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The Chain
THE
whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains;
this is the first paradox and inextricable knot of our nature.
Man is in love
with the bonds of birth; therefore he is caught in the companion bonds of death.
In these chains he aspires after freedom of his being and mastery of his self-fulfilment.
Man is in love
with power; therefore he is subjected to weakness. For the world is a sea of
waves of force that meet and continually fling themselves on each other; he who
would ride on the crest of one wave, must faint under the shock of hundreds.
Man is in love
with pleasure; therefore he must undergo the yoke of grief and pain. For unmixed
delight is only for the free and passionless soul; but that which pursues after
pleasure in man is a suffering and straining energy.
Man hungers
after calm, but he thirsts also for the experiences of a restless mind and a
troubled heart. Enjoyment is to his mind a fever, calm an inertia and a
monotony.
Man is in love
with the limitations of his physical being, yet he would have also the freedom
of his infinite mind and his immortal soul.
And in these
contrasts something in him finds a curious attraction; they constitute for his
mental being the artistry of life. It is not only the nectar but the poison also
that attracts his taste and his curiosity.
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In all these things there is a meaning and for all these contradictions
there is a release. Nature has a method in every mad-ness of her combinings and
for her most inextricable knots there is a solution.
Death is the
question Nature puts continually to Life and her reminder to it that it has not
yet found itself. If there were no siege of death, the creature would be bound
for ever in the form of an imperfect living. Pursued by death he awakes to the
idea of perfect life and seeks out its means and its possibility.
Weakness puts
the same test and question to the strengths and energies and greatnesses in
which we glory. Power is the play of life, shows its degree, finds the value of
its expression; weakness is the play of death pursuing life in its movement and
stressing the limit of its acquired energy.
Pain and grief
are Nature’s reminder to the soul that the pleasure it enjoys is only a feeble
hint of the real delight of existence. In each pain and torture of our being is
the secret of a flame of rapture compared with which our greatest pleasures are
only as dim flickerings. It is this secret which forms the attraction for the
soul of the great ordeals, sufferings and fierce experiences of life which the
nervous mind in us shuns and abhors.
The restlessness
and early exhaustion of our active being and its instruments are Nature’s sign
that calm is our true foundation and excitement a disease of the soul; the
sterility and monotony of mere calm is her hint that play of the activities on
that firm foundation is what she requires of us. God plays for ever and is not
troubled.
The limitations
of the body are a mould; soul and mind have to pour themselves into them, break
them and constantly re-mould them in wider limits till the formula of agreement
is found between this finite and their own infinity.
Freedom is the
law of being in its illimitable unity, secret
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master
of all Nature: servitude is the law of love in the being voluntarily giving
itself to serve the play of its other selves in the multiplicity.
It is when
freedom works in chains and servitude becomes a law of Force, not of Love, that
the true nature of things is distorted and a falsehood governs the soul’s
dealings with existence.
Nature starts
with this distortion and plays with all the combinations to which it can lead
before she will allow it to be righted. Afterwards she gathers up all the
essence of these combinations into a new and rich harmony of love and freedom.
Freedom comes by
a unity without limits; for that is our real being. We may gain the essence of
this unity in ourselves; we may realise the play of it in oneness with all
others. The double experience is the complete intention of the soul in Nature.
Having realised
infinite unity in ourselves, then to give ourselves to the world is utter
freedom and absolute empire.
Infinite, we are
free from death; for life then becomes a play of our immortal existence. We are
free from weakness; for we are the whole sea enjoying the myriad shock of its
waves. We are free from grief and pain; for we learn how to harmonise our being
with all that touches it and to find in all things action and reaction of the
delight of existence. We are free from limitation; for the body becomes a
plaything of the infinite mind and learns to obey the will of the immortal soul.
We are free from die fever of the nervous mind and the heart, yet are not bound
to immobility.
Immortality,
unity and freedom are in ourselves and await there our discovery; but for the
joy of love God in us will still remain the Many.
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