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Nº. IV
CONCERNING REVELATION (1)
ALL true and worthy illuminations are reveilations, or re-veilings.
Mark the meaning of this word. There can be no true or worthy illumination which
destroys distances and exposes the details of things.
Look at this landscape. Behold how
its mountains and forests are suffused with soft and delicate mist, which half
conceals and half discloses their shapes and tints. See how this mist like a
tender veil enwraps the distances, and merges the reaches of the land with the
clouds of heaven!
How beautiful it is, how orderly and wholesome
its fitness, and the delicacy of its appeal to the eye and heart! And how false
would be that sense which should desire to tear away this clinging veil, to
bring far objects near, and to reduce everything to foreground in which details
only should be apparent, and all outlines sharply defined!
Distance and mist make the beauty of
Nature: and no poet would desire to behold her otherwise than through this
lovely and modest veil.
And as with
exoteric, so with esoteric nature. The secrets of every human soul are sacred and
known only to herself. The ego is inviolable, and its
personality is its own right for ever.
Therefore mathematical rules and
algebraic formulæ
cannot be forced into the study of human lives; nor can human personalities be
dealt with as though they were mere ciphers or arithmetical quantities.
The soul is too subtle, too instinct
with life and will for treatment such as this.
One may dissect a corpse; one may
analyse and classify chemical constituents; but it is impossible to dissect or
analyse any living thing.
The moment it is so treated it
escapes. Life is not subject to dissection.
The opening of the shrine will always
find it empty: the God is gone.
A soul may know her own past, and may
see in her own light: but none can see it for her if she see
it not.
Herein is the beauty and sanctity of
personality.
The ego is self-centred and not
diffused; for the tendency of all evolution is towards centralisation and
individualism.
And life is so various, and so
beautifully diverse in its unity, that no hard and fast mathematical law-making
can imprison its manifoldness.
All is order: but the elements of
this order harmonise by means of their infinite diversities and gradations.
The true mysteries remained always
content with nature’s harmony: they sought not to drag distances into
foregrounds; or to dissipate the mountain nebula, in whose bosom the sun is
reflected.
For these sacred mists are the media
of light, and the glorifiers of nature.
Therefore the doctrine of the
mysteries is truly reveilation, – a
veiling and a re-veiling of that which it is
not possible for eye to behold without violating all the order and sanctities of
nature.
For distance and visual rays, causing
the diversities of far and near, of perspective and mergent
tints, of horizon and foreground, are part of natural order and sequence: and
the law expressed in their properties cannot be violated.
For no law is ever broken.
The hues and aspects of distance and
mist indeed may vary and dissolve according to the quality and quantity of the
light which falls upon them: but they are there always, and no human eye can
annul or annihilate them.
Even words, even pictures are symbols
and veils. Truth itself is unutterable, save by God to God.
Footnotes
(9:1) Home, November 27, 1885. Received in sleep. Referred to in Life
of Anna Kingsford, vol. ii, p. 246.
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