Sex--The Unknown Quantity Part 16

Do skysc.r.a.pers, or air ships, or wireless telegraph systems make us happier? If they do, is it not because of their ethical rather than their so-called practical value? Is it not because they prove to man his power to use the plastic material of the planet and control it to do his bidding? Rapid transit adds to convenience; but above and beyond all the so-called practical valuation which can be put upon modern inventions and accomplishment is the message which these mechanical marvels present to the mind. The message that man is not a machine; that he is not a creature but a creator; that he is not a miserable worm of the dust, but a winged G.o.d.

Greater than all the other benefits bestowed by modern mechanical marvels is the knowledge of each other which has resulted from intercommunication between nation and nation. The great breeder of discord and the waste of hatred is the idea of segregation. The man of the cave and the club feared his next door neighbor, because he did not know him, and the animal-man fears that which he does not know; his imagination pictures the unknown one as something monstrous and dangerous. Intimacy will teach us that people of a distant country are like ourselves, even though they may dress differently; even though they may wear their hair an inch longer or shorter; may eat a diet of nuts instead of meat; may pray standing up rather than kneeling down.

Upon such trifling and absurd differences as these are based our ideas of "alien" races and "foreign" nations.

Annihilation of s.p.a.ce and time accomplished by modern mechanical inventions has made us familiar with the interior life of other human beings and has compelled us to the knowledge that they have feelings, emotions, desires, hopes, aspirations, and faults, exactly like our own, and thus will be established a bond of unity, which will reach the heart of our neighbor. If this bond of unity has not as yet been established, it is because the majority of Mankind are still only sense-conscious. They have not yet a.s.similated the knowledge which the past few years has precipitated in such an avalanche that the slow-moving mind cannot keep pace with it. But out of all this knowledge must come in due time the quality of wisdom. Wisdom seeks love as the only eternal reality. Not because G.o.d has commanded that we shall do so; not because of a sentimental ideal, but because any other course is futile, foolish, silly and does not "get us anywhere"

as the slangologists rightly express it.

Thus everything in the busy commercial world, seemingly bent upon perpetuating external forms and systems, is in reality a symbolic language of which "unity" and "within" are the pivotal centers. These two words are really complementary, because it is only with the interior nature that unity can be established.

We may conjoin; combine; contact; cohere. We may form partnerships, corporations, combinations from the outside. These are external expressions of the interior desire for unity, but union is of the interior nature only.

With the more intimate knowledge of each other which intercommunication between nations makes general, each little segregated ma.s.s of human beings must sooner or later arrive at the conclusion that we are very much alike and that to "get together" on any proposition involving the welfare of all humanity is a much less costly and a far more satisfactory way of settling matters than by going to war over it. Not that this idea is yet fixed in the brains of the majority, but there is creeping into man's cranium a faint thought that perhaps the survival of the fittest will be best maintained by peaceful methods; an idea that honor can neither be maintained nor appeased by shedding blood. This knowledge will bring us to the wise observation that fundamentally, cosmically there is no place for enmity between nations and races and cla.s.ses and the s.e.xes; that the whole conglomerated ma.s.s of hatreds and inherited enmities and segregated interests; the absurd idea that one part of the world can permanently prosper by the enslavement of any part; the undeveloped and savage ideas that underlie our civilization; all these thought-concepts have no more reality in the cosmic scheme of things, than have the picture-blocks of the child in the adult life.

The world has been living through a nightmare. The warfare which belongs to the animal plane of Man's evolving consciousness has been carried into the mental world as well. Not only do men fight like tigers in the jungles, but they fight with tongue and pen as well, using food products, textile fabrics, inventions, mechanical devices and the creations of brains of men, for their weapons. But this type of warfare will not much longer survive. Mankind must choose between trans.m.u.tation or annihilation. Hatred is self-destructive. Blind indeed must be those who can expect to escape this law. "They who use the sword shall perish by the sword." How else can it be? There is but one force. If we use it to construct, we are constructed. If we use it to destroy we are destroyed, since it is by the very nature of law that we become involved in that which we employ. It is a simple sum in arithmetic. We may either add or subtract. If we add, there is no limit. If we subtract we ultimately wipe off the slate.

The fact is dawning upon an increasing number of thinkers, that even as brain is superseding brawn in the marts of the world, so there is still a finer and higher and better force, so potential in its power that nothing can withstand its melting, merging, unifying motive. That power is love, without which though we have all else we are but as "sounding bra.s.s and a tinkling cymbal."

Even as the ferocious man-eating animals have disappeared from the earth; even as the giant gladiators, the mailed knights, the erotic pomp and regalia of Imperialism, with their captives chained to their chariot-wheels; the cruel despots, the tyrannical masters and scourged slaves; the b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices, the horrible games of the amphitheatres, even as these one-time evidences of alleged "civilization" have pa.s.sed away, so too will time see the dissolution of our own "false G.o.ds." Trans.m.u.ted into pure and perfect love and peace and equality, the power now misapplied in the work of hate and destruction, will increase a thousand fold and be directed toward the maintenance of a balanced world--a world in which Love and Wisdom are united.

We are always fearful of changes. The bat-like eyes of the mult.i.tude are blinded by the light of the sun. Why cannot we trust the Cosmic Law which has always given us a better ideal in the place of the decadent one? If we prefer to use the word G.o.d, then let us say why cannot we trust G.o.d?

In the external world, then, the idea that a part of this sphere is inherently antagonistic to another; that men are born enemies; that the female and the male must forever struggle for supremacy--all these ideas are disappearing. "Unity" is the pa.s.sword to the coming civilization. If then we will accept this conclusion and apply it to our individual selves, we will conclude that no function of the human organism should merit disapproval; or be regarded as an enemy. Before we can arrive at a balanced and sane world without, we must come to a balanced and sane state within our own organism.

We must know that the s.e.x function, the most vital of all the various expressions of life in the individual body as well as in the social body and the racial body, is not an enemy with whom we must maintain unceasing warfare, but a wise and trustworthy friend with whom we may safely co-operate, neither repressing this vital force until we have conquered it and dragged it like a bleeding captive behind our chariot-wheels, nor should we like the drug-slave become lost in the clutches of an abnormal appet.i.te.

Indeed, as the forces of life become trans.m.u.ted from the physical appet.i.tes to the finer, and interior desires of the soul, abnormalities and perversions of s.e.x-force will be impossible.

s.e.x-force is, at the Center of Being, unpolluted. It is pure, perfect and harmonious. It is divine. Why? Because it is bi-une; it is balanced.

In our present-day lopsided civilization, we find that nearly every one is lop-sided, and unbalanced. Alienists declare that almost every man and woman has some hobby or mania. Doubtless this is true. An age of specialization would incline the race toward "lopsidedness." But the source of Life is balanced; if we come to the place where we consciously unite with that interior source we will no longer be unbalanced, because the central source of life is s.e.x, and s.e.x is, at the center of the radius, bi-une, which is to say balanced. There is no chance for s.e.x supremacy, for domination, or dispute, or jealousy.

There is equilibrium.

It is probable that to those who cannot compa.s.s the consciousness that equality does not mean identicalness this sort of balanced life will appear tame and tasteless. Few women perhaps and certainly fewer men can imagine a s.e.x-union in which love is so great, so over-powering and at the same time so perfect, that there is no room for jealousy.

The average person believes that jealousy is inseparable from s.e.x-love. But even as our antediluvian ancestors could not imagine the mechanical miracles of the telephone and the telegraph, so we fail to comprehend the infinite depth and intensity of our interior being until we come to the place where we awake from the sleep of the mortal and glimpse the heights of the immortal life.

No one can give to another this interior wisdom--this philosopher's stone, by means of which all baser instincts are trans.m.u.ted into the pure golden-tinted light of illumination. He can but point the way and promise that the results are mathematically proportionate to effort, and effort will be backed by individual desire.

We do not hold, as do many writers dealing with the physiological side of the subject of s.e.x, that the s.e.x function is primarily designed for purposes of procreation and that any other expression of s.e.x is contrary to nature. The essential function of s.e.x is to vitalize.

Procreation is one of the uses of s.e.x-love, but it is not its primary function.

Until men and women have absolute control over their s.e.x impulses they are still on the plane of sense-consciousness; and as long as they remain only sense-conscious they miss the very thing that they seek.

All that is pleasureable in s.e.x-contact that reaches any man or woman who is only sense-conscious is no more than a faint echo of the ecstacy of divine and perfect love which is known to the spiritual alchemist, who has discovered the art of trans.m.u.tation and thus found the key to the gate of eternal life.

As long as we remain limited to the plane of sense-consciousness, old age is a blessing. It compels trans.m.u.tation of the love-nature into interior channels. By the failure of the physical organism to express the s.e.x-desires, this force is given an opportunity to become trans.m.u.ted into higher, finer and more intense and beautiful thoughts.

It takes on whatever quality of soul we have acquired and it fosters that quality--be it much or little--so that we may not go into the interior realms a spiritual pauper.

Even as our physical childhood is a prelude to mental adultship, so old age, our "second childhood," is a prelude to our soul adultship, and the character of our old age period is prophetic of our state in the soul life.

There are some extremely aged persons whom we cannot, if we have any degree of interior vision, cla.s.sify as old; the youth and beauty and love-radiance of their interior nature is so potent that it shines through the worn and wrinkled garment that covers it; and we know that when that garment shall have been removed by the hands of Death, that the soul will be clothed in radiant youth and beauty, and light.

This is indeed the esoteric cause of the widespread repudiation of a mental recognition of age.

"I am seventy years young" says the man who hopes for eternal youth and life; and if he says it from the standpoint of wisdom--the wisdom that knows himself an immortal soul fired by pure and holy spiritual love, then indeed his words are truly symbolical.

But if he utters them merely in desperate defiance of organic decay, they are empty and he will enter the after-life, even as he leaves this one, without having attained that which he craves.

This truth is an integral part of the cosmos, from which there is no appeal; no reprieve; no immunity, no "respecter of persons." The law is absolute and it is also just. Pure and perfect love is the price of immortal life. There is no other "coin of the realm."

"But," questions the initiate, "why cannot those who know, if there be such in the world today, give us this mystical formula? Why do they not tell us how we may reach this desirable state of spiritual s.e.x-love, which affords such divine happiness to those who find it?"

The query is pertinent and the desire is natural; the doubt of its reality is consistent, yet we are constrained to say that in the very nature of such inquiry the disciple of the Hidden Wisdom voices his unreadiness for _Illumination_. The desire for self-gratification, though right and natural to the sense-conscious plane, is yet inimical to attainment of spiritual consciousness.

There is a spiritual message in the persistently inculcated doctrine of sacrifice. It is not that a Supreme Being desires sacrifice, or gifts, or adulation, or homage, or worship, or that any power glories in our unhappiness. It is not that we may purchase any spiritual thing by giving up something which we prize, but it is because our spirit becomes attuned to the central source of Life by means of our willingness to perform what to the sense-conscious plane of existence seems a sacrifice.

"He sought for others the good he desired for himself; let him pa.s.s on" is the Egyptian phrasing of the Golden Rule, and this states it as clearly as it can be stated.

Yet should any one take this truism as an unfailing formula and expect to enter the golden gate of eternal life because of obedience to the letter of the pa.s.s-word, he would fail. Altruism _is_; it is not mere recognition of a word.

We may presuppose another natural and instinctive query: "If then only by union with one's true mate one can enter the bliss of eternal life and love, should not we drop every other responsibility, sever all ties of relationship, give up wife or husband or family or work, and search for the one perfect complementary, finding which, is found the answer to all life's problems?"

Again we can only say that the seeker would be disappointed. We should remember the story of Sir Launfall. Returning from the unfruitful quest of long years for the Holy Grail (the golden chalice), he learned the lesson of Truth from the beggar at his own door to whom he gave the cup of cold water _without any consciousness of doing a good deed_; without hope of thereby finding the grail.

He who seeks with the selfish thought of securing for self any good will not find it though he should give away every farthing to the poor; though he should never permit one unkind word to pa.s.s his lips; though he should fast and scourge and deny the flesh; kneel all day and all night in prayer. As long as he holds to the thought of self and of _obtaining_ something so long will he miss the _attainment_.

Spiritual insight establishes two facts beyond cavil or dispute or reversion. One is that G.o.d's laws cannot be broken. We are not trying to say that they should not be broken; or that they cannot be broken with impunity; or that if broken we shall be punished. They simply cannot be broken--they are unbreakable.

We cannot buy or sell or beg or steal or borrow or take as a gift, or in any wise acquire immortal G.o.dhood, except by attaining it any more than we can come to physical manhood or womanhood except by growing to it; and by the same law no one can keep it from us; neither priest nor scribe; neither prophet nor inventor. We are a law unto ourselves. No one can break the law of your being any more than you can break that of another. No power on earth or in the celestial spheres or in the intervening s.p.a.ces can keep that which is our own from us. Wherefore then, should we tear ourselves and each other with strife and jealousy and wounded honor and outraged marriage vows, when either partner to a marriage contract sees fit to sever that relationship?

If you lose out in what you believed to be love, be sure that the object of your desires was not yours to lose; in all the spheres there is only one who is yours by divine right and no one can by any possibility usurp your place in the final issue; and that place once found no one can oust you from it. But remember what we have said in previous chapters of the word "found;" it is from within.

How vain and how foolish it is to think that a power so stupendous, so magnificent and so beneficent as to project this immense panorama of life; to establish such marvelous diversity within such simple unity; to bestow the bliss of love, could make a mistake. How puerile has been the teaching that we can sin against the Eternal G.o.d. We need not worry about the Supreme and Eternal Power. "The dice of G.o.d are loaded." Our concern is with ourselves, lest we imagine that we may cheat in the game of life.

We are self-centered, free-willed; immune from any possibility of offending the universe. The whole problem of life and death, in so far as it relates to our individual selves, is "up to us." We can delay arrival at the goal of our desires; we can dally by the wayside if we will. Only our own loss, our own suffering, our own unsatisfied longing shall punish us. But who is so stupid that he would remain wandering in the bleak and barren desert, when he might by a turn of his hand enter fields Elysian and merge his soul into the boundless areas of infinite bliss and wisdom?

We should not imagine that death will do this for us. Death is nothing more phenomenal than withdrawing from one room to another. The soul may strive on for ages through many incarnations. Only one thing can free it; and that is love; love for others than the personal self. The broader and deeper the love nature, the wider it reaches out to enfold in its tender protection all living things, the more nearly divine we become, and the sooner will we touch the area of the spiritual and attract our own.

It is evident that self-seeking even for so worthy a possession as one's own counterpart defeats the very effort. We are not to seek; we are only to prepare ourselves to be ready and worthy; when we shall have done this, nothing can withhold our own from us; not though the two halves of the One Being are separated by all the barriers which the sense-conscious race of men have erected between themselves and the bliss of Heaven. Says Emerson: "What is thine, will gravitate to thee." We need not therefore go about apprehensively fearful lest we lose that which belongs to us; in so doing we are apt to keep our eyes glued to the earth, thus forgetting that it is from the higher realms of vibration "whence cometh our light."

Says Emerson: "O, believe as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world which thou oughtest to hear will vibrate on thine ear. Every proverb, every book, every by-word that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding pa.s.sages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will, but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And this because the great and tender heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly, an endless circulation through all men as the water of the globe is all one sea, and truly seen its tide is one."

Here then are specific and trustworthy statements for the further enlightenment of the student of the problems of s.e.x. Like algebraical propositions they prove themselves when correctly solved. Immortal G.o.dhood is attained by counterpartal union, because the Central Source of Life is bi-une. Immortality is our spiritual birthright, but we must claim it if we would consciously realize this truth.

G.o.d is the bi-une creative principle, and we are literally and in truth the "image and likeness" of this bi-une Being. Not one hermaphroditic personality but a pair. A pair is one whole, even though each of the pair is distinct in form and diverse in temperament and qualities. We are especially emphatic upon this point because there has been so much vague and speculative theorizing upon this definition of a bi-une Being. Your perfect mate is distinctively masculine or distinctively feminine in s.e.x as the case may be; and he or she is your mate because of this perfection of distinctiveness.

Our former ideas of femininity and of masculinity were faulty. Woman is not less but much more womanly, if she has exchanged fear for courage; deceit for truthfulness; ill-health for vitality; helplessness for helpfulness. Even as a man is more manly when he spares the nesting birds where formerly he ruthlessly destroyed; when he unites protection with bravery; when he knows sympathy from weakness; when he combines sentiment with principle; and gentleness with vigor.

No mortal can by any possibility break the laws of G.o.d. Therefore you are not to try to enforce your ideas of morality upon others. Who has const.i.tuted you book-keeper for the universe? You are to concern yourself with establishing happiness upon this earth.

You are to see to it that your love is big and broad enough; all-inclusive enough to wish to see every one happy from your immediate family to your far-off neighbor in Central Africa. You need not worry about whether they break the moral code as you see it. You are to render love and service to this world with all your heart and all your power; if you do this, you will reach the goal of your desires.