W

HY talk about what we all know? Simply because it is of the utmost practical importance to us. It is far more important than either the things we are keenly interested in finding out, or those in the next further layer which we have not yet glimpsed, and so should hail as wholly new discoveries. We might as well admit the facts-exploration appeals to most of us, especially when it can be done at second hand, following someone else's account of discoveries. Conquest is another matter. It does not awaken the same appeal. The very word makes one begin to feel uncomfortable -it has such an angular aspect. Perhaps this is one reason why what we know lacks interest for us. The next step is so evidently along the conquest route. We prefer rather to garner more information. Lean and hungry cooks, surrounded with all the materials for producing nourishing food, lacking only the will to compound and bake them: that is one picture of a condition we should be able to recognize as very like our own. You can see, with a little imagination, that ill-nourished cookperson running around the garden, looking for new flavours to use, new vegetables to add a final dash of excellence to the pot, but never putting the pot over the fire;-not quite ready to do the one thing needed, which is to use what is at hand.

WORDS AS SCREENS

In case the structure of modern civilization should, as some are anticipating, be shaken over, and fall into ruins, there will be in it one gain for the disciple of the next generation. There will be great simplification. Now, we have so many words, so much machinery of life behind which to hide; we so seldom face facts as they are, even when we are alone with ourselves! Something or somebody (for these elementals are very personal), in the congeries we call "self", gets uncomfortable, and tries to turn the conversation that is going on within us, as soon as we begin to deal with fact. Usually it succeeds; and the result is that when we look things over with anyone else, honesty of thought and expression are so rare that memory readily holds the record of all those fruitful occasions. The other extreme, to which we sometimes react, is surely equally stupid. We say, Let us face the facts;and grimly begin to burrow, like rodents. For the moment, we pretend to believe that only the mud and grime and rubble in our natures are real; we face them as our realities and have a bad half-hour. Then common sense comes to our rescue, we clutch its hand to pull us up out of the mire, and quickly drop it and run off, to find some way of forgetting what we saw. It would be far wiser to stand by, and to get the rest of the picture. Often we get that more clearly by watching others.

FRIENDS AS SIGN-POSTS

A sympathetic observation of the struggles of a fellow-student may reveal much. Even the attempt is illuminating. Do we hesitate to try? Do we say, "Oh, I never know what things mean?" There is a clue;why this unwillingness to make the effort?

I have one friend who would answer :-"That is such a slow process. My conclusions would be sure to be wrong. Then by the time I had discovered where they were wrong and tried another interpretation,—so much time would be lost. I should never get anywhere." This friend is always looking for "short-cuts". Let a new angle of an accepted truth be presented, and it is by this person eagerly received as a probable short-cut to the acquirement of some quality that is now being painfully striven after. Eternity, on this friend's map, would appear to be checkered with short-cuts, known to and carefully concealed by the elect;-effortless approaches to the heights of heaven, the exhilaration of the altitude without the struggle of the climb. Surely those are ways imagined only by the valley-folk, who have not yet dared the steeps, known to them only by sight, and so not known at all. It could not be thus that Masters reached their commanding position, nor with such ideals that they attempt new conquests, always fresh dangers. My friend's eagerness for a deceptive ease of attainment ought not to annoy me, as it too often does. It stands out bold and clear, at that particular fork of the road like a warning sign-post. It tells me how foolish I am when I turn away from the effort and sustained determination which right self-identification often require. Is one annoyed with the man who nailed up the sign warning of a dangerous quicksand at the side of the road?

Another friend to whom I am much indebted gets stalled at a different spot. It amuses me to liken it to the problem of the boy whose voice is "changing";-that boy may start a salutation in his nice new deep voice, and find it ending in an embarrassingly shrill pipe. It happens that my changing-voice friend has been making a special study of obedience, as one of the great virtues exemplified in the lives of seers and saints, great and little. There is a genuine admiration for the fruits of obedience, and a real desire to travel by that road. Indeed much ground there has been covered, but beware of any sudden demand! Let conscience, or some natural authority on the outside, give a quick word of command-and, squeak, squeak goes the childish protest. This usually is voiced in the form of a determination to be obedient even to the point of martyrdom; only this, and only that, and as many more onlys as there is space for before the tear drops begin to splash. Yet, constantly as this little drama is repeated, my friend does not yet see in it the part played by self-will; does not even suspect that none could give command to one who has not yet been broken to the obediences of conscience and daily custom. It is clear to the onlooker that an obedient heart, a wholly obedient heart, would find no problem, no obstacle in the various situations

which to this friend of mine are so cruelly complex and make plain obedience seem so impossible. Instead of wondering why she "acts up" so foolishly, let me be grateful for another sign post, in the labyrinth of our common human nature. This one says, Make sure you are eager to obey before you count the obstacles.

REAL NEEDS

What do we really need? Looking within my own heart, or recalling the registered demands made by others, the answer is the same. We all have teaching enough. Any one, out of dozens of the books we have, gives that. They but repeat the truths given out, now from one angle and then from another; show them flat, or in relief. They are like the maps printed by the railroads,-the territory covered by the road is shown with all the intersecting lines that cross it; but broad and clear, as though nature's own chosen route, stands out the line of the company that prints the map. One sees it as the best possible way to travel. So each of our books points out one or more best ways. The desire, however, is not so much to induce travelling by that route alone. What the wise ones most desire is to awaken the will to set forth, the desire to adventure on any charted route. Yes, we have knowledge enough.

We are rich, too, in examples. Take the simple, unassuming life of Mr. Judge, with the light thrown upon it by his Letters, Volumes I and II. We have there sufficient applied wisdom to meet every need. Sometimes I have been tempted to rearrange those two books, with scissors and paste pot, on the plan of the old fashioned health guide, called the Family Doctor, or some such title. That tells you:-"If feverish, stop eating; drink a gallon of water; take a big dose of herb-tea, and sleep twelve hours." In equally simple fashion, but with far greater discrimination, Mr. Judge prescribes for the soul's disorders, particularly those due to the over-feeding of Lower Manas, and to failure to give the will the constant exercise that makes it a supple, responsive instrument. Our only need, it seems to me, is there, the need of more will, more desire. But, after all, that is equivalent to saying that all a housecarpenter needs is a completed house. Building houses is his tradebuilding will and desire might be called the trade of the disciple;neither builds for his own use. He builds that there may be more of his commodity for use in the world.

THREE WISHES

Suppose you were offered three wishes, as in one of the oldest type of fairytale. For what would you wish first? This is not so simple as it sounds. The situation is one common to the fairylore of many peoples, written in many languages. Suddenly appears the fairy magician; as quickly the three wishes are made;-and the fortunate one is soon rubbing his eyes, for he finds that with three fair chances to get anything he wished, it is all over, and he has nothing at all. Unlimited

as the offer was, he was never left healthy, wealthy and wise. One of the oldest versions of this particular story is that in which the gift-fairy made her offer to a poor old husband and wife. The wife put in the first word: "I wish", she cried, "that I might always have all the porridge I could eat." Annoyed at such trifling with their great opportunity, the husband said, as the porridge pots began to run over,-"I wish you had a bag of it on the end of your nose!" He had meant only to reprove, but he had used the fateful words "I wish", and instantly there appeared the pudding bag firmly attached to her nose. There was then no choice, the third and last wish had to be used to free the wife from that unsightly ornament. The fairy vanished, and they faced one another, no whit better off than they were before all the treasures of the Earth had three times been laid in their hands. Why? Perhaps the fairy gift bore the power to call forth the dominating desire, instead of some wellcalculated, prearranged demand.

If the opportunity came to us, what would be our "wishes"? Many of us might in fact say, with all speed:-"I wish to know the Masters." What is our picture when we think, with radiant anticipation, of the happiness of knowing a Master? Maybe an image of ourselves, in our very best guise, both inside and out, standing comfortably in a circle of Masters and their chêlas, listening reverently to their conversation. on some lofty theme,-after having been welcomed with the kind and gracious words in which such loving beings would surely express their recognition of a stranger's presence. How smoothly and happily life would flow on were one permitted frequent entrance into such company. Or if alone with one's own Master, what companionship! All one's feelings would of course be understood and respected, all the hurts and jars removed. All would be love, sweetness, charm.

ONE WHO DREAMED TRUE

How does that dream fit the facts that have been given us? Does anybody recall passages in H. P. B.'s writing that lend colour to any such idealistic setting? What of the saints who had close personal direction by the Master Jesus? One whose name naturally comes to mind is the recently canonized Margaret Mary. Her letters, written to one or another superior of her Order, are full of references to the, as she said, "unmerited" favours and expressions of tenderness that the Master lavished upon her. Equally prominent and far more readily accepted by her, are accounts of the manner in which she was disciplined by the Master for the most trifling infraction of the Rule of her Order, for any slightest manifestation of a flaw in the perfect and complete obedience that was characteristic of her. There was nothing of democracy in that relation between French nun and Master; nothing of that easy friendship and readily flowing intimacy which many pictures of such privileges require. Unsparingly, and in terse terms, her shortcomings were pointed out to her. If told what to do, perfect performance was

expected, and severe punishment followed any delays or lapses,-punishment devised by wise tenderness to be deeply felt and fully remedial in her particular case. It was the combination of tenderness and unsparing severity, the incessant demand for one's best effort, richly rewarded when fully given, that is, in our human experience, typified by the ideal parent and child. There can be no doubt of the allure, the consuming desire for complete union which this Master called forth in the heart of the one who described herself, as consumed with such a thirst for union that nothing on earth could satisfy this longing.

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But who is ready for the terms? We fear that frequently the second "wish" would be this-"Free me from such companionship. Its demands are too much for me!" And the third "wish" might be,"Let me forget the sight of myself that came as I stood before the Master." Is that the experience of those to whom such companionship has been accorded? Not so far as any records go; quite the opposite. And naturally so, as it would be vouchsafed only to those who had grown out of the nursery, who were able to lose themselves, to give themselves, in a profound love.

To us, still nurslings, what does such a record as that of Margaret Mary offer? For one thing, a new type of ideal; a truer, more compelling picture of what real companionship with a Master means,the necessary demand on his part for likeness; the insistence that the disciple shall live by the laws of the Master-degree :—the rare adventure of such an effort, the hunger and thirst to satisfy his demands which make the sweetness and delight of toil and pain. That, however, is on the heights. Less is demanded of, and so less can be given to, one of lower degree. But there is record of one such whose knowledge of his Master was equally clear and sure. He was generous enough to relate his first distinct consciousness of his Master. It was not some lofty or tender interview that was first accorded to him. He had been praying, agonizing over a situation that gave him great distress; had asked the Master's help-had asked for light on his duty. Within his heart came, he tells us, the response which he later paraphrased in these words: "What do you want me to do about it? What can I do about it?" It was his Master, and he knew it. The problem so perplexing was clear to him now. He saw that he had to pick up his load and carry it; that under the intense eyes of his newly-found Master, no shirking, no lamenting of his fate could be tolerated. Later, as he told the story, that same cross lifted with much foreboding, became his joy, his deepest delight.

This, too, we all know to be profoundly true, far more real than our reluctances, fears, hesitations; and we are responsible for what we know.

E.