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The Way to Enlightenment - Excerpt

There is but one Way, one eternal Path,
But one Direction, one ambrosial Bath
For self-unfoldment, one immutable Law
That only can us to self-knowledge draw:
One precious kernel, one essential seed,
Found in the scriptures of each major creed:
The basic teaching of all current faiths
Which our whole-hearted compliance still awaits.

The flaw has been we to the skies extolled
The Founders of our Faiths and proud installed
Their idols, relics, pictures and the rest,
Their gospels and their thought, not in our breast,
But in palatial temples, churches, shrines,
Of stately looks and masterly designs,
To quench our thirst for pomp, and tried our best
To exalt them over others and invest
Their persons and their words with such a bright
And supernatural halo that the Light
They came to shed remained confined within
The walls of sanctums they were worshipped in.

Or in the homage shown to their great works,
Their interpreters and their priestly clerks,
All hoping to obtain a modest share
Of glory if they, with assiduous care,
Applauded their own faith above the rest,
To fail deplorably in the first test
To treat the others like oneself to trace
A most essential guideline for the race.

But where the seeds had to be deeply sown
Remained as barren as if hewn of stone:
The human heart which had to study, sift
And act upon the precepts in their gift,
To reach the state sublime they promised all
Those who might rally to their clarion call.

Instead of striving for a study deep
And critical we turned into docile sheep
Their followers, contending that their words
Contained the wisdom found in all the worlds,
With this fanatical, religious zeal
We narrowed down and put a binding seal
On the revealed injunctions but to feed
Our vanity and not to advance the creed.

For what the Founders said remained unchanged
By praise or criticism, but we deranged
Our thinking, when we chose to shut our eyes
To the truth that there is more in the skies
And on the earth than mortal mind can know,
Whereof the admission spurs us on to grow,
While by assuming that there is no more
To learn, on knowledge we tight shut the door.

That is why nature to remove the clamp
That had constricted human thought to cramp
The growth of knowledge which could not but stunt
Our mind, arrayed a formidable front
Of powerful intellects in Europe who
Remorselessly, as if dispatched to do
The task, the sovereignty of Faith dethroned,
Attacked her sanctum, battered it and stoned,
And left her flat to learn with pain and smart
That all our scriptures augur but the start
Of long, adventurous journeys that shall last
Until mankind to the earth can hold fast,
Beginning from a few, to win with Grace
The glorious empire of Self for the race.

The tendency in modern intellects
To expose the fallacies, faults and defects
In sacred teachings fails to take account
Of the plain fact that masses cannot mount
As fast the heights of thought that are innate
In them, and hence in their immature state
Of mind it is a grave mistake to uproot
Their faith and cause digression from the Route.

In rituals, ceremonies and pomp was lost
The teaching which, beyond compare and cost,
Terrestrial consciousness revealed to man
To draw his first attention to the Plan:
To curb the passions human nature bind
And labour for a cosmic-conscious mind,
Which soaring from the carnal nest could reach
Eternal Life the prophets came to preach
In stories, parables, allegories,
Aphorisms, sermons and mythologies
To suit the measure of the intellect
Of average mortals, not but the elect,
For revelation comes to guide the mass
Of mankind, not but those the crowd surpass.

What I assert can be seen e’en today
With but a little thought and brief survey:
Is rationalist approach to faith the rage
Of people e’en in this enlightened age?
Or more than e’er they are invaded by
Irrational impulses, which probe defy?

Or do they stop to reason when they run
After a mountebank or anyone
Known for miraculous power or saintliness,
And do they not soon crowd round him and press,
All eager for some boon or gift of grace?
If not obliged do they not run apace
To others, loath to disabuse their minds
Of the lure of the uncanny which oft binds
The thought of man to be refined and used
To profit, when the true Light is diffused?

These Laws of Life none can reveal save Faith—
Idle to expect this from a ghost or wraith—
And that is what the Enlightened came to teach:
The primary steps for us the height to reach,
And that is why a riot has begun
With hundreds of new cults instead of one:
Why hundreds of new prophets in the field
Their poverty with loud drum-beating shield.
And that is why these teeming mushroom cults
All o’er the earth produce such poor results
That we have not progressed a furlong more
Than where we were three thousand years before.

All that the founders of these movements tell
The same old wine they in new bottles sell,
For were there something new in their discourse
It would provide a strong cementing force,
Our greatest need, not a divisive one
Which some accept, some spurn, some treat as fun.

Instead of stressing where their greatness lay,
Their deep sincerity and selfless way
Of life, superb example and high thought,
Their strength and wisdom which upheavals wrought,
We turned our prophets into deities who
Nothing in common had with me or you.
Who had not battled and essayed for long
To turn their mind from passion, sin and wrong,
Who were above the reach of carnal love
And e’en in fancy never broke the vow,
Above all faults and blemishes which make,
As they are handled, mortals gold or fake,
And which, a common feature of their life,
Demand an honest and heroic strife,
Decreed by nature, as part of the Plan
For the ennoblement and rise of man.

How could the laity emulate with zeal
Their great example when thus made to feel
Inferior beings meant to obey the writ,
Whate’er their wisdom, courage, strength and grit,
And ne’er to dream that they could also rise,
With effort, at least, to approximate size?
The natural target for the human race
Lost in the battle for the pride of place!

Where lies the difference ’twixt a hard endeavour
For ecclesiastic or temporal power,
Whether a palace is built for a king
Or an imposing shrine for crowds to sing
Hymns of praise to the Lord or if we raise
The Enlightened too to power with fulsome praise,
Rather than treat them as compassionate guides
To lead us to the place where Truth resides,
And let not our temporal thirsts replace
The gratitude to be shown in this case.

The Founders of our faiths, revered and praised,
Always austere and humble, never raised,
Luxurious mansions for themselves or God,
Preached in the open, sat and slept on sod
Sheltered by trees, embracing rich and poor,
The high and low to make their mission sure.

How can the present-day religions win
The hearts of men, when they are void within
Of what their Founders spared no pains to instil:
A moderate, honest way of life to will
And gain salvation for the embodied soul,
Of Knowledge and Religion the one Goal,
The one supreme objective of our life,
The ground for all our sweating toil and strife,
The reason why we are and why we came,
The baffling mystery behind the game;
Our precious soul—a deathless spark divine
Of Cosmic Life—must in his glory shine.

[Excerpt taken from The Riddle of Consciousness]