The inner life and the Tao-teh-king E-Book

C. H. A. Bjerregaard

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

CONTENTS PREFACE CHAPTER I.- THE INNER LIFE AND THE TAO-TEH-KING CHAPTER II. -THE INNER LIFE CHAPTER III - MYSTICISM CHAPTER IV - SIMPLICITY CHAPTER V - THE SAGE CHAPTER VI - LAOTZSE CHAPTER VII. - LONGEVITY CHAPTER VIII. - NATURE WORSHIP CHAPTER IX. - TAO CHAPTER X. - TEH CHAPTER XI. - LIFE, LOVE, LIGHT AND WILL CHAPTER XII - A SHAWNEE TALE CHAPTER XIII - NON ACTION CHAPTER XIV - NATURE CHAPTER XV. - AN APPENDIX ON JEAN JACQUE

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CHAPTER I.- THE INNER LIFE AND THE TAO-TEH-KING

CHAPTER II. -THE INNER LIFE

CHAPTER III - MYSTICISM

CHAPTER IV - SIMPLICITY

CHAPTER V - THE SAGE

CHAPTER VI - LAOTZSE

CHAPTER VII. – LONGEVITY

CHAPTER VIII. - NATURE WORSHIP

CHAPTER IX. - TAO

CHAPTER X. TEH

CHAPTER XI. - LIFE, LOVE, LIGHT AND WILL

CHAPTER XII - A SHAWNEE TALE

CHAPTER XIII - NON ACTION

CHAPTER XIV - NATURE

CHAPTER XV. - AN APPENDIX ON JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU'S IDEAS

C. H. A. Bjerregaard

The Inner life and the Tao-teh-king

First digital edition 2017 by David De Angelis

PREFACE

These chapters were originally lectures to a small, but select company. They are now revised and published for a larger world. They claim not to be exhaustive, but only an attempt in direction of a mystic interpretation of the Tao-Teh-King, a manner of reading that famous book but little practiced and less understood. The only proper way of reading that book is in the light of mysticism. The book can certainly not be handled like a Confucian document.

I lay no claim to be a Sinologist. I have, however, in many places examined the texts and made translations differing somewhat from others. Elsewhere I have used all the known translations, with which I have usually agreed.

It is more than thirty years since I began in this country to call attention to the Tao-Teh-King. It was then an almost unknown book. Since then, several translations and paraphrases have been published in this country and articles of more or less value have appeared in magazines, but much remains to be done if this treasure is to become known where it ought to be known. I hope my undertaking may be a step in that direction. Without the generosity of the theosophists before whom the original lectures were delivered, the book could not have been published. I owe them my profound thanks.

C. H. A. BJERREGAARD.

CHAPTER I.- THE INNER LIFE AND THE TAO-TEH-KING

THE main difficulty in speaking about the Inner Life is the language that must be used. The medieval and renaissance mystics and occultists were obliged for various reasons to usealchemical language and phraseology to express their wisdom of life, because such language was picturesque and easily comprehended by minds of a mechanical and practical turn, minds crude and ignorant of their own psychic powers and processes.

To-day we have the same difficulty to overcome as the older mystics. Our audiences are unfamiliar with psychology and so little in the habit of seeing themselves as units, that they really believe themselves to be mere bundles of faculties, forces and states, and areunable to give an account of their mental, moral and spiritual condition. It is therefore necessary to present the Inner Life as if it were something in space and time. It is necessary to speak of traveling on paths, as if such paths were actual roads; and yet, Inner Life and Outer Life, Traveling and Paths, are only terms of psychic conditions. I shall in this chapter speak of passing over bridges as if I literally meant it. I shall be using realistic language, but not talk about realistic bridges. I shall talk psychology.Spiritually understood, there is no Inner Life, there is no Outer Life, there is no Path, no Bridge, No East, No West, no High, no Low—what is there? Well—wait till you have read these chapters and you may know!

I will now do like thegenial boy does who wants to know how his machinery is made and put together—he picks it to pieces and examines it. I will likewise pick our deeper life to pieces and try to show what it is and how it works, and, as I proceed, I shall put it together again.

A few words about different standpoints and the "two that of the Orient and that of the Occident. For the

sake of the deepest understanding of problems which are of the uttermost importance to all thinking people, it is desirable that all theosophic andmystic subjects should be studied from a Western standpoint as well as from an Oriental. Most of you here present are accustomed, I think, to hear these subjects presented in Oriental phrases and in set terminology, all derived from Eastern sources. It has seemed to me desirable that you should hear the same truths set forth in Western terminology. I am sure you can only be the gainers. I propose to set them forth that way. But let me say something to guide you to see the similarities and to prevent confusion.

Let me take as an illustration a familiar object, a lense, either concave or convex. The lense remains a lense whatever you do with it, but it reflects the light variously as the light falls upon the concave or the convex. You may call the concave a type of the East, and the convex a type of the West, if you like, or vice versa. The viewpoint and the judgment are personal, indifferent, not real; the reality in the case is the fact that the lense reflects the light. The lense, of course, is the mind.

Because I speak of great truths from the Western point of view and in Western terminology, I differ only from some of you in viewpoint and in personal aspect, but not really; we meet in the middle, in mind; in the Inner Life; in the fact that we both reflectthe real, each in our individual way, however.

Another illustration. Let us suppose I pass over a bridge: the "bridge of existence/' from one end, the Western, and you from the other end, the Eastern. We shall see the Middle of the bridge and the approaches differently, but we shall both be passing the same bridge. And let me add that it would be wise for those of my listeners who have passed over such a bridge from one end only also to pass back over the bridge from the other end. They shall certainly bethe wiser for so doing. It is the mystic's way. And let me say further, and, here I hint at a mystery, let me say, that since neither you nor I know absolutely which is the beginning or the end of the bridge, that it is immaterial which is the East or theWest end of it. The most important part of the bridge is the Middle; from the Middle of the bridge we may ascend into another plane of existence, and find that that existence is the real one, and that neither of the two approaches have any reality.

Natureknows of no Beginning nor End; knows only the

CHAPTER II. -THE INNER LIFE

Middle; the Inner Life. She spreads out continually from the Center, from the ever-present Now. For that reason, the Middle is called the first or fundamental principle and is the Inner Life. And for that reason, I say, that neither the East end nor the West end have any reality. As for myself, I have long ago come to the conclusion that neither end of the bridge is the real one, and, long ago a wise man talked much about the Middle Path. I, forone, am sure he spoke the truth. And I have found many who also have understood him.

What is the Middle? Now I shall not indulge in metaphysics or mysticism, but use a well-known theosophic phrase as my illustration. The theosophic doctrine of "Brotherhood' ' is a very practical application of the philosophic doctrine Middle ; it is the at-one-ing point for all races and creeds; it answers to the One in philosophy. In that doctrine Theosophy proclaims equal rights for all extremes. It is the gospel of "goodwill among men." It answers, as I said, to the One in philosophy; and to Unity. It is that which Schiller calls the Holy Will and "the idea supreme"; it is the power, that works for righteousness; the "spirit of rest" that ever tries to stay the changefulworld. It is the "Love" of St. John; it is "the pure form of thought'' of Kant. It is " god incarnate'' of Christianity. All these terms explain what the Middle is; what the Inner Life is. They explain that Middle, which we meet from whatever end we enterthe bridge of life, and it is from such a Middle, I said, that we readily swing ourselves to heaven. Unless we come to the perfect realization, that life is one, one glorious whole, and not split up into various antagonistic elements, we shall never cometo sound and rational philosophies or religions. Human life is fallen apart and now lies in most unfortunate dualisms of good and evil, of inner and outer, of upper and lower, of heaven and hell. The guilty ones are both saints and sinners; the first in ignorance, the latter in wilful misrepresentation. Away! Away! Let us now and henceforth build temples to Unity, to the One, to the Middle, to the Inner Life! Life, Existence, is one, not manifold; one at the core; only manifold in manifestation. Let us hangon to that. With this doctrine and realization before us, we can without fear examine the characteristics of the East and the West and see how they are merely extremes of a Higher Truth, a Higher Unity. And perhaps you will agree with me that it is desirable that I should speak from a Western point of view.

To simplify matters, let me characterize the two viewpoints. The East is synthetic; the West is analytic; that, of course, makes views different, yet the multitudinousness of the circumference is onlythe center spread out, so to say. They answer to each other like concave and convex. Do they not? The East is sympathetic and has religion; the West is intellectual and has culture; that of course separates the two; but as sympathy meansheart, and culturemeans brain, the two make a complete man: One; the Grand Man, Adam Kadmon, the Inner Life. The East discovered the World, the great objective; the West discovered and asserted the Ego, Man. To the East, the individual man is vanity and must be denied. TheWest declares that the world must be denied; but the discoverer in both cases was Intelligence, Mind: hence they meet. Intelligence, Mind, Heart, is the Inner Life. The essential point is that we always are on the wing, like the eagle. The eagle is only on the earth the few moments that Nature calls. The East does not wish to have any will of its own; it will not assert itself; self-assertion is in the East a sin and an illusion. But in the West a man is despised if he stands for nothing and leaves no monument after him. The East and the West here seem to differ radically. Do they not? Yet these two activities both meet in volition! Will is the name for the core of Man: it is the Inner Life. The essential point is that we have will, because in the will bothactivity and passivity meet; both the objective and the subjective. The East has discovered the wonderful truths and the laws expressed by the words Karma and Eeincamation. In Western philosophical language, and to Philosophy, the same truths are known under the names of Necessity, Determinism, Cause and Effect; hence they are not opposites. The real opposites as discovered by the West and thrashed out so thoroughly, that there is no more life in them, than in the ideas of Sin and Forgiveness. Where the East sees only Necessity and Law, the West sees only Freedom. Different they seem, yet they are but two sides of the same problem: the Oriental is the impersonal method, the Occidental is the personal. Both dissolve in absolute truth and remain as a mystery!