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subjects: another when the unresolved dualism of your own personality
(though you may not give it this high-sounding name) becomes the main
fact of consciousness, perpetually reasserts itself as a vital problem, and
refuses to take academic rank.
This state of things means the acute discomfort which ensues on being
pulled two ways at once. The uneasy swaying of attention between two
incompatible ideals, the alternating conviction that there is something
wrong, perverse, poisonous, about life as you have always lived it, and
something hopelessly ethereal about the life which your innermost in-
habitant wants to live these disagreeable sensations grow stronger and
stronger. First one and then the other asserts itself. You fluctuate miser-
ably between their attractions and their claims; and will have no peace
until these claims have been met, and the apparent opposition between
them resolved. You are sure now that there is another, more durable and
more "reasonable," life possible to the human consciousness than that on
which it usually spends itself. But it is also clear to you that you must
yourself be something more, or other, than you are now, if you are to
achieve this life, dwell in it, and breathe its air. You have had in your
brief spells of recollection a first quick vision of that plane of being which
Augustine called "the land of peace," the "beauty old and new." You
know for evermore that it exists: that the real thing within yourself be-
longs to it, might live in it, is being all the time invited and enticed to it.
You begin, in fact, to feel and know in every fibre of your being the
32
mystical need of "union with Reality"; and to realise that the natural
scene which you have accepted so trustfully cannot provide the corres-
pondences toward which you are stretching out.
Nevertheless, it is to correspondences with this natural order that you
have given for many years your full attention, your desire, your will. The
surface-self, left for so long in undisputed possession of the conscious
field, has grown strong, and cemented itself like a limpet to the rock of
the obvious; gladly exchanging freedom for apparent security, and
building up, from a selection amongst the more concrete elements
offered it by the rich stream of life, a defensive shell of "fixed ideas." It is
useless to speak kindly to the limpet. You must detach it by main force.
That old comfortable clinging life, protected by its hard shell from the
living waters of the sea, must now come to an end. A conflict of some
kind a severance of old habits, old notions, old prejudices is here in-
evitable for you; and a decision as to the form which the new adjust-
ments must take.
Now although in a general way we may regard the practical man's at-
titude to existence as a limpet-like adherence to the unreal; yet, from an-
other point of view, fixity of purpose and desire is the last thing we can
attribute to him. His mind is full of little whirlpools, twists and currents,
conflicting systems, incompatible desires. One after another, he centres
himself on ambition, love, duty, friendship, social convention, politics,
religion, self-interest in one of its myriad forms; making of each a core
round which whole sections of his life are arranged. One after another,
these things either fail him or enslave him. Sometimes they become ob-
sessions, distorting his judgment, narrowing his outlook, colouring his
whole existence. Sometimes they develop inconsistent characters which
involve him in public difficulties, private compromises and self-decep-
tions of every kind. They split his attention, fritter his powers. This state
of affairs, which usually passes for an "active life," begins to take on a
different complexion when looked at with the simple eye of meditation.
Then we observe that the plain man's world is in a muddle, just because
he has tried to arrange its major interests round himself as round a
centre; and he is neither strong enough nor clever enough for the job. He
has made a wretched little whirlpool in the mighty River of Becoming,
interrupting as he imagines, in his own interest its even flow: and
within that whirlpool are numerous petty complexes and counter-cur-
rents, amongst which his will and attention fly to and fro in a continual
state of unrest. The man who makes a success of his life, in any depart-
ment, is he who has chosen one from amongst these claims and interests,
33
and devoted to it his energetic powers of heart and will; "unifying" him-
self about it, and from within it resisting all counter-claims. He has one
objective, one centre; has killed out the lesser ones, and simplified
himself.
Now the artist, the discoverer, the philosopher, the lover, the patri-
ot the true enthusiast for any form of life can only achieve the full
reality to which his special art or passion gives access by innumerable re-
nunciations. He must kill out the smaller centres of interest, in order that
his whole will, love, and attention may pour itself out towards, seize
upon, unite with, that special manifestation of the beauty and signific-
ance of the universe to which he is drawn. So, too, a deliberate self-sim-
plification, a "purgation" of the heart and will, is demanded of those who [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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