Your product is multiple, not a perfect cube. It cannot unfold into the Cross. It misses Resurrection. You must be free, even to perform your work in the world. You must be free to be irresistible.... Genius is approach to freedom. It finds its own paths; it cuts itself free from the forms and vehicles of others.

We have known the dark slavery of the opinions of others. Many of us have cast off such bonds, who are still slaves to our own opinions. We learn to stop lying to others before we learn to stop lying to ourselves. Until we are free, we have no opinion that is fit to endure; until we are free, our opinions are coloured and formed in the matrices of personal self, which is subject to death.

It's all so simple. We have to put down what is in our hands to help others. We have to still our own thought to listen to another's saying. We have to silence the self to hear the Master.

This silencing goes on and on in all our work. Pain shows the way.... We must traverse the deserts. We must cross all the rivers. We must see one by one every material thing betray us. This is the Path--money, opinions, ambitions, health, friends, desires, all betray so long as we obstruct their approaches with our own conceptions and our own greeds. We rise one by one above these illusions. The last and greatest is that desire which is born in generation.... All the old reaches its highest perfection in the human love story. All Nature binds one to the loveliness of this tale. It is the way to the Way. Because it is not the Way itself, it appears to end. The great intensities of agony now begin. The soul realises that only the foothills of pain are passed; that here are the mountains, here are the deep valleys that contain the Gethsemanes and timbers for the Cross, and the plan by which the Cross must be morticed and tenoned....

The sea, the mountain, gold, the rose, the child, the peasant's simplicity, the coming of the coolness of evening, the glory of the clay and waterfall, mist and cloud and star, the deep healing winds that come slowly with their heavy fruitage of power from the mountains, the swift winds with the holy breath of the Sea--all these in the breast of the mate.... When this dream is taken, one bleeds, laterally and full-length. One wants to die; thus he overcomes death. He feels the great burden in which all other burdens lose themselves. When he passes this highest series of inland peaks, the distances stretch clear and shining ahead. This the test of faith because you deal with love itself. Your soul, in its earliest advices, tells you that your love of earth is pure.

It is. It is good. It is the highest here.

It is still to be perfected by the races, even by the new races, who must be born bright with its untried magic.... But so long as it is idolatry to that which is subject to change, it is hourly impregnating the life itself with the seeds of pain....

You are called to the love of Souls. Sooner or later you must go. It is the Path. It is the steep path to the Master. You give up all to go this way--and then you laugh to find it all returned in lovelier dimensions. You take your idolatry from the plane of mutation--lift it into the glorious and changeless plateaus of the spirit....

You turn from the Seen to the Unseen.

This is the passage. You are called to go alone a little way--to be worthy of the great Meeting. You carry your gifts of the passage woven into the Seamless Robe of your being. All that impedes day by day you cast aside, as an army making a perilous retreat casts off day by day its impedimenta--until at last you stand naked upon the eminence, and the Voice says, "Be not Ashamed--I am the Beloved...."

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Out of slaveries.... We think at first that God is without--at last we look for Him within. We come from the happiness of the Father's House making our great journey, but our Soul's quest continually is for the happiness again. Yet we must not look back. It is failure to go back. That which we have left unfinished, is not behind, but awaiting ahead.

We are slaves to our bodily health until we learn that the body is superbly fitted for obedience to the Soul; that it comes into its rhythm and beauty only when mastered. Indeed the very process of mastery is to lead it to the Fountain of Youth.

We learn that truly to be rich, we must give continually. We learn by the quickenings of our spirit that white lines run from the brows of all creatures to an apex which is God--that God is all. All is God.... All is one. We are one. We are brothers. One house for all at the end of the Road.... We find the King in our own Souls. We learn from that that all men are Kings. We bow to all Souls. All souls are rays of God. We come at last to see the sons of God in the eyes of passing men.

Our passion now is outpoured. That is joy. We ask nothing but to give, to heal,--to permit the spirit of the Healing Masters to flow through us, but first we clear away the obstructions of the self.

Achieving our own chastity, we perceive the potential chastity in every face. We are deluded no longer. The imbecile cannot hide our eyes from the Flame. All purity must be found within. We have no fault with others when we are cleansed. We see the heroes then, the giants, the runners, the singers, the charioteers.

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We learn that we can give nothing real away--that all we do for others is service for ourselves. We give pain for joy, time for eternity, the human for the divine--give to receive, give to be radiant. We must be Flame to be fed by the Flame Itself.

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We are prepared by every suffering, every humiliation, until the personality bows at last.... Personality is good. It has brought us where we are. Do not kill it out before its work is finished. We do not realise its beauty until we see it mastered--until we see it with the eyes of the Soul. All one story. We learn to love step by step. We love ourselves, our possessions, our children, our friends, our mates, our Masters, our God.... The higher we go, the more perfectly we contain all the gradations.

The last sufferings, the last tests, are so often through the human love story, because all weaknesses are easily shown through that--all our pains so quickly received.... The bright sandals of the Master at last are heard across the Hills. One laughs then, for He brings with Him the beloved we have cried for so long.... Not in the love of desire after that, but the love of giving, the love that casts out fear, that passes understanding, that fulfils the law, the irresistible love of the Christ.