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From Intellect to Intuition - Chapter Eight - The Universality of Meditation
CHAPTER EIGHT

The Universality of Meditation

"To every man there openeth
A Way, and Ways, and a Way.
And the High Soul climbs the High Way
And the Low Soul gropes the Low;
And in between, on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.
But to every man there openeth
A High Way and a Low,
And every man decideth
The Way his Soul should go."

John Oxenham

We have outlined the method through which the mystic can become the conscious knower, and have defined the sequence of the development which eventually brings about illumination of the physical brain, and the living of an inspired life upon earth. We started with the man who, having exhausted the resources and the satisfactions of physical living and facing the inevitability of a great transition to another dimension of living, seeks the way to knowledge and certainty. He discovers - when he investigates with impartiality - that there have been at all times those who knew, those who had penetrated to the heart of the mystery of being, and who have returned carrying the assurance of the immortality of the soul, and of the reality of the Kingdom of God. They speak, likewise, of a method by means of which they have arrived at this apprehension of divine Truth, and of a technique which has made possible their transition out of the fourth into the fifth kingdom in nature.

We found that these illuminated men, right down the ages, testify to the same truth, and that they claim for this universal method that it brings them certain results that might be enumerated as follows: [178]

First: They achieve direct experience of divine realities, of transcendental truths and of the supernatural world. These appear, when contacted, to be as much a natural process and as vitally a part of the evolutionary development as are any of the processes to which the sciences of biology, of physics or of chemistry bear witness. Just as these three great sciences are occult to, and practically unattainable by, the average grade school student, so the higher metaphysics is occult and unattainable, even to the academician who lacks the needed open-mindedness, the definite training and the equipment.

Second: Another development is the unveiling of the Self. Through the mental and spiritual education which advanced meditation practices confer, the problem of the psychologists as to the nature of the Self, the soul, the psyche, is solved, and the word can be resolved back into its original meaning - Psyche, the name of the soul. The process has beep that of a gradual unveiling, and of a sequential approach nearer and nearer to the soul. The psyche emerges in its true being.

Back of matter, there can be found an immanent and potent factor which is responsible for the coherence of the form nature, and which constitutes the acting personality in the physical world. This can be regarded as the life aspect, and scholars are wrestling all the time with the problem of life, trying to arrive at its origin and its cause. More deeply seated still can be found the feeling, suffering, experiencing, emotional aspect of the Self, working [179] through the nervous system and the brain, and governing most potently all activities in the world of human affairs. It feels pleasure and pain; it is engrossed with moods and emotional reactions to life, and with worries and desires of all kinds. This is the usual personal life for most of us, for we feel more than we think at this stage of human development. The reason for this is told us with clarity by Patanjali as follows:

"The sense of personality is due to the identification of the knower with the instruments of knowledge... The illusion that the Perceiver and that which is perceived are one and the same is the cause of the pain-producing effects which must be warded off."
- Bailey, Alice, The Light of the Soul, pages 115-116.

We are told by him in another place that life experience and the process of physical plane living and feeling come from

"the inability of the soul to distinguish between the personal self and the spirit. The objective forms exist for the use and experience of the spiritual man. By meditation upon this, arises the intuitive perception of the spiritual nature."
- Bailey, Alice, The Light of the Soul, page 239.
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