THE SIMPLE FACT that the average person permits whatever desire for knowledge he may possess to be overborne by dislike arising from his superficial impression of philosophy or by a feeling of fear of the abstract itself unfits him to pursue such study. For there are certain cardinal characteristics required of every man before he can even be permitted to cross its very threshold. Nobody can hope to philosophize with profit who lacks seven psychological qualities. They are necessary because they represent the means whereby he may hope successfully to reach his end. An explorer who wishes to penetrate into difficult new territories, who will have to cross mountains, rivers, and deserts on his journey, should, if he knows his business at all, first prepare for the expedition by obtaining a proper equipment. He who seeks to explore the hidden philosophy and penetrate into the new territory of truth must likewise look to the nature and quality of his own personal equipment before his mind may venture forth into an activity which is likely to try and test his capacity to the uttermost.
It is not anybody and everybody who can undertake such an expedition. Those who will fulfil the preliminary conditions can alone hope for final success. These conditions are not externally imposed but are inherent in the very nature of the apprehension of truth, and therefore their fulfilment is inexorable. Nor are they manufactured arbitrarily by any exacting teacher. They are imposed by Nature herself and accepted by long tradition. However, nobody need trouble himself with them unless he or she belongs to the earnest few who seek to know the ultimate secret of life at any cost. All other persons can comfortably ignore them and take their own time and ease in life. Emerson has well said: “Take what thou wilt, but pay the price.” These words fit quite squarely at this point of our quest.
In the Western countries it has always been open for anyone to enter upon a philosophical study, but in Asia the aspirant was first required to show or acquire a modicum of suitable capacity for the task. Until both aptitude and attitude were acceptable he was regretfully refused instruction. It did not matter to the custodians of wisdom whether he held any religious faith or none, whether he was an atheist or a Christian or a Muslim, but it did matter that he should get psychologically fit. This difference is an important one and helps to account for the superior result and notable success obtained by the Asiatics. Fichte, however, must have caught a glimpse of the need for this disciplinary preparation, because he once said: “What kind of philosophy a man chooses depends ultimately upon the kind of man he is.” The successful assimilation of the higher truth will be in exact proportion to one’s personal qualification.
After the reading of the present chapter has been completed the student should earnestly examine himself at leisure in a strictly objective manner to ascertain how far the desirable characteristics are present within his mental makeup. The examination must be conducted on a basis of the strictest honesty. The results of this leisurely survey may startle him if he is earnest, shame him if he is sensitive, or enlighten him if he is eager for self-knowledge. One of the first things it will show him is the extent to which he is swayed by harmful instincts, well-known prejudices, unknown bias, hidden fears, foolish hopes, unjust attitudes, moods of the moment, powerful hallucinations, or deep-seated illusions, and how he gropes in a fog of conflicting motives and powerful subconscious influence. Thus he discovers what he really is! Such a revelation will not be pleasant. If he is really unfitted for philosophy this moment will become the crucial one, when he will irritably cast the book aside and drop the subject altogether. But if he is made of the right stuff he will take to the needed discipline and gradually bring about the desired change.
The first concern of a philosophical tutor is to knock down the student’s idols made with feet of clay, or to tell him plainly what he is really doing when he worships them. For the tutor is in the unpleasant position of an asylum doctor who has sometimes humoured the lunatics who regard themselves as being what they are not, such as Napoleon, by agreeing with them, but who eventually deems the time ripe to tell them brusquely they are not what they imagine themselves to be! At such an unpleasant moment it is invariably the experience of the doctor to become the most hated man in the institution!
The knowledge that they find themselves in a similar position—for few persons like to be told that they are not competent to receive truth—is an additional reason why the tutors of the hidden philosophy kept it secret for so many centuries. In fact, from the standpoint of philosophy few people are properly balanced and really normal, and hence it takes it as axiomatic that the aspirant has to be treated and cured of this unbalanced condition which he shares in common with millions. For philosophy seeks to put its students at the correct angle whence to view the pageant of cosmic existence as it really is, bereft of glamour and deception. This cannot be done until the intellect is well clarified and the strength of its hidden complexes vanishes. The task of reordering one’s mind is likely to be a painful process. The work of clearing away the falsities and foolishnesses which beset it is likely to leave some emptiness behind.
It is essential to find out what forces are acting in the mind and affect its reasoning and its outlook. Once the student unearths the real bases of his actions and attitudes he can philosophize freely and fearlessly, but not before. He must ruthlessly unmask by searching criticism his hidden motives, his unconscious desires, his darkly covered bias. The complexes which fill the subconscious layer of the human mind and which he neither recognizes nor names are partly responsible for his inability to apprehend truth. A most important department of preliminary activity is therefore to dig out these mental weeds and present them to the clear light of consciousness.
Once he becomes aware of the secret processes of his mind and the secret workings of his wishes he will discover that many false beliefs, many emotional distortions, cling to it out of its long past, acting as powerful detriments to right conduct and preventing the clear insight into truth. He will find that he carries a heavy burden of illusions and rationalizations which resist the entry of real knowledge. Only through such a thorough psychological understanding into what is going on behind the scenes of his conscious personal life can liberation come and prepare the way for further steps on the ultimate path. He must strip naked his innermost characteristics, taking and making no excuses, but boldly seeking to understand the bitterest truths about himself. He must see himself as he really is, exposing self to self. Such is the delicate psychological operation needed to detect for removal from the process of thought and action all those tendencies, complexes, hallucinations, and rationalizations which prevent the entry of truth into the mind or drive it along wrong roads. Until these influences are detected by analysis and exposed by interrogation they will not cease their maleficent operation. These complexes come to dominate the man and retard his free use of reason. He has to humble himself from the beginning by not hesitating to admit that his character, both in its open and concealed phases, is a deformed, crippled, and unbalanced thing. In short, he has to study a little psychology before he can profitably study philosophy. He has to analyse his emotions, examine the interaction of feeling and reason, perceive how he forms conceptions of ideas and things, and tackle the problem of unconscious motivation.
When a particular idea, for instance, recurs constantly and irresistibly to the mind and finally becomes a deep-seated obsession it interferes with the free play of thinking and thus renders accurate philosophical reflection impossible. Or when a man makes a mental reservation in favour of certain beliefs in a particular subject or field of interest and will not allow his faculties to work fully therein his mind is then divided into two or more insulated departments which are never permitted to interact logically on each other. We may then have the spectacle of complete credulity in one department and critical reasoning in the other. He is really unbalanced in one department and yet quite balanced in the other. The excellence of the latter hides the defect of the former. The fault does not lie in inability to think properly but in a particular complex which interferes at a certain point. Again, when a concession must be made to reason for the sake of self-respect or for the respect of others we witness the peculiar process of the person finding a conscious basis for his conclusions which is quite other than the real one. Thus he deceives himself and perhaps others by such rationalizations of egoistic wishes and unjustifiable prejudices. Other difficulties are delusions which assume such a fixed character as to afford an impregnable front to reason. Their persistence usually appears in the domain of political, religious, social, or economic belief.
All these may be classed as diseases of the mind and until they are cured they prevent a healthy working of those faculties which are called into play when we seek truth. For they determine the processes of thinking and action.
Such is the self-revelation which awaits the student. It will not be pleasant, but if he will have the courage to accept it like a medicine it will be purifying. There can be no cure as long as he is not aware that he is diseased.
It is difficult to arrive at an accurate analysis by oneself, and here the aid of an expert philosopher, i.e., a sage, is always useful when obtainable, but such men are exceedingly rare. The competent philosopher sees what complexes are operative in a man after a little conversation and without the need of going through the lengthy and sometimes fantastic processes of psychoanalysis. Moreover, he will see them much more clearly than the psychoanalyst because they will themselves suffer from a different set of complexes so long as they have not undergone the philosophic discipline! Such an examination can be most effectively carried out only by one who is himself mentally “free.”
However, these pages should assist every earnest reader in self-examination to some degree, while the constant pursuit of the lofty ideal of truth will generally do much to cure complexes. No genuine teacher can effect the final self-overcoming for the student; he must bring it about by his own free choice and by his own firm effort; but the constructive criticism of such a teacher is usually illuminating, while his personal presence is always inspiring.
This introspective dive into the depths of the aspirant’s character and capacity is a venture which must be coolly and boldly made. It will inevitably meet with innate resistances, instinctive oppositions, and emotional impediments which seek to check his descent. These arise naturally out of inborn tendencies as well as environment, education, or circumstances. They are mostly masked weaknesses or psychological repressions. Nevertheless, as he becomes aware of them by calm self-criticism he should find in their very presence—if he is philosophically minded—a special incentive to correct them and secure right adjustment to life. This demands great intellectual honesty in refusing to evade realities and greater intellectual courage in overcoming obscurantism; it is therefore a task for a mental hero who is not ashamed to learn that he needs altering and not afraid to contribute voluntarily to such a reform. It is an inner metabolistic process which gives temporary pain but leads to permanent health. And this is the only way in which he can fit himself for the mastery of the hidden philosophy.
To persuade people to challenge or change their old habits of thinking is immensely hard, for human nature is conservative at heart. And these old habits stubbornly reassert themselves at every opportunity. Yet if a man finds that these psychological qualifications seem far beyond his reach, and this standard of intellectual conduct far too exalted, he need not be mortified. The remarkable clinical results achieved by psychotherapeutic treatment point the way to undreamed-of powers of self-improvement which lie latent in the human mind. None of us has reached the limit of his capacity. Insight always accumulates when we search for new horizons. Many a man might become a philosopher if he would but bestir himself, if he would pay the price in persistent unrelenting effort to break the spell of old fallacies, and if he would take firm hold of a living transforming faith in his own progressive possibilities.
Years ago we used to think that every man was born with a set character, a fixed degree of ability, and a limited amount of mental power and that he could never exceed these limits. Today the penetrating analysis of psychology has banished the myth of the last phrase into the limbo where it deserves to remain. Just as the power of physical culture is nowadays universally acknowledged to be a definite one, just as we know that our muscles can be made stronger and the blood circulation quickened by daily exercise, so we know now that our mental ability and natural characteristics can be developed along precise lines, if we set about the task in the right way.
“A ten-thousand-mile journey starts with the first step,” says a Chinese proverb.
No wise man will despair, therefore, over the perplexities and difficulties of studying this philosophy. Nobody has really failed until he has given up. Why should we not today do what other men intend to do tomorrow? Or—to alter Milton’s line: They are not served who only stand and wait. We may remake our mentality if we will. For the theories of psychology and the actualities of experience clearly exhibit the fact that the capacity of the mind is extraordinarily flexible and expansive; it can grow beyond recognition when patient effort to understand the apparently incomprehensible is conjoined with hope, which is the last of human possessions, as wisdom is the best. Therefore we must ungrudgingly discipline ourselves mentally and mould ourselves ethically to arouse the right attitude for the arduous journey which lies before us. This is our preliminary step.
If this book presents the world with a doctrine which demands an unusual amount of sustained attention merely to follow it, which requires an intensity of concentrated thought on the part of its students such as few seem to possess, and which holds up an ideal of selflessness that will seem to most men as quite unattainable, the reply in defence may be taken from Thoreau that “we are not the less to aim at the summits, though the multitude does not ascend them.”
Nor does this mean that we are required to possess the required characteristics to perfection; it means that we are to make an inner exertion to develop them to an extent sufficient to enable us to grasp the elementary and earlier principles of philosophy at least, and to keep the seven qualifications ever before us as personal ideals. Thus the narrow chink of intellectual light may grow and grow until it becomes a broad beam, illuminating much that was formerly indistinct. A humble beginning may suffice to start with, for by the time we have mastered more of these principles we will have experienced the subtle charm and extraordinary fascination which lie in the soul, deeply hidden behind philosophy’s forbidding face. We shall then yield willingly to its demand upon us for further self-improvement in such qualifications, even though we may realize that their fuller acquisition will not be a swift matter nor a simple one. We shall thus unfold the characteristics stage by stage, not all at once.
Most of us begin as sinners; we may only hope to end one day as sages. But there is an immense difference between the man who wallows contentedly in his sins and the man who lifts himself up dissatisfied and discontented after every occasion of sinning. The first is bogged and aimless, whereas the second is not only moving but possesses right direction. For the pure joy of ennobling character, sharpening intelligence, and gaining strength as we proceed is one of the uncounted profits of philosophy. A mere glimpse at the qualities needed for such a chastening study will prove that they can be no mere polish to show off a man’s intellect nor even a cultural ornament; they demand much from a man but in the end they give more, for they possess plenty of bearing on this business of making both material livelihood and eternal life. They lead to a balanced understanding of the whole of life, not for theoretical display but for effective and sensible action. It has already been shown that the practical justification of religion is its advocacy of the good life; it shall later be shown that the practical justification of philosophy is its advocacy of the best life. Even if this study does nothing more, the practical and psychological aims it sets before us will have laid the firm mental and moral foundation for an exceptional personality, who is sure sooner or later to be marked out for superiority in one sphere or another. It will become a safe guide to proper action and a satisfaction of the purest and most exalted feelings. We shall undergo a profound transformation for the better of attitude, outlook, and habits. Thus those sacrificial hours which are given to philosophic discipline or study are not given in vain. The deity whom we thus worship well rewards its faithful devotees.
It would be easy for the inexperienced to undervalue the necessity of these seven psychological qualifications, but the striving philosopher knows that they are his most precious attributes. With them he is rendered ready for enlightenment and may hope to realize life’s supreme goal, but without them—never!
The first characteristic is none other than a strong yearning to find truth. The aspirant must learn how to go down on his knees for freedom from ignorance. No Asiatic sage of olden days would even touch on the alphabet of philosophy to any inquirer if he noticed that this yearning was absent or extremely feeble. One cannot set a water-sodden wood pile ablaze until it is somewhat dry; neither can any honest teacher take a satisfied worldling, to whom the world needs no questioning and looks good enough as it is, and lift his mind to the higher regions of being. This yearning is a higher octave of the same deep-felt longing to get at the hidden heart of life which mystics call “the manifestation of Grace,” only here it rises from compelling emotion to calm thought as it takes a more advanced form and demands ultimate truth rather than temporary satisfaction. Not many are born with such an attribute of loving truth for its own sake, for ordinarily the mind does not want to exert itself to find it. Those others who acquire it later in life usually do so out of the depths of agonized suffering, tragic loss or disappointment with religion or mysticism. It may also arise from personal contact with a genuine sage, when the outward demonstration of its benefits, especially in critical times, may become both plainly apparent and mentally attractive.
The desire for truth really means the desire to get rid of ignorance. No truly thoughtful man can rest satisfied like a merely sensual animal, but after initial wonder or doubt about the cosmic spectacle must at some time or other strive to tear aside the veil that hides life’s meaning. He must be bent on the removal of this ignorance; if he dogmatizes that truth is unattainable he thereby becomes unqualified. Let him strive first, and never desist from such striving, if he wishes to dogmatize correctly on this point.
And whoever is merely or momentarily curious likewise renders himself unfit, for he too will soon fall by the wayside. Wisdom must win a man as her ardent disciple or not at all. He is best fitted for philosophy who is attracted to it by a burning passion for truth rather than by an ascetic repugnance to the world. Truth demands a deep devotion before revealment. Very few want it so strongly. Most men and women may be interested in it as a hobby or for polite intellectual discussion, but stop short at permitting it to tincture their lives. Therefore they are hoodwinked and given shoddy substitutes, because just as in everyday transactions for material things they get only what they pay for. They are soon tested on this quest, anyhow. Those who are unconsciously insincere or whose motives are quite mediocre or whose aims are limited will let their love of lesser but more tangible things outweigh their love of intangible truth. For they will be brought to consider deeply and deliberately whether by time or by teacher not only if they want the highest truth but also if they want it irrespective of its unpleasantness or pleasantness. The right kind of seeker will pursue it to the end and then accept it whatever its taste, be it like poison or like nectar, for he has understood the implication and felt the force of Bacon’s saying that, “No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.” Whoever yearns to hear the veiled goddess’s call and to follow her wherever she be found, whether in unfamiliar lands or in unfamiliar thoughts, becomes her beloved votary.
But the goddess will not walk in like an apparition to visit him; he must go in restless search of her. It will be quite natural therefore for anyone who feels such a strong truthward yearning to strive in consequence to possess the second qualification, which is an enduring determination to take up the quest of truth and persevere, come what may, until the goal is reached. The quest is inevitably a long and steep hill which must be climbed with struggle and effort, rather than a flat road where progress is easy and predictable. This single factor of unabated endurance amid all the perplexity and darkness which envelop the aspirant is most essential if he is not to tire in discouragement and forgo the quest. It is essential because it gives him the propulsive force which he needs to drive him onward through all difficulties, across all disadvantages, and against all obstacles, rendering him strong enough indeed to carry through to the bitter end. Even he who does feel the truth-yearning must guard it well, for he is swimming against the stream of superficial present-day environments—a hard task but a manageable one, because whoever is really in earnest receives an undaunted courage born of despair.
Defeatist moods of mind and heart will inevitably blow over him and go, but the determination to carry on with the quest must remain. Mental chameleons who change the colour of their goal with every year cannot suit this path. The seeker must be patient enough to endure steadfastly both trials and temptations, troubles and joys, and yet remain as patiently determined as before. Tests and ordeals will beset his whole worldly path and constantly assail his mind.
Let us return to our analogy of an explorer and say that he has set out to cross Northern Africa from coast to coast. If he were to stop short at any point of his journey and turn back because of lack of water or hostile environment or attacks by sand flies, snakes, and mosquitoes he would never reach the other coast. The seeker after truth must be no less keen within his own sphere of intellectual exploration and refuse to turn aside from pressing onward in his settled direction. He must know how to continue with studies that yield no immediate fruit and how to wait for the favoured moment of illumination. None of us is entirely our own master and all must await the proper time, the destined hour of higher comprehension, and yet we must not slack in our work while waiting. Time is thus a factor which must be allowed for. Colonel Lindbergh’s leap across the Atlantic was in its day a feat which was sung to the skies in which he flew. But it came only after he had already practised seven thousand lesser trips. The glamour of philosophic achievement gives vivid colour to a historic name, but beneath the story of success runs an unseen river of persistent and patient day-by-day toil. The revelation of truth must grow little by little within oneself as it draws the mind to a gradual transfiguration; albeit its final realization may occur with startling suddenness.
We must fight our own weakness of purpose. The real struggle in life is the struggle of man against himself. It is the one which fewest enter because it asks so much from him. Yet it is the only one which is really worthwhile. Nothing great or grand can be obtained by mere wanting. To get one must be prepared to give—oneself! There was once a wandering teacher in Galilee who noticed the common inclination to feebleness in his own followers. He had to tell them: “Those that do my words shall know my doctrine.”
The determined mind achieves most. When the pressure valve on a steam boiler begins to rise a greater volume of energy begins to come out of the engine. When the same wires which carried a feeble current of electricity suddenly begin to carry a high voltage, results improve as quickly. These things are parables which man should heed.
Finally, philosophic determination to ascertain what is truth refuses to confuse defeat with failure. From the first it draws the dividends of warning or wisdom, but the second it never acknowledges.
The third required characteristic is thinking power, an intelligence sufficiently vigorous to weigh the relative importance of things or validity of statements correctly and not merely conventionally. Philosophy demands perspective. It seeks to see things as they really are. This implies a certain mental alertness which is awake to the trite but true saying that things are not always what they appear to be. The false often appears or is made to appear as the true. Reasoning should be so independent that it produces a stubborn refusal to accept any opinion merely because everyone else holds it. The herd sinks in the flood of the opinions and theories of others because it is held mentally by erroneous beliefs, seeming realities, and misleading appearances, but the Thinker stands firm. The way out from this bondage is right reflection, deep analysis, and constant inquiry—all combined in quest of truth. This study involves much new and not at all easy thinking; our generation may not assimilate much of it but the pioneer minds certainly can. An intense intelligence is required. We must think, we must act, not for ourselves but for truth. Such cultivation of rational insight will facilitate the understanding of the philosophy.
Nor is this all the implication. Equally important is the keen capacity to distinguish what is ephemeral from what is eternal, the things of a day from the things of a lifetime, the passing show of material existence from the relatively more permanent mental factors. It might be called the sixth sense, which knows what is genuinely fundamental in the game of living. It should so act that it leads to a constant exercise of discernment between those values which are enduring and those which are merely temporary. And it should so love strict fact rather than pleasant fancy that the determination to discriminate the real from the illusory, which is most essential throughout the study and practice of philosophy, gradually becomes uppermost.
Philosophy cannot become intelligible without much mental effort; it is hard to follow—so hard that the effort is often like trying to walk on a logical tightrope without losing balance—and those who are unable or unwilling to put the effort forth will necessarily find parts of this book a puzzle no matter how plain its language. The intellectually timid and the mentally weak often excuse themselves by saying that such inquiries are unnecessary. This is because they do not know the place of truthful thought in life; consequently they do not understand that to stimulate thought is no less needed than to inform it.
To play with a few problems in order to be able to air some witty remarks to admiring society does not make anyone a philosopher. He alone who will think matters out to their final end, who will hunt every question down to its central issue and not hesitate at any point because he comes counter to a notion held by all other men, who will ruthlessly apply the conclusion he makes to the life he leads, is worthy of the name of truth-seeker. Whoever is unwilling to examine a tenet in order to find out whether it be true or not, merely because its alien face is completely unfamiliar, has no right to receive truth. And whoever is deterred from inquiring into a doctrine because it is not held within his own country or among his own people, but hails from another land and from people of another complexion, is equally unworthy of this priceless gift. Reason knows no geographical frontiers. In this sphere of philosophical research the introduction of political bias or racial prejudice against tenet or teacher is utterly fatal to success.
The ordinary man is impatient of sustained reflection and is governed by immediate impressions; he jumps too quickly to conclusions, often basing them on superficial and misleading appearances. Thus he remains bound by ignorance. This weakness is a defect which can be overcome by discipline. Such a mind needs to deepen and sharpen its own character, and train itself into habits of travel beneath surfaces. No mind which refuses to undergo such strengthening and training is capable of the undertaking involved in philosophy, the quest of what is. Sharpness of understanding is needed to take away all those things which are not true, all illusions, and to clear away confusions. Moreover, its need will also become apparent when in the further volume we shall study the significance of sleep and dream.
The ultimate ideal is a mind as keen as a Toledo sword-blade that the steely thrust of its thought may effectively pierce delusions and fancies, sentiments and superstitions. The most cherished and cheerful notions may have to vanish when dissected by such a keen blade, for it will be discovered as this study unfolds that nearly all men harbour plenty of illusions merely because the movement of their mind is faulty and tardy, and because its edge is blunt.
When the mind has thus been sharpened it will be better predisposed to unfold the fourth characteristic. This is a settled attitude of inner detachment from both the unpleasant episodes and pleasant attractions which constitute the nadir and zenith of mundane living. Whatever misfortune the turning wheel of destiny may bring to the forefront of the student’s life, he must cultivate a hidden indifference, and whatever enjoyment or desires rule the hour he should not be so strongly attached to them that he cannot let them quickly go if need be. If he wants to secure a philosophic perspective he must stand on the ground of such indifference, because his attachments create mental favouritism and thus prevent his reaching a fair impartial attitude when weighing evidence, pursuing inquiries or delivering judgment. Moreover, such a qualification is needed so that the seeker may not be drawn aside from his quest by temporary allurements. For were he so attached to the ordinary experience of the world that it meant everything to him, there would not exist any cause for embarking on this philosophic quest.
An intelligence which is not stupefied by social convention, personal status, inordinate ambition, hilarious hedonism, or unsatisfied desires cannot help discerning that life upon this rotating globe is a changing flux of both favourable and unfavourable events from which none are exempt. And if this same intelligence is sufficiently sharp it will also perceive that everything, including itself, is perishable, everything is evanescent. All worldly attractions, all earthly possessions, all human relationships, all sensual pleasures as well as their objects may die or disappear tomorrow. Therefore the philosophic student is required to cultivate a correct attitude toward their seductive glamour, which is to be neither one of blind infatuation nor of total repulsion. He must assign an accurate value to this fitful panorama of the passing days if he is not to deceive himself. When he sees that everything is relative and everyone is transient he will understand that they can yield only a relative and transient happiness to him at the best. He must understand that he is not safe if he regards what is fleeting as the end-all and be-all of his incarnation. He must therefore become serious enough to use his intelligence in the uncommon direction of seeking for something that does not die and does not pass away. Whether such a thing can be found or not is a different matter, but the quest of philosophy is for a reality which is enduring and an absolute truth which lies beyond mere human opinion. But not only does he need his intelligence to see all this but he also needs his courage to admit it. If he can travel so far—and few can—he is then prepared to take up the attitude advocated here—a certain stoic detachment from the fluctuations of individual fate and an ascetic equanimity toward pleasure.
There are other minds, however, which may not be so sharp as to see the need of such an attitude and yet they will arrive at it all the same, as the outcome of certain experiences through which they have passed. In them it arises out of great suffering, bitter loss, sudden shock, unsuccessful striving, or profound danger. Such persons are often quite rich in earthly experience. When they are bored with paying court to the casual and leaving the fundamental far behind; when they are tired of fretting through the dark years and philandering through the bright ones, they unconsciously form this philosophic characteristic for themselves. The abrasions to women’s hearts caused by unkind or unfaithful men, no less than the shadowed emptiness which fickle women bring into the hearts of infatuated men, may eventually cause this qualification to appear. Thus intense suffering injects some indifference toward life into human blood.
The worldwide sorrows and sufferings which have bitterly wounded our century have provided some lesser initiation into such an attitude. When people observe that the existence of their possessions, properties, and persons is no longer secure, but may disappear on the morrow; when they have passed through the anguish of losing the substance of their wealth or the presence of beloved relatives, they tend to lose something of their attachment to worldly life. They realize how transient and unstable it is, and the days of dreadful chaos and continued insecurity become less attractive in their eyes. Thus sorrow leads to understanding. Every tear becomes a tutor.
It would be easy for the nature of such a quality to be misunderstood by those who have never felt it or have never seen it in action or having seen it manifested theoretically taken it to be what it is not. It does not imply ascetic running away from human life nor turning away from personal activity nor even estrangement from common enjoyments, but something quite different. A mere temporary disgust due to passing affliction will not suffice. Something profounder is needed—a veritable casting-off of invisible chains. Indeed, he who possesses it may outwardly partake of all the same routine existence of family obligations, work, and pleasure as others, but deep down in his heart he will evaluate it at its true worth as being transitory and unabiding.
This characteristic need not divorce him from practical and personal life—he will carry out all their requirements to the letter and his external relationships may even exist as before—but he will form a different estimate of them from the common one. He may act in the same way as others, but will not get lost in his action. He may appreciate the delight of comfortable environments and other attractions and he may know how to enjoy them no less than others. Nevertheless, he does not pin his hopes for happiness entirely to such a basis, for he has a clear sense of the transitory nature of all things. In this sense only may it be said that he abstains mentally.
Nor does this characteristic mean a weakening of worldly capacities. It is to be interpreted correctly only when its emphasis is placed in the background of the mind rather than the forefront. The man will be as firm and matter-of-fact in his practical dealings as any business executive, but duty will motivate him more than desire.
If there is no room here for a facile optimism about life, neither is there place for gloomy pessimism. The goal is too grand for that. The ordinary person may mask his bitter disappointment or secret suffering behind a polite smile or a pungent cynicism, but the philosopher needs no such mask, and even if he has a deeply serious purpose in life he knows that he can be serious without being solemn. He may still like to laugh. He will always hope that the time will never come when he shall be unable to laugh at himself. But should such an unfortunate mishap befall him, if he is a true philosopher he will ask his friends but one favour: to wrap him up neatly in a winding shroud and bear him away quickly to the nearest crematorium! For he would rather not afflict the world with one who thinks so highly of self that he has forgotten that his present birth is but one out of millions, and who thinks so meanly of reality that he cannot play with his surface life as cheerfully as a child plays with hoop and stick. And if in his search after truth by the power of strict reasoning he slay all the poetry of his soul, neglect and lose all the fine nuances of feeling which come to him through the arts and nature, he is undone. If it brings him to the point where a forest becomes a collection of so many thousand trees and nothing more, nothing of mellow peace and classic beauty, he is undone. If he cannot linger for a few minutes every evening to pause amid his business and watch the play of lovely colours as the sun dies, he is also undone. The zest for accurate measurement by the logical mind need not displace the appreciation of charm and atmosphere by the sensitive heart; there is plenty of room in life for both.
Thus it is both possible and preferable that the philosophic insight which produces detachment should rest alongside the full growth of human culture and human activity. Not the loss of feeling or a maimed zest for life is desirable so much as the cultivation of profound detachment deep within those moments of feeling or zest.
The need of gaining the fifth characteristic has already been mentioned in an earlier chapter. This consists of ability to practise the technique of meditation. The general aspects of this technique have been fully dealt with in the writer’s other books, and here it will suffice to note only three points which the practitioner needs to emphasize specially if he is also pursuing the philosophic quest. He has here no concern with the other consequences of yoga. Indeed, occult experiences, extraordinary visions, and similar abnormal happenings will only hinder his progress in philosophy if he pays them undue attention. They have no importance here, however encouraging they often are on the mystic path. The first of these points is the power to regulate the thoughts and master attention, and then to concentrate fully in any required direction. The mind possesses a natural tendency to run in various directions and to flit from one subject to another, on account of the pressure of emotional attachments, physical environment, or imperfect education. This tendency can be stopped and corrected by the psychological discipline of meditation. The power to become completely absorbed in the subject in hand can then be unfolded.
The meaning of such concentration is extreme attentiveness to the topic under consideration, never permitting it to lapse through laziness or fatigue. The mind must move only where the will directs it. Much may be accomplished through this single power of concentration. It is a steady force which, when directed toward any purpose or obstacle, overcomes such resistance. The acetylene welding ray—which melts the hardest steel—is a fit example of physical concentration. Similarly the faculty of fixing attention at will and retaining it ultimately helps to burn a way through the hardest intellectual problems.
The second factor of philosophic importance to be sought after in the mystic discipline is equipoise—a calm, steady, and even disposition of mind which will withstand shocks. When passions rage strongly within a man, when anger flares up too frequently, or when desires threaten to submerge him, he becomes unbalanced. And when powerful emotional complexes are opposed by adequate reasons, when domestic troubles or business anxieties unremittingly distract his attention, or when the temperament is unstable and vacillating, flitting from one thing to another, mental conflicts must inevitably arise and harass a man. In all these conditions steadying of the mind may be effected by meditation practice. Through its aid a better equilibrium between feelings and thoughts, between thoughts and thoughts, between passion and reason, may be tentatively evolved and fitfully maintained. Permanent equilibrium, however, can be established only by completing a course in philosophic discipline. Nevertheless, meditation in the hands of a moderately advanced practitioner can quickly remove violence and agitation of the mind, as well as pacify its conflicts. Excited feelings can be subdued, the strength of wrath reduced, and hot desires that distort life put aside by resort to the discipline of meditation. This settles the mind down again and restores its evenness and balance, at any rate for the time being. The Indian yogis call such a condition of resistance to momentary passions and of general self-control “level-headedness.” We may prefer to call it “inner peace.”
The third point to be noted is the unfoldment of reverie. This is of profound importance and the highest value when, in the more advanced stages, the student attempts to gain the final fruits of his philosophic effort, the realization of ultimate truth. It is that which appears in the constant endeavour of the mystic to cease external activity, to shut out the distractions of his material environment, to stop the operation of his five senses, and to develop a condition of complete introversion. The latter is akin to the profound abstractiveness and creative moods noted in the lives of famous geniuses. This sustained inwardness may consummate itself even in trance, but the essential factor is the capacity to reorientate the attention at will from the world of concrete things to the world of abstract thoughts. Many a practical man of business or industrial affairs possesses a keen sharp mind but is yet unable to move amid abstract ideas because he can apply his attention only to concrete objects. This capacity for subtle introspection is an unusual one.
It is now convenient to explain a matter in connection with mysticism and yoga which was out of place in the earlier treatment devoted to it, and which will throw some light upon the formula-problem raised in the first chapter. Every philosopher must possess these three qualities of concentrativeness, calmness, and reverie. In these respects he will be a mystic, but most mystics are not philosophers. Mysticism may now be viewed as a disciplinary stage through which the would-be philosopher must pass if he finds, as most do, that he lacks such qualifications. The difficulty of completely concentrating the thoughts in ordinary life, which is so familiar and so personal, is well known; how much greater must it be in philosophic research, which is so remote and impersonal? The difficulty of such research soon tires the unwilling mind unless it has previously developed the strength which comes through such discipline. And without the complete concentration which mobilizes the mind to a single-pointed end, and which keeps out extraneous thoughts, resistance will beset the effort to grasp either the meanings of philosophic problems or to move onward to their proper solutions. The lengthy trains of thought in which the philosophical student is forced to indulge absolutely demand the presence of this quality. His mind must be competent to take them up without being shaken from its purpose by extraneous ideas or disturbing environments.
Furthermore, the composure of mental peace is an essential prelude to the undisturbed investigation of truth. The man who cannot keep conflicts and anxieties out of his mind will not be able to keep his attention uninterruptedly fixed on philosophic matters. The poise needed for such reflection can be got from meditation and will help to prevent emotional interferences, remove ideological obstructions and permit the student to approach his study with a clearer mind. It is a commonplace fact that excitement darkens intelligence, that sound well-balanced judgment cannot be delivered when the mind is full of wrath; but both are dismissed or disappear under the calming influence of yoga. Even if a man possess sharp understanding he may injure its philosophic value if he uses it when he is angry. The mind must be emotionally free for study. When hostility to another man or an injury done to oneself rankles within it, or when it is excessively discontented, it becomes distracted and to that extent unfit for profound reflection.
It will later become necessary in the course of this quest to defeat the naive reports of the bodily senses and penetrate to a region they know not of. This task is difficult because the average man more or less believes his mind is imprisoned in the body and unconsciously handicaps himself by this belief, which will be proved erroneous. If this task is to be achieved it can be done only by first detaching the mind from its self-imprisonment and thus rendering it flexible enough to find that region. The habits of introspection and abstraction engendered by meditation prove indispensable preessentials here. And in the investigation of the significance of sleep the value of such extreme fineness or subtlety of mind will also be realized. Moreover, all metaphysical thinking is made much easier by an earlier experience of meditation. And when the mind must move quickly from the practical world into the consideration of ultimate principles and abstract themes the intensely sharp attentiveness of the yogi can enable him to grasp them more effortlessly.
From these observations it will be seen that philosophy regards the yoga of concentration as an invaluable psychological training which it prescribes to qualify a man for its pursuit. Such yoga assists the understanding of the world to the extent that it helps to shape the instrument of mind with which we must get such understanding. The mystic who unfolds reverie and calmness through meditation and stops there, intent upon enjoying the peace or ecstasy he may feel, will remain in ignorance of the supreme truth about life although he will have gone farther than others in self-knowledge. He may feel happy, but he will not be wise. To put the matter in a nutshell, the yoga of philosophical discernment is the necessary sequel to the yoga of mental concentration. The one is required to prepare the mental instrument which must be used in the operation of the other.
It must also be repeated that only when meditation is correctly practised is it likely to be useful for this quest or indeed any other. When wrongly done or when carried to excess it becomes a hindrance to philosophic activity, breeding fresh evils, whims, and fancies which will need to be overcome and which were not formerly present. It should be practised within suitable limits. When people lose sight of these disciplinary and purificatory purposes of mysticism and magnify it to the exclusion of all else they not only fail to remove their complexes but may even increase them!
It will be noticed that the philosophical aim is definitely different from that of mysticism. In the latter the neophyte rises in the scale by repressing thought; here he rises by exerting thought. The one teaches inertia, the emptying of mind, while the other teaches activity, the expansion of mind. Both are correct in their own places, and do not conflict. The mystic stills the mind in order to get thought-control, but once the control is attained, he should begin to think vigorously. Thus he should kill thoughts only to use them better later! Meditation practice must in this more advanced stage be set behind the study of philosophy; the correct order now is to begin with the one and finish with the other.
But the seeker who is satisfied with nothing short of ultimate realization may not stop even here. For when his philosophical course is run he will once again drop the labours of thinking and resume his mystical practice. This time, however, thinking will now come to its deserved rest spontaneously, of its own accord, its purpose fulfiled, while his absorption in yoga will now be a natural day-long process, secret, unmanifest, and not interfering with his practical everyday activities. It is not possible to achieve this final stage of ultimate realization unless he has perfected himself not only in both formal yoga and formal philosophy but also in the art of immediately expressing their logical consequences in vigorous action.
In earlier books, it may be remembered, the writer made a most elementary fragment of the higher analytic philosophy the basis of certain meditation exercises, thus attempting what was rarely done among mystics—to render even the meditation exercises fruitful for later philosophic purposes. This was an original contribution introduced because he did not want his readers to become fools, which so many mystics appear ardently to desire, and also to prepare the way for the work of the present volume. Indeed it was written in The Quest of the Overself: “This is the true fulfilment of yoga—to wield thought as a master and then discard it.” Such a statement was quite correct and perfectly justifiable when considered in relation to the level of those for whom it was written, i.e., for those striving to succeed in the yoga of mental concentration. The highest ideal of this level is to still the mind, reduce thoughts, and bask in the sunshine of mental peace. But now the student who has made some progress in meditation and seeks to rise to a higher level ought to reverse the statement quoted. There will be no contradiction here; only a continuation and further fulfilment of the quest into higher strata. In his exercises he should practise stilling the mind first and immediately after that awaken it into fullest vigour for the pursuit of philosophical inquiry. Whereas before he suppressed thought, now he should seek to examine and direct it. Henceforth he will be alert to Nature and note her workings where before he dismissed her and cared only to turn inward. He may keep his inner peace and stillness—philosophy will not rob him of that—but he should not imagine it to be the ultimate goal. It is a stage closer to the apprehension of reality, but it is not reality itself. If he works in the way recommended here, he will approach still closer to the final apprehension of ultimate reality. Only near the end of this quest can formal yoga and philosophy again become co-equals, for then both will have to be fused and then transcended.
The sixth of this group of psychological attributes which marks the competent student is not likely to be palatable to most people. At every stage of philosophical research the student must suppress his emotions and sentiments whenever they come into sharp conflict with reason. Whenever the psychological process has been illuminated it has been found that, especially in the examination of complex problems, as well as in the evaluation of rival ideas, the tendency of undisciplined persons to cloud clear thinking by a confused emotional haze is inveterate. They usually see the world and interpret the experiences of life through this haze. It is the task of the student to clear it away.
The human personality holds within itself congeries of conflicting desires and contradictory impulses. It provides refuge for instinctive passions and ancient urges whose deep-seated character is not always suspected until critical moments bring them fully to the surface. All these forces are so powerful that it is true to say that most men live more by feeling than by thinking. The consequence is that they colour most of their thinking with conscious or subconscious wishes and desires, with irrational neurotic fears, and other emotional complexes. They have not seldom been known to put chains on their feet in the form of disreputable personal cravings which are essentially harmful to their own interests. The ebb and flow of these feelings and impulses drives them involuntarily and renders it difficult for them to base their general attitude toward life on solid facts or right reasoning.
We may see the meaning of these statements more clearly by watching unchecked emotion at work in larger fields than that of the individual. During the tense days of war passion sweeps through people and often reaches crescendo point. A nation may then be led like a sheep to slaughter into decisions fatal to its true interest.
During political elections whole crowds fall into emotional excitement and are then easily swayed by demagogues; at such times it is obvious that their minds are obfuscated and rigorous reasoning is out of the question. And doctors attached to asylums know that when the emotional excitement of mobs becomes so intense as to be uncontrollable it is recognizably similar to one of the symptoms of insanity with which they are quite familiar. Strong gusts of emotionalism therefore provide a barricade against which the attacks of reason are futile. Emotion unchecked by reason is one of the great betrayers of mankind. Two powerful emotions—hate and greed—are together responsible for many of the crimes in world history. The passions engendered by sex are responsible for terrible troubles. Herein lies one of the causes of the traditional privations and vetoes which society has imposed on the free and full manifestation of emotion in decent social intercourse.
Now the philosophical student especially cannot afford such emotional luxuries. He knows that when feeling inundates the whole life of a man it does so to the detriment of his intellectual nature. And because his chief instrument of penetration into the domain of truth is nothing but the mind itself, sharpened to a delicate edge, he must sooner or later come to a definite choice between the constant exercise of reason and restraint or the constant indulgence of emotion and passion. He more than others must beware of delusions bred by personal sentiment, of letting sober judgment give way to infectious enthusiasm, of sacrificing cold fact to heated imagination, and of swinging through the alluring arc of delusions bred by personal sentiment or sexual desire. He cannot possibly discover truth if he is not willing to depart from an unreliable standpoint at its behest. It is not the pleasure or the pain which any idea or event yields him which is entitled to determine either its truth or its value, for these emotions merely reveal something about his own character, but nothing about the true nature of the idea or the event itself.
Feelings easily entangle the thinking faculty and prevent its clear operation. The irrational element in the human soul is forever seeking the feeling of satisfaction and forever avoiding that of frustration, merely because the one produces pleasure and the other pain. Primitive people who have not evolved their reasoning powers provide a clearer illustration of this principle than civilized men. And who does not know that the verdicts of anger are mostly ephemeral, whereas those of reason always endure?
The questions which come for consideration in philosophy are often so finely balanced that emotion may quite easily obtrude its arbitrary judgment against the cooler voice of reason and thus prevent the student from perceiving the real truth. And his difficulties are enhanced because human feelings know how to camouflage themselves cleverly. Human desires in particular are extremely competent to seduce reason. Few people recognize the real motives for some of their most important actions. There are many internal barriers to such recognition that are of their own building or that are purely inborn. They have wrapped the bandage of many an emotional complex around themselves which must be painfully unwound again before truth can be seen. They twist knowledge not seldom to suit their complexes. A student may in a hypothetical case even have a sharply developed mind and yet his attachment through desire may make him favour his belief in the ultimate materiality of the physical world when all proof might point to its ultimate nature being essentially mind-stuff.
He may also not like this and that person, yet, for the purpose of understanding them, he ought to be prepared to refrain from allowing such a sentiment to sway his examination. Otherwise he will blunt his power of judgment and blind his faculty of insight.
The learner’s liking or disliking of certain facts or certain experiences has nothing to do with their truth or with their reality. If he insists on making such attractions or repulsions his guide—as do most people—then he will never succeed in finding either truth or reality. The surface of a lake can reflect an image without distortion only when it is free from disturbance by the wind, and the mind can properly inquire into truth only when it is free from disturbance by strong feelings. Wishful thinking is always pleasant but often unprofitable.
The hope of philosophy lies in following reason, and not in thwarting it by following inordinate desires and emotional vagaries. Even the unbalanced ambition and undue vanity will distort thinking and prevent the acquisition of accurate knowledge. Anger and hatred however are notorious misguiders. When unrestrained all these emotions are lying invaders who nevertheless claim to speak truth. Hence those who persist in denying reason in the interests of their feelings thereby render themselves unsuited to this quest, just as those who prefer to keep their mentalities warped, their passions untamed, and their instinctive repulsions uncontrolled can never attain a true understanding of the significance of life. For they will engage themselves in the futile and even impossible endeavour of fitting truth to a procrustean bed of involuntary and internal compulsions.
A scientific fidelity to fact irrespective of personal feeling will alone carry the student to a successful issue of his researches. When the reasoning faculty is loaded with thick sentiments and narrow preferences it is soon unconsciously perverted. Every emotion becomes potentially dangerous when it takes upon itself the task of guiding reason instead of letting reason guide it. To think truthfully, therefore, the neophyte must courageously enforce a strict self-discipline. This is the awful sacrifice which he is called to commit, this holy offering of what he desires upon the lofty altar of what is.
A manifestation of feeling which is peculiarly prone to bring the unwary student into danger is undue unjustified enthusiasm. It is a star, which often blazes brightly for a time, only to sink down on the horizon of disappointment. Quite notoriously enthusiasts sail freely over established facts into an empyrean of mere theory; not seldom they lack discrimination and certainly detachment. Therefore their judgments are often distorted. The seeker must take care therefore not to be carried away by any kind of enthusiasm when considering evidence or forming judgment. He should always be on his guard when in the literary or personal presence of the overheated doctrinaire, as well as of the hard bigot who has closed his mind. He should refuse to pronounce upon any subject which he has not investigated upon sounder evidence than the misrepresentations of his personal preferences. If he shirks this caution he is likely to open the gate for phantasies to come into his being or for specious and delusive reasoning to mislead him. The novice in philosophy must seriously set out to train himself to disregard both emotional aversions and emotional attractions during the hours of his study. He has to free his mind from its inherited, inborn, and acquired distortions. He must not let impossible fancies and wildly visionary excitements sweep him off his feet. All such imaginations must be brought analytically into the foreground of the mind and there submitted to the closest impartial scrutiny. If he resists this process and fails to insulate himself against them—as he is likely to do in the earlier stages—he merely delays the time when his feet can be led to truth.
Thus we arrive at the hoary wisdom that if in the kingdom of men emotion rules for the moment, reason should rule in the end.
These have been hard sayings. They are likely to be much misunderstood. Hence a warning must be uttered for the second time within this chapter that the student is not asked to kill intimate emotion and destroy warm feeling; that indeed is quite impossible; he is asked only to keep them subordinate to reason and not let them when contrary to it rise to the top of his being. He may rightly and usefully appeal to emotion when it is supported by reason. Not the destructions of sentiment and feeling should be his aim, but their proper guidance and control. Emotion is a part of man’s nature and is therefore incapable of elimination; it must be given its fit place in his life, but reason must direct its course whenever the two come into collision. Nothing worth keeping is to be stifled, but everything is to be brought into right relation.
Nor is the worth of properly directed reasonable enthusiasm to be undervalued. It gives precious driving force to the novice and insulates him against biased critics and baseless opposition. Indeed, all feeling is the propulsive element in human personality and leads more to action than anything else; hence the melancholy spectacle of unfeeling philosophical bookworms who are unable to live up to their noble reasonings.
However, the aspirant will certainly have to curb the disabling passions of anger and obliterate the abysmal sin of hatred, because only such a self-critical habit fits him to find truth. He must make this resolve plain in every conflict.
He must demand complete candour from himself. Not wanting to face a problem must not be the excuse for shirking it. He may not and will not always be able to control the rising surge of feelings or to check the irrational compulsions from within, but at such times he ought at least to seek to understand them and weigh them for what they are. Thus even when he surrenders himself to them he will no longer do so blindly. It is a considerable gain for the earnest novice to arrive at such a step.
His desires will surely diminish under the probe of keen analysis and thus render his mind more peaceful. And out of such governance of feelings there will inevitably follow a more organized and disciplined governance of conduct. He will begin to live as a better and wiser man.
It should not be surprising after such reflections to learn that philosophy is more the business of the masculine sex than its counterpart, and more of maturity rather than of adolescence. It is generally easier for men to follow this path than for women, although Nature compensates by rendering the mystic path easier for women. Women are naturally more prone than men to permit reason to stoop to the baits of sentimental emotion and to permit them to cloud the sky of thought. Due to social causes Western women are more intellectual than their Eastern sisters, but they cling more strongly to egoism. Hence in the matter of this truth-quest they are no better off. However, it will always remain axiomatic that an exceptional woman will forge her way out of these weaknesses, face the unconscious motives which beset her, and claim her higher heritage from Nature. Finally we find that philosophy is better suited to those who are nearing middle age than to the youthful. The younger are more quickly moved by emotion and passion than their elders, who, possessing riper experience in the unwritten discipline of life, are more level-headed. But here again the beautiful law of compensation is also at work. For it is the privilege of youth to tread new paths of thought with a magnificent daring that others lack.
From all these struggles there will slowly appear of itself the seventh and final characteristic, but the aspirant must now take up its cultivation in full awareness of what he is doing and after full deliberation. This is the willingness to look directly at life through a clear lens and not through one tinted by the predilections and preconceptions of his ego. It is perhaps the most difficult of all his preparatory tasks consciously to unfold this impersonality. However, its importance can hardly be overrated. Every man who has not undergone the philosophic discipline is inclined to rate his own judgments far more highly than they merit. He usually seeks to arrive at conclusions which gratify his implanted prejudices and satisfy his inherited bias. It is quite customary for him to accept no facts in an argument save those that dovetail into his existing outlook. In this way and not infrequently he comes to reject what he urgently needs, as an invalid may refuse to swallow a bitter-tasting medicine, which he needs far more than the sweet confection for which he asks.
Every time a man thrusts his ego into a train of thought its balance is disturbed and its truth-value distorted. If he is to judge every fact by the standards of his earlier experience alone he will thereby prevent new knowledge from arising. When we examine the manifestations of his mentality in speech and act his general if unconscious attitude appears to be: “This fits in with what I believe, therefore it must be true; this agrees with my views, therefore it must be true; this fact does not conflict with the facts of which I am aware, therefore I shall accept it; that belief is quite contrary to what I believe, therefore it must be wrong; that fact does not interest me, therefore it has no value in discussion; that explanation is hard for me to understand, therefore I dismiss it in favour of one which I can understand and which must consequently be true!”
Whoever wishes to be initiated into genuine philosophy must begin by casting aside such merely egoistic standpoints. They show forth his conceit and vanity; his quest of corroboration of his own preconceptions and prejudices, and not the quest of truth; his study of the printed page only to confirm his foregone conclusions; his resort to a teacher not to gain new knowledge but for endorsement of his old beliefs. By keeping the “I” foremost in his thinking he is unconsciously drawn into various and vicious fallacies. The sympathies and antipathies generated by such personal views constitute hindrances to the discovery of what an idea or object really is in itself. They often cause a man to see things which do not exist at all, but which through association of ideas he imagines to exist. It is a pathological fact that the various forms of insanity and mental disorder are rooted in the ego and all the obsessions and complexes are likewise connected with the “I.”
He who has not undergone the philosophic discipline is frequently infatuated with himself and his state of mind is bounded on all sides by the pronoun “I.” This “I” cheats him out of truth, for it blocks his path to correct perception. It unconsciously prejudges arguments or decides upon beliefs in advance, and thus he never has any guarantee of reaching right conclusions, but only of returning by the discovery of justifications and rationalizations to the mental standpoint where he started. He is like a spider caught in a web of its own weaving. When such egoism dictates the trend of thought reason must stand aside as impotent. It locks the mind in a cupboard and thus loses the benefit of new ideas which would fain become entrants therein. When ego becomes the centre of obsessive states we meet with minds narrowed by religious bigotry or clouded by metaphysical meandering or hardened by unreflected materialism or disequilibrated by traditional beliefs and overweighted by acquired ones—all blindly refusing to examine the unfamiliar, the unpalatable, or the unknown and rejecting them offhand. They willingly believe what appeals to them and willingly disbelieve what does not, afterward inventing rationalizations of their own preferences, but in neither case is the question “Is this true?” investigated independently of their predilections, and the result accepted whether it turns out to their liking or not.
All this means that those who have the strongest personal views are the most difficult to lead to truth. Such persons need to absorb the lesson inculcated by Jesus: “Except ye become as little children ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.” The humility implied in this phrase has often been misunderstood. It means the childlike mind and not the childish mind. It does not mean a flabby surrender to wicked persons or a weak yielding to foolish ones. It means putting aside all prejudices born from experience and all preconceptions born from earlier thought until one is undetained and unperturbed by them when facing the problem of truth. It means being alienated from personal bias and uninfluenced by thoughts of “me” and “mine.” It means ceasing to use as an argument the words “I think so” or “I stick to my belief,” and ceasing to believe that what you know must therefore be true. Such an argument leads only to mere opinion, not to truth. Personal beliefs may be false, asserted knowledge fictitious. We must walk humbly in these philosophical precincts. Teachers of the right kind are admittedly rare, but so are students!
Now philosophy is a purely disinterested study and demands that it be approached without previous mental reservations. But bias is often so deeply rooted and therefore so hidden that students do not always suspect, let alone detect, its presence. Even many so-called philosophers of repute have a subconscious determination to accept nothing that is different from what they expect to learn, and under such self-suggestion they allow bias to overcome judgment and prepossession to enslave reason. Therefore the student who is earnest must deliberately weed out those comfortable subterfuges behind which he hides his insincerities and hypocrisies of thinking, his personal weaknesses and selfishnesses. During the course of his study and whenever he brings his mind to bear on any problem he must endeavour to free himself from the pressure of all individual predilections. Such mental selflessness is uncommon and will come only through deliberate development. The student should always remember that he should first fairly state and then cautiously examine a case from all sides before delivering judgment. Truth has nothing to fear from fullness of investigation but is really strengthened thereby. If then he discovers that he is in error he should welcome the discovery and not flee from it because he smarts under the wounds of hurt vanity and unexpected humiliation. He has need of complete elasticity of mind in order to rid himself of slavery to prejudice and to attain an inner integrity and genuine mental health.
Bertrand Russell has somewhere pointed out that “the kernel of the scientific outlook is the refusal to regard our own desires, tastes, and interests as affording a key to the understanding of the world.” This is an excellent statement of the qualification here demanded, the depersonalization of all inquiry into knowledge, the mental recording of things as they are and not as we wish them to be, the setting of every problem in a detached mental background.
The student may not dodge an issue. He ought not to shrink from wrestling with his own complexes. He has no option but to face them staunchly. He must be truthful to himself at least, trying to rise above private preconception, for in this way alone can he view things in their right perspective. His adherence to truth must be as incorruptible and as admirable as was that of Socrates. A firm intellectual objectivity rather than a weak wish-fulfilment will emancipate his mind from bondage to the ego and enable it to take truth in without offering resistance. Thus it will be raised to an atmosphere of impartiality and impersonality and trained in untainted self-denying thinking which alone can advance him to correct insight. And even those who declare this task too difficult in everyday life can at least endeavour to aim temporarily at its ideal during the minutes or hours devoted to these studies.
Wherever truth leads, there the aspirant must follow. If he betrays his rational insight and proves traitor to his highest ideal at the clamorous bidding of preconceptions which demand a low conformity he condemns himself to the penalty of being perpetually captive to common ignorance.
A summing-up shows that the student’s quest after truth begins with dependence on authority, rises to the use of logic and later of reason, progresses to the cultivation of intuition and of mystical experience, and culminates in the development of ultramystic insight.
The higher philosophy is so wisely balanced and beautifully integrated that it does not disdain any of these ways of knowing but uses each in its proper place. Hence although the name “philosophy” has sometimes been used here in its academic sense as meaning a metaphysical system, it has more often been used in its ancient and truer sense as meaning the unified wisdom which completes metaphysics with mysticism and incorporates religion with action.
An indispensable warning must here be given that this book makes no attempt to supply instruction in moral preparations for the Quest. This omission is deliberate because such instruction has been so freely and frequently given to humanity by ethical teachers, religious writers, preachers, and prophets. Although we have not developed this subject here because so much has been written and said about it in innumerable books, nevertheless its importance should not be underrated. On the contrary, it should be regarded by every aspirant as one of the major necessities of the philosophical discipline. The philosophical aspirant should comprehend that, because he too practises meditation, he must satisfy the same self-purificatory requirements that are laid down for the mystical aspirant. If his meditation practices are to be protected from the dangers involved in them, he should seek constantly to refrain from harming others, to ennoble his character, to govern his passions, and to cultivate virtues, the major virtues inculcated by the prophets of all great religions.