CHAPTER X

THE PATHWAY OF LOVE

Love is the Great Reality.

Everything else in this world of Experience is either tributary to love or it is an unsatisfying subst.i.tute for love; or a counterfeit of love. Love is the one cohesive, unifying, constructive force, and it is at the same time the only liberating force.

Hatred, as exemplified in warfare, may sometimes appear to free a people from the rule of a tyrant, but unless love be at the root of the "casus belli," other and more direful disasters will follow in the wake of seeming victory.

There is an erroneous idea, quite general among Christian people, that Death frees the spirit from the bonds that hold it to the mortal and the incomplete. Death only drops off the garment of the flesh; there are innumeral sheathings yet to be shed, before the soul grows the wings with which to soar to the celestial realms, where Love reigns supreme.

Love is the only power on earth or in the spheres, that can liberate us either from our own prejudices and hatreds and fears; or from the limitations and attractions of the animal-man.

Love is, indeed, the Alpha and Omega of Life. "There is no other G.o.d but Thee," has been the cry of every race on this globe, apostrophizing the unrecognized little baby-G.o.d, personified and presented to the race-mind as Horus; or as Krishna, or as Christ; but always it is Love, the Invisible, the Beautiful One, who is adored.

Ingersoll with his wonderful gift of word-painting, and inspired by that great love of humanity which characterized him, has said:

"Love is the only bow on life's dark cloud. It is the morning and evening star. It shines on the babe and sheds its radiance on the tomb. It is the mother of art; inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart; builder of every home; kindler of every fire on the hearth; it was the first dress of immortality. It fills the world with melody, for music is the voice of love. Love is the magician, the enchanter that changes worthless things to joy and makes right royal queens and kings of common clay.

It is the perfume of that wonderful flower, the heart, and without that sacred pa.s.sion that divine swoon, we are less than beasts, but with it--earth is Heaven and we are G.o.ds."

It would be superfluous to state here, that Love has ever been recognized as the supreme prize, lacking which all other gifts of life are worthless.

It is admitted that Love is almost the only thing in this age of commercial supremacy which can not be bought. Though it may be bartered for.

Although it be unreservedly admitted that Love is the all-powerful and magic solvent which trans.m.u.tes all baser emotions into the higher, the general inference will be drawn that this type of love is not s.e.xual. It will be termed parental; humanitarian, self-sacrificing, or altruistic love, and the point may be taken that if humanity had developed nothing higher than the love which is manifested in the s.e.x instinct, the world would be a sorry one indeed, since s.e.xual love, as we have witnessed its ascent from protoplasm to man, has been, in most instances, a blind urge toward personal gratification, not more lofty than the need of supplying the craving for food. This is quite true of animals, and of the lower types of animal-man; not necessarily the earliest types of men, but the lowest types, which we still have with us but happily in decreasing numbers.

But even among animals we find evidences of something vague, indefinite, but insistent which leads the animal to exhibit what we term a tendency toward _selection_; and in the animal also, through the exigencies of s.e.xual love, we find parental love, and here again we note a peculiarity which ascends also into the family life of humans, namely, that in some instances what we have called the maternal love, the gentle, care-taking, guarding and protecting love, is demonstrated by the male. This is less common with the animals than with Man, but it is sometimes found and proves the existence of the evolutionary trend toward balance in the individual, as well as in the family.

If maternal love were confined strictly to the female parent, and the procreative instinct were the legitimate inheritance of the male only, we could never hope for a perfect s.e.xual union, for the very cogent reason that the love of the male would never equal that of the female, since our capacity grows by becoming diffused.

As the world stands today, parental love takes a higher place in the life of the family, and of the nation and of the race (the family on a larger scale), than does love of husband or wife; and over and above even parental love we have been accustomed to place the love of G.o.d.

Now we know that there are many who claim that their love of this abstract G.o.d supercedes that of love for their family, but we may tacitly agree to take this statement as either an admission of fear of the Unknown or the realization that there are heights and depths of the love-principle which they have not yet penetrated, something to which the spirit soars. They intuitively recognize that there is some perfected state to which we aspire, else human love would never flower into its full possibilities.

And so when we declare that we love G.o.d above all other loves; more than wife or husband; children or parents; we are but admitting that we realize in our interior nature that we have not yet loved any _human being_ with as great a love as we are capable of.

If any one holds the mistaken idea--and it is one that is very generally held--that the perfect s.e.x union can be attained by no finer phase of emotion than that expressed in procreation; and that in order to develop the highest quality of s.e.x-love, he must eschew all other phases of manifestation, and concentrate the forces of his being in the direction of s.e.xual expression, he will meet with dire defeat.

The laws of the cosmos cannot be broken. We are constantly confronted with the admonition, the child of Fear, to "be careful not to break the laws of G.o.d." We need not worry at all about the laws of G.o.d, whether we call these Cosmic Law, or Nature, or Divine Providence or something else. Our concern is with ourselves. Neither need we worry whether our neighbor obeys the moral code as we see it. So long as he does not refuse to us our right to follow our own ideals, we may permit him the same liberty.

G.o.d, as manifested in the cosmic law of trans.m.u.tation, will take care of Him-Her-Self. Morality can not be extinguished. Love cannot be killed by men. We can only hurt ourselves in trying.

Love is neither fickle, capricious nor sly, notwithstanding tomes of seeming evidence to the contrary. Love is the most perfect mathematician in the universe. With whatsoever measure a man or a woman metes out love, with that same measure it is returned. Neither is Love blind. Love is depicted thus, because he is not concerned with appearances, but with realities. He is not gazing without, but within.

He is doing his best, the poor little neglected Love-G.o.d, with the material at hand since he must fulfill the law of his being. He seeks to unite lovers in their interior nature, but as each of the would-be happy pair is bent on gazing without, instead of within, he is handicapped. And when unhappiness follows, they blame the blindness of Love, instead of realizing that He is depicted with a bandage over His eyes, to indicate that Love is an interior quality. So too, the Egyptian G.o.d Horus, the G.o.d of Love, was depicted with his finger on his lips, to typify the truth that true love is not noisy, bl.u.s.tering, jealous, burning, ranting, protesting. He is silent; soft; melting; blissful; magnetic; _uniting_.

Our noisy civilization, seeking happiness in Things, mistakes protestations and appearances for realities, and so modern marriages are consummated on this basis, and the caricaturists have depicted Cupid as having exchanged his love-darts for dollars, but this is a slander on the little G.o.d who wouldn't know a dollar if he could see one. "It is not true that one knows what one sees; one sees what one knows," declared a clever Frenchman, and as the average modern bride and bridegroom are forced, or think they are, by modern standards of living, to know dollars better than they know Love, their perverted vision sees Cupid's arrows tipped with the dollar mark. But even the dollar mark spells US, united, and if they are indeed truly united in love, wealth untold is theirs, and if they are not thus united then indeed are they poor in happiness, which is the only real poverty.

But even in the very failure to attain happiness in things, married couples have learned or they are learning, that there is an interior nature which must be considered if marital happiness is expected.

In all too many instances it may take many experiences and the road to the heights may for a time be lost but let us remember that "Love never faileth."

It has been said that "love makes G.o.ds of men," and we have taken this phrase as a charming bit of hyperbole, whereas it is a literal truth, because when two individual souls have rounded and balanced their natures by means of love, they come together in an eternal union, and are immortal; "in their flesh they have seen G.o.d," and the pilgrimage is ended.

There is a phrase current at the present day, belonging to slang, that universal language of the ma.s.ses, "the Volapuk of the melting-pot." It comes to us simultaneously with the affinity-wave and the soul-mate quest; and it is both pertinent and timely, although by no means always wisely applied. It is the expression "I have found my seek-no-farther; he (or she) is the Real Thing."

Life is a succession of experiences in the quest of immortality.

Immortality would be a curse instead of a blessing if attained alone.

Even the attainment of so unworthy an ambition as riches is a mockery if unshared by others. Fame is like a ruined and deserted castle to the one who has achieved it, unless there be the one other to share it. Even the philosopher, the philanthropist, the humanitarian, he whose love nature is supposed to find satisfaction in making others happy--can not realize the completeness and fullness of joy, unless there is the one mate with whom he may share his altruistic work; or lacking this, he looks to the Life Beyond for the completeness which he does not find here.

Renan says: "One reason why religion remains on such a material plane for many is because they have never known a great and vitalizing love; a love where intellect, spirit and s.e.x finds its perfect mate."

Verily, love is the only vitalizing power in the universe; and when denied the interior union which should exist between a conjoining pair, Love does the best He can, and infuses into the relationship as much of the divine nectar as they will accept.

_There is no impure love._ I repeat: There is no impure love. The impurity is in the mortal mind of man, obstructing his vision until he fails to see the purity of that which fain would lift him from the Slough of Despond to the Heights of Bliss.

If love be always pure, if it be always the uplifting, unifying, constructive power of the universe, what becomes of the apparent fact that men have sinned for love of woman; that for love of man, women have lost their self-respect, their hope of Heaven; and have sunk to depths below that of the brute creation?

What becomes of the all too many instances where human nature appears to love vice; to be under the spell, as it were of a pa.s.sionate love for all that is ign.o.ble and defiling? How, then, can we say that love is always pure when it leads to such disaster?

Love never leads to disaster, though love may follow wheresoever the erring mind of man leads, and thus Love is all too frequently dragged from his true place of exaltation, and brought into the arena of human conflict. Love is no fighter; He never opposes; He only concurs; He unites if there is anything with which he can establish an affinity of union.

Egoism is the arch-enemy of love, selfishness is the manifestation of egoism. Selfishness seeks to possess; it is selfishness that causes a man to commit crime, in order that he may bedeck the woman he loves with jewels and fine raiment. He is buying her bodily presence with the baubles which he vainly believes will bind her to him; and he must be taught the lesson of the Yoga sutras "not this way; not this way;"

and the more worthy he is of redemption, the more certainly will he be caught in the trap of his own making, lest he really perish; whereas by seeming defeat, outward defeat, he may learn the true path of inwardness. Certainly Love is the only guide to whom he may safely trust his redemption.

If a woman really sinks into the depths of degradation through what appears to be love, it is because selfishness and vanity have temporarily supplanted Love. But there is another side to the question. Society has very erroneous ideas of success and failure; and in looking at these opposite ends of the same pole, Society may be standing on it's head.

A story ill.u.s.trative of this inverted view of success is worth repeating.

A young Englishman of aristocratic family, tired of the inanities of social life, and denied the privilege of entering the commercial world, emigrated to the South Seas. It was reported at home that he had married a native Samoan woman and was living the simple life of the Islanders. English society, when his name was mentioned at all, spoke of him with hushed voices and with a "what a pity y' know"

manner as of one who had sunk below the depths of ordinary failure.

Subsequently a friend visited Samoa and found the young man enjoying life and evidently supremely content. In the course of conversation the visitor chanced to speak of a mutual friend who had been rather wild in the days when they both knew him, and thinking to impart agreeable news to the exile, the visitor eagerly a.s.sured him that "Sir Arthur is respectably married and settled down now" whereupon the self-const.i.tuted exile commiseratingly responded with: "what a pity; and he was such a decent sort, too." So we may see that there is much in the point of view.

Happiness is the final test of success or failure; and we may trust this test, because no one can be happy in any other than the progressive, upward-trending life. Dissipation has never been a satisfactory subst.i.tute for happiness. Wealth is valueless to the possessor if it shuts out love; and if love be present, wealth holds but an inconsequential place.

However it be, the pathway of Love is long; and between the force of attraction which unites two atoms in chemical affinity, and the union of two perfected human beings, in whom Love and Wisdom are balanced, there are many degrees of the manifestation of Love, and the question inevitably arises "what shall we do with those marriages that are not yet perfect?"

If, as here premised, there is in the entire universe but one mate for each man and each woman; and if the union of perfect mates is the only truly spiritual union; if this union precludes the possibility of "temptation" in any other direction, what is to be done with all the marriages which we know to be imperfect; wherein it is evident that soul-union is not present? Are they immoral, and are they to be abandoned? And is marital infidelity in such instances immoral?

It is. Infidelity is always immoral, because all deceit and deception and dishonesty are immoral.

Let us see what const.i.tutes infidelity, irrespective of marriage.

Infidelity is to be unfaithful to a trust imposed; to betray a confidence; to break a promise. This is the abstract definition and it is the only definition that will withstand a.n.a.lysis, whether applied to the marriage vows or to other promises and pledges.

Obviously the answer to this question, then, is to either not impose upon oneself or upon another "vows"; or, if we do so impose, not to break them; but if vows are not to be broken, they may, thank Heaven, be dissolved.

And surely the marriage ceremony of the future will not impose vows or promises, because intelligent men and women must rise superior to the necessity for bonds and promises. A marriage ceremony is, even at its very highest, when the contracting persons are spiritually mated, nothing more than announcement to the society of which they are members, of the fact of their mutual agreement to live outwardly, as well as inwardly, in s.e.xual union.