1
This I may say that my work throughout has always
been based on a firsthand knowledge of what I write about and not upon hearsay
or tradition.
2
There are times--and they are the times when,
looking back, I love my profession most--when writing becomes for me not a
profession at all but either a form of religious worship or a form of
metaphysical enlightenment. It is then, as the pen moves along silently, that I
become aware of a shining presence which calls forth all my holy reverence or
pushes open the mind's doors.
3
The Writer who sometimes sits behind the writer of
these lines smiling at my puny attempts to translate the Untranslatable, once
bade me put away for an indefinite period the thought of any future
publications. I obeyed and there was a long silence in the outer world--so long
that two obituary notices were printed by newspapers! I had enough leisure to
discover the faultiness of the earlier work and felt acutely that the world was
better off without my lucubrations. But a day came when I felt the presence of
the Presence and I received clear guidance to take the pen again.
4
Writing, which is an exercise of the intellect to
some, is an act of worship to me. I rise from my desk in the same mood as that
in which I leave an hour of prayer in an old cathedral, or of meditation in a
little wood.
5
Much that was pertinent to the Quest was left
unmentioned in the earlier books, partly through reluctance to speak of certain
matters, partly through the writer's own need of further personal development to
attain irrefragible conclusions about other matters. The reluctance has now been
overcome and the development has been achieved.
6
All the volumes that I have previously written
belong to the formative stage. Only now, after thirty years unceasing travail
and fearless exploration have I attained a satisfying fullness in my
comprehension of this abstruse subject, a clear perspective of all its tangled
ramifications and a joyous new revelation from a higher source hitherto known
only obscurely and distantly. All my further writings will bear the impress of
this change and will show by their character how imperfect are my earlier ones.
Nevertheless, on certain principal matters, what I then wrote has all along
remained and still remains my settled view and indeed has been thoroughly
confirmed by time. Such, for instance, are (l) the soul's real existence, (2)
the necessity for and the great benefits arising from meditation, (3) the
supreme value of the spiritual quest, and (4) the view that loyalty to mysticism
need not entail disloyalty to reason.
7
It is regrettable in those early books that I
over-estimated the pace of progress and brought the goal noticeably nearer than
it really is.
8
I have gathered my materials from the West as well
as the East, from modern science as well as ancient metaphysics, from Christian
mysticism as well as Hindu occultism. The narrowness which would set up any
Indian yoga as being enough by itself is something which I reject. And there is
no cult, organization, or group with which I associate myself or within whose
limitations I would ask others to confine themselves.
9
The purpose of these pages is not to attack but to
explain, to appeal, and to suggest. Their criticism is constructive and
untouched by malice. It comes from a well-wisher and not from an opponent of
religion: therefore it ought not to be resented.
10
It demanded no less than hundreds of interviews
with different teachers and hermits, thousands of miles of travel to reach them,
and at least a hundred thousand pages of the most abstruse reading in the world
before I could bring my course of personal study in the hidden philosophy to a
final close. Today I have not got the time to take others through such a long
and arduous course and they have probably not got the patience to endure it.
11
My researches were made not only amongst modern
books and ancient texts and living men. They were also made in the mysterious
within-ness of my own consciousness.
12
The world-wide extent of my correspondence and
travels; the extraordinary variety of Oriental and Occidental human contacts
which has fallen to my lot; the narratives and information which have fallen
from the lips of those who have sought me out for interviews and those whom I,
too, have sought out for the same purpose; the knowledge which I have gleaned
from ancient little-known texts and modern printed books in four continents;
experiments made and observations recorded amongst mystics and devotees of the
most varied types--from all these sources an immense amount of valuable mystical
occult and metaphysical knowledge, theoretical and practical, has fallen into my
hands. Had I known all this at the beginning of my own quest--now thirty years
ago, I would have been saved much trouble, many errors and constant sufferings.
However, others will profit by it for I intend to make the best fruit of my own
experience available to genuine seekers.
13
I am a researcher, that is my special job. Then I
go on to convert the results of my researches into notes and reports, into
analyses and reflections. Later I draw upon this material for my published
writings.
14
I lay no special claim to virtue and piety which
most men do not possess. But I do lay claim to indefatigable research into
mystical truth, theory, and practice.
15
P.B. as a private person does not count. There are
hundreds of millions of such persons anyway. What is one man and his quest?
P.B.'s personal experiences and views are not of any particular importance or
special consequence. What happens to the individual man named P.B. is a matter
of no account to anyone except himself. But what happens to the hundreds of
thousands of spiritual seekers today who are following the same path that he
pioneered, is a serious matter and calls for prolonged consideration. Surely the
hundreds of thousands of Western seekers who stand behind him and whom indeed,
in one sense, he represents, do count. P.B. as a symbol of the scattered group
of Western truth-seekers who, by following his writings so increasingly and so
eagerly, virtually follow him also, does count. He personifies their
aspirations, their repulsion from materialism and attraction toward mysticism,
their interest in Oriental wisdom and their shepherdless state. As a symbol of
this Western movement of thought, he is vastly greater than himself. In his mind
and person the historic need for a new grasp of the contemporary spiritual
problem found a plain-speaking voice.
16
I am only a generator of ideas, not a disseminator
of them. My work is to inspire and direct others in private, that they might
serve humanity spiritually in public.
17
The fact that I have had practical experience of
earning my livelihood as an editor has been made a subject of criticism. Were my
critics not so narrow-minded they would have had the sense to see that exactly
therein lies one of my merits. For this experience has purified me of the common
mystical defects of writing whole pages that mean nothing, of recommending
readers to attempt impossible tasks, of getting both thought and pen lost in the
clouds to the neglect of the earth. It has taught me a robust realism and a
healthy self-reliance--two qualities which are notoriously absent from the
ordinary mystical make-up and for lack of which they commit many mistakes. My
critics try to give the impression that earning my livelihood was a low act and
that being a journalist was a kind of crime. These two facts are indeed held up
against me as though they prove that I am both mercenary and materialistic, as
though nobody with mystical aspirations would do the one or be the other. Such
facts really pay me a compliment and do me no dishonour. But the blind
unreflective followers of a dying tradition cannot be expected to perceive that.
They cannot be expected to comprehend that I am endeavouring to bring mysticism
into mundane life, to throw a bridge across the chasm which has so often
separated them. And I know no better way than to have done so in my own personal
life first before attempting to tell others how to do it.
18
Those who look in these pages for an exact
presentation of the Oriental doctrines look in vain. Scholars, purists, and
pundits had better beware of these pages. We do not write for them. For the
teachings which we have drawn from the East have been used as a base upon which
to build independently; but the responsibility for the superstructure rests
solely with us, for it is a building intended for the Modern West. Nevertheless
those who decry our writings cannot deny that they have contributed much towards
the creation of a new interest in Oriental literature. They would do well also
to place some of their censure upon destiny, which all along has used me as an
agent at first unwitting but later clearly conscious.
19
They alone will comprehend the purport of this
volume who can comprehend that it does not only seek to present the pabulum of
an ancient system for modern consumption but that it has integrated its material
with the wider knowledge that has come to mankind during the thousands of years
which have passed since that system first appeared. Consequently we offer here
not only a re-statement but also an entirely new and radically fresh world-view
which could not have been reached historically earlier.
If we study the history of human culture we shall begin to discern signs of an orderly growth, a logical development of its body. Truth has had different meanings at different periods. This was inevitable because the human mind has been moving nearer and nearer to it, nearer and nearer to the grand ultimate goal. And when we watch the way knowledge has mounted up during the last three centuries we ought not to be surprised at the statement that the culmination of all this long historical process, the end of thousands of years of human search, is going to crystallize in the new East-West philosophy which it is the privilege of this century to formulate. Here alone can the relative interpretations of truth which have been discovered by former men, rise to the absolute wherein they merge and vanish. This means that although truth has always existed, its knowledge has only existed at different stages of development, that we are the fortunate inheritors of the results gathered by past thinkers, and still more that we are now called to complete the circle and formulate a finished system of philosophy which shall stand good for all time.
All the conflicting doctrines which have appeared in the past were not meaningless and not useless; they have played their part most usefully even where they seemed most contradictory. They were really in collaboration, not in opposition. We need not disdain to illustrate the highest abstract principles by the homeliest concrete anecdotes, and we may describe them as pieces in a jig-saw puzzle which can now be fitted together for now we have the master pattern which is the secret of the whole. Hence all that is vital and valuable in earlier knowledge is contained in the East-West philosophy; only their fallacies have been shed. A full view of the universe now replaces all the partial views which were alone available before and which embodied merely single phases of the discovery of Truth. Thus the analytic movement which uncovered the various pieces of this world puzzle must now yield to a synthetic process of putting them together in a final united pattern. Culture, on this view, is the timeless truth appearing in the world of time and therefore in successive but progressive periods. Only now has it been able to utter its latest word. Only now does philosophy attain its maturest completion. Only now are we able to reap the fruit of seven thousand years of historical philosophy. Only now have we achieved a world-system, a universal doctrine which belongs to no particular place but to the planet. Knowledge has grown by analysis but shall finish by synthesis.
20
Not one but several minds will be needed to labour
at the metaphysical foundation of the twentieth-century structure of philosophy.
I can claim the merit only of being among the earliest of these pioneers. There
are others yet to appear who will unquestionably do better and more valuable
work.
21
Others will take up this work where we leave it
unfinished. If my effort can do nothing more at least it will make easier for
those who are destined to follow after me a jungle-road which I had to travel
under great difficulties. I have roughly cleared an area of human culture which
my successors may cultivate and on which they may perhaps produce a perfect crop
one day. I did what I could but the fullness of results will be theirs alone.
The effects of my thinking will not fully declare themselves in our own day. It
is not pride that makes me say that the volume which follows The Hidden
Teaching Beyond Yoga is the first methodical embodiment in a modern language
of this tradition as well as the first synthetic explanation of it in scientific
terminology, for the book is called forth by its epoch and someone would sooner
or later have written it. What is really interesting is not who writes it but
the fact that it was written in our own time. For something there achieved marks
a most important stage of human cultural history.
I have indeed undertaken what I believe to be a pioneer work. I cannot give my patronage to any particular system. I can bestow it only on Truth, which is unique and systemless. For enough of the sacred presence is at my side, enough of the disciplinary self-transformation has been achieved, and enough of the mental perception arrived at, to enable me to take up the external task of preparing others for illumination in their turn.
22
This synthesis has developed from the world-wide
researches of this writer, plus the secret traditions of Oriental teachers, the
personal experiences of Occidental adepts, and the needs of modern aspirants. It
notes with approval the trend toward interest in yoga and mysticism, but with
regret where so much of this interest is directed to antique or medieval types
unsuited to those needs, which are based on professional business and
occupational conditions unknown to such earlier types. Into this synthesis has
gone the garnerings from great storehouses of the past, but added to them are
the fresh creative findings of the present. Orient and Occident, ancient and
modern, have joined together to produce this distinctive teaching. It is not
enough to resuscitate the doctrines and methods of a bygone era; we must also
evolve our own. And this can be done only out of firsthand experience of
illumination under modern conditions.
23
I did not seek to become the formulator of
such a unique and priceless message to mankind. Indeed knowing myself in
weakness as well as strength, I naturally shrink from seeking such an immense
responsibility, and would rather have helped and served a worthier man to
formulate the message. This is not to say that I underrate its value, its
dignity, its public prestige. But all my previous attempts to evade the task
having ended in failure, I now positively and affirmatively--no longer
reluctantly and hesitantly--step forward to its accomplishment. I do so moreover
with tranquil joy, for I am utterly convinced in the deepest recess of my heart
no less than in the logical thinking of my brain, that the teaching is so
greatly needed in our time by those who have sought in vain for comprehensive
elucidation of the problem of their existence, that I feel the help it will give
them constitutes the best possible use of my energies, talents, and days in this
incarnation.
24
Although I was already travelling the road to the
self-discovery of these truths, it is true that an apparent fortuitous meeting
with an extraordinary individual at Angkor saved me from some of the time and
labour involved in this process. For he turned out to be an adept in the higher
philosophy who had not only had a most unusual personal history but also a most
unusual comprehension of the problems which were troubling me. He put me through
strange initiatory experiences in a deserted temple and then, with a few brief
explanations of the hidden teachings, placed the key to their solutions in my
hands. But after all it was only a key to the door-chamber, and not the entire
treasure itself. These I had to ferret out for myself. That is, to say, I was
given the principle but had to work out the details, develop the applications,
and trace out the ramifications for myself. I was provided with a foundation but
had to erect the super-structure by my own efforts. And all this has been a task
for many years, a task upon which I am still engaged.
25
Henceforth the background of this teaching will
be, nay must be, a universal one. It shall resist those who would label it
Eastern because they will not be able to deny its Western contents, form, and
spirit. It shall resist those who would label it Western, because they too shall
not be able to deny its Eastern roots and contents.
26
Let them remember that the Truth comes not from
any person but from the Holy Spirit. It is from such a source that what is
worthy in my writings has come; the errors however are mine. Let them therefore
describe themselves as students of philosophy, not as followers of Brunton.
27
I try to practise the advice I give others and to
live according to the teachings I write down. This does not mean that I always
succeed in doing so. But the endeavour being there, the ideas they concern have
been put through some testing in action: they are not left in the air as mere
untried theories. Today, through a world-wide correspondence and formerly
through numerous interviews I have uncovered in addition to them the experiences
of people standing in every grade of development.
28
Once I took it upon myself to interpret Oriental
mysticism to the West. Now after long experience and longer thought, I find it
necessary to stand aside from all the dead and living sources of knowledge with
which I had established contact, if I am not to misinterpret Oriental mysticism.
I am compelled to walk in lonely isolation, even though I respect and honour not
a few of those sources. What I learnt and assimilated from them stood finally
before a bar of my own making. For I thought, felt, walked, worked, and lived in
terms of a twentieth-century experience which, seek as I might, could not be
found in its fullness among them. However satisfactory to others, their outlook
was too restricted for me. Either they could not come down to the mental
horizons of the people who surrounded me, or else they came down theoretically
with their heads and not with their hearts. This does not mean that I question
their immediate correctness; it means that I question their ultimate usefulness.
It would be as absurd to deduce that I am now inconsistently rejecting mysticism as it would be absurd to declare that I reject the first three letters of the alphabet, merely because I refuse to limit my writing to the combination of ABC alone. I am trying to say that the whole content of mysticism is not identifiable with what is ordinarily known as such; it exceeds the sphere of the latter to such an extent that I have preferred to return to the ancient custom and call it philosophy.
29
This book is but a mirror, in which I have shown
the facts and events of a life devoted to the quest of Realization. Whether the
conclusions it contains are to your taste or not, please deign to believe that
as a record I have endeavoured to invest it with absolute verity.
30
It is not without much reluctance that I have
ventured to betray aloud the intimate experiences received in secret and
solitary communion with nature. I would fain have harboured them until this body
was gone, when their fate would carry no concern for me. But the bidding of my
spiritual Guides was such that these words have gone out into print.
31
Paul Brunton is trying to do something new. He
went to India to learn from the most perceptive Indians, not to copy their
followers. Yet the latter at times lack the wide tolerance of their teacher.
Merely and politely to disagree with them is denounced as immense arrogance.
"Who are you," these followers shout, "to dare to have an opinion contrary to
the divine word of our Holy one?" Brunton has the highest regard affection and
reverence for these Indian teachers, and especially for the ones who freely
initiated him into their knowledge and inner circle. But this regard does not
necessarily mean that he is obliged always to agree with them and always to
think along with them. Indeed, they did not agree with each other. Those who
might deem it ungracious of him to criticize their doctrines at certain points,
should know that he speaks not only on his own personal behalf but also with
certain sanctions--derived from the most ancient esoteric initiatory Oriental
traditions--behind him. Paul Brunton also has something of his own to give. He
cannot merely copy these others in living or echo them in writing. He too must
be himself just as they were themselves. He may be their friend but he cannot be
their follower. If it is for others to be that, he rejoices; but if he is to be
true to the light which has come to him, he must shed it by himself however
small it be in contrast to theirs. He may be but a candle to the suns of other
guides, but to hide it because their light is greater would be to disobey his
own inner voice. There was a time when this same voice bade him give forth the
message of a few among those he had sought out and studied with. He gladly did
so. But now its bidding is different. He has to speak the Word which he alone
can speak, for every individual is unique. Every man is born to be himself, to
undergo a set of experiences which in their entirety no one else has undergone.
He alone of all the human race has just the mental and emotional psyche which he
has.
32
If this book can only make the Overself seem as
real to the imagination of others as it is to me in actuality, as living a
presence to their faith as it is to my meditation, it may be of some service to
them. But if it fails to do so, it may still....
33
In this book I have considered myself to be a
sensitive recording instrument, carefully and minutely registering the
impressions received from these higher states of consciousness.
34
My work is a "prophetic" message to our times, a
religious revelatory work. An academic seal would put it on an intellectual and
consequently lower plane.
35
If I make a first formal appearance as a teacher,
it is only in deference to the mission now imposed on me and the mandate now
given me.
36
Have I not searched far and suffered much to
prepare an easier path for you all, to cut through thick jungles a track which
others could follow with less pain and less labour? Have I not gleaned
sufficient knowledge at great cost to be worthy of a hearing? Have I not
attained sufficient proficiency in yoga and philosophy to be worthy at least of
a claim on truth-seekers' attention? Have I not toiled and over-toiled in the
effort to share both the modicum of knowledge and the measure of proficiency
with others to be worthy at least of their interest?
37
Now comes the crux of the whole matter. So far as
I can follow the teachings of the ancient sages, the path which stretches before
mankind appears to have four gates set at intervals along its course. The first
is open to the great majority of mankind and might be named "religion, theology,
and scholasticism." The second is open to a much smaller number of persons and
could conveniently be named Mysticism. The third which is rarely opened (for it
is heavy and hard to move) is "the philosophy of truth," whilst the final gate
has been entered only by the supermen of our species; it may be titled
"Realization." Few readers would care to wander with me into the wilderness
whither it leads. I refuse to tarry in the limited phases of development and
have gone forward in further quest of the sublime verity which is presented to
us as life's goal by the sages. I value tolerance. Let others believe or follow
what suits or pleases them most; I trust they will allow me the same freedom to
continue my own quest.
38
It is precisely because we are entering an epoch
when the common people are at last coming into their own and when the world's
conscience about its duty toward the underprivileged has been tardily aroused,
that I feel I am obeying a divine command when I write of sacred things in
direct manner, of metaphysical themes in a plain manner, and of mystical
experiences in a familiar manner. Spiritual snobs may call my treatment of these
subjects, cheap, and my work, journalese, but its result--faintly indicated by
the long record of help gratefully acknowledged--is their best answer.
39
I have written this book because in an age when
the two opposed conceptions of man are throwing the world into strife and
revolution and war, there is clear need for personal testimony from those who
know the truth rather than those who believe in it.
40
To attempt this book will be an adventure for the
Warriors of Light, but the wanderers of night will put it down with much
celerity. For these pages are enchanted with a white magic which can inflict no
greater injury on adversaries than to permit them to resist the principles
contained therein.
41
To the outside observer, my declining years have
been dead ones, apparently spent in inactivity and futility. But this is only
one side of the picture. For they have also been spent in a hidden activity on a
higher plane, as much for my own spiritual growth as for the world's peace.
42
I have attempted to think out anew, and on the
basis of my own experience and not that of men who lived five thousand years
ago, what should be the attitude of a normal modern man toward life. Such
blessed independence may be scorned by some, but it is a birthright which I
jealously guard.
43
I believe that there is a soul in man. This is a
frank if commonplace avowal. Yet as I look again at these words, I find a false
modesty in them. It is a poor tribute to truth to hesitate timidly in making the
open declaration that I know there is a soul because I daily commune with
it as a real, living presence.
44
Life remains what it is--deathless and unbound. We
shall all meet again. Know what you are, and be free. The best counsel today is,
keep calm, aware. Don't let the pressure of mental environment break into
what you know and what is real and ultimately true. This is your magic talisman
to safeguard you; cling to it. The last word is--Patience! The night is darkest
before dawn. But dawn comes.
45
I prefer anonymity for my work but fate has
ignored my preference.