PURITY OF LIFE

Romans 13:8-14

There's a little book of axioms in mental science which no Occidental student has proved the accuracy of, and which no Orientalist yet wafted to our shores has been a living demonstration of, though the book was written in India no telling how long ago, and the faithful Westerners have been working hard at it now these dozens years.

There is one purpose running through the book, and that is to urge every man to get the strings on a singular apparatus called the mind. If once he can hinder the thoughts of that unruly engine and direct them at will, he has a masterly fine time riding over this globe. It shows that actions all spring from runaway thoughts if those acts are not easily controllable. For instance, if you cannot go without eating for six weeks or so without feeling faint you have attained to little or no management of your mental machinery.

One proof of your ability to handle the reins on your mind would be to lie still as a log in the forest showing no signs of breathing long enough for the birds to build their nests and hatch their young on your head and in your clothes without their discovering you to be anything but a warm tree-trunk.

As to-day's Bible lesson on purity of life suggests outward conduct and mental responsibility, and this book of metaphysical trainings is all about the same, it is well to compare the ideas of two disciples of two such similar masters of matter and mind as Gautama and Jesus.

First, if the author of the little old book was indeed as far from the quality of Gautama as Paul was from the quality of Jesus, then of course it is no wonder that not a yogi disciple of his who lands in New York can do a single one of the marvelous acts which the bona fide Gautamaite most certainly can, and that while the yogi repeats the metaphysics, already well known in the West, he, like Paul, is taking his smoking and his meat-eating up into his heavenly assertions.

Did anybody ever read between the lines anywhere that the mind of Jesus was contemplating such themes as Paul is forever hauling into his sermons! Thus the student of Paul can almost always be easily detected by his discourses on deportment — outward behavior. He talks all the time about living the life. Then he enumerates what performances to abjure and what performances to tie to. But Jesus did indeed teach that "because I live ye shall live also," and therefore wasted no time or breath in such verses as Romans 13:13. Knowing that the high and holy one that inhabiteth eternity was his own nature from beginning to end, he knew that to know him was to live his life.

Abstain from the Appearance of Evil

Notice that the discussion of today's theme must swing the attention from the globe of matter to the globe of mind, and from mind to physics back again. But who this one is that is attending to mental gymnastics and physical gyrations this Bible section only hints at, and one must read over the whole little book of aphorisms to find if its author were more interested in the one who is neither matter nor mind, or the gymnastics of matter and mind.

The golden text is: "Abstain from all appearance of evil." The fruit of this abstinence is to be a deeper state of sanctification. "Restraint of actions will lead to restraint of thought. This is being wholly sanctified," as he says in another verse.

Verse 9, of this chapter, turns one's gaze from behavior of body to behavior of mind. It is summed up as a great future for mankind when he has the lines on those two unruly terrors, namely, his physical constitution and his thinking apparatus. (Verse 10)

The author of the book of mental science written nobody can tell when, takes up Paul's verses in a somewhat different fashion. Read Paul to the Romans, 13: 9, 10 and then notice this author's idea. It reads this way; "When abstinence from theft in mind and act is complete in the yogi, he has the power to obtain all material wealth."

Paul says that there will be no ill to our neighbor when there is no stealing from his substance by our outward draughts on him and our mental tractions. Neither one of them makes the stealing business the effect, but institutes it as a cause. Jesus and Gautama taught that drawing my substance and my sustenance from the Almighty One, I would be above the system of haulage from my neighbors, either by the activity of my fingers and speech or my mentality. Both Gautama and Jesus knew better than to set for me so severe a task as abstaining from theft.

Both taught that the high and holy one that inhabiteth eternity is able to stop my mind from its tricks of planning how to get things, but no amount of restraining and punishing my planning and arranging habits will ever stop them. After ten thousand or so years of punishing themselves the Orientals much prefer the planning and contriving dodges of the Western world in their getting of our Western dollars. The Jesus and Gautama doctrine was: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added." "Depending on me thou shalt know me completely."

You may take heed to one fact on this journey of attention to first the physical world and then the mental, and that is that the less a man is attentive to either of them the more mastery he has over them, provided that his attention is fixed on the one, whose ways are not bodily ways at their most sanctified conduct, nor mental reasonings at the height of their assertions.

Look Unto Me and Be Ye Saved

There is one forever present on all occasions whom to attend unto is life and health and power. Though we make our bed in adversity still nigh us is the Mighty One. "Look unto me and be ye saved." Though we be inclined, to the pleasures and cruelties of the senses of the flesh, still forever nigh us is the Mighty One. "Look unto me and be ye saved." Though the angers and loves
and stealings and envies of an unruly set of thoughts are our portion, to the extent of a Nero, a Claudius, or a Loyola of Spain, still, never failing, never fainting, never changing, the One of whom Jesus and Gautama spoke is near. "Look unto me and be ye saved."

The Greeks had a name for this ever accompanying one. They called it the Self. Their highest motto was: "Know Thyself". The Persians had a name for this eternal comrade. They called it the "Light". They proclaimed that to watch that shining light would be to flee as a bird from the snares of human existence. Nehemiah, the Hebrew prophet, called the ever-present comrade of his life his "Self". John, the Hebrew lover of Jesus, called the eternal ally the "Light". "I consulted with myself," said Nehemiah. "There is a light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world," said John.

Paul says in verse 12: "Let us put on the whole armor of light." Then he tells us how to behave in order to get on that armor. He can never get on that armor by behavior though he should learn to hold his breath for a week at a stretch and abstain from calling names for a lifetime.

He says in verse 14, "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof." Here he calls the light by the name of one man who made so much provision for his flesh, judged from the flesh and mind trainers' standards that they called him a glutton and a wine- bibber, yet it injured not his Majesty, nor hindered his miracles.

The whole that a man is, in the greatness of his character or the freedom of his life, is measured by what he is looking at. People are astounded at the phenomenon of a concourse of intelligent men and women passing over and ignoring the sliding panels and ceiling strings with which a Blavatsky jerked down Koot Hoomi and Morya missives from the mystic plaster of a common house, but pouncing with merciless examinations upon the few well-done little imitations of the same practiced by a judge.

No System Majestic Enough to Watch

The secret lies in the direction of their attentions. One's gaze is on the mighty mysteries that hang over the heads of all men, and the other's is lifted no higher than the applause of humanity. It has been the amazement of multitudes that one who instituted a system of healing whereby name and fame and money were more than piled up was not ever cured by the system, and yet whoever else should attempt to promulgate it, having the same uncured bodily state, would be jailed for a fraud. The secret lies in the direction of their attentions. One has eyes set on the forces that swing the planets and men in their censers, while the others are set on the system itself.

No system is majestic enough to watch. The stars that wheel in solemn distance to the songs of beings out of the reach of imagination are not high enough to watch. The sparkling, reasonings of a Plato are not safety enough to keep me from the clutches of a body that tempts my attentions, the terrors of a mind that cannot cope with the nineteenth century's Grand Rapids. Paul, with his forcing processes for thoughts and senses, has never yet saved a man from the stake in the days of stakes, and from the shameful ignominy in the days of competitive examinations.

The author of the aphorisms shall find his most faithful devotees too worn and discouraged to proceed; the lofty speculations to which the, people have been turning, for lo these many years are not any of them the one unto whom the gaze must turn that the body shall move in its safe beauty, unspoiled by passions and untouchable by appetites. They are not the high and holy One inhabiting eternity, whose smile on mind sets it to tunes of loving kindness caught from the land of the unexiled soul.

Let who will reason of life, light, and immortality strain the supple muscles of his great mind till he can trace the stars beyond Orion. As for me, I watch my God. Let who will starve and beat and hate and strive with his body, giving it the one precious pearl of priceless count, namely, his attention. I shall heed the counsels of one who stepped out of the grave and shone on the night of darkening asceticism and blackening philosophy with the splendor of his watch of the Eternal God. "What I say unto you I say unto all, watch."

Something Greater Than Rebuke

If Blavatsky watches the mysteries she shall laugh as free greatness in the faces of criticism. What she hath her eye on is greater than rebukes. But the occult mysteries are not the absolute and unchangeable ones upon which Jesus was looking when the tomb gave him up and the morning of time broke on man.

The reasoner, with shining descriptions of the all-good one, with life and not death in his dews, shall be greater and freer than the disputers who judge by sight of evil and death, but follow thou no system of thinking. The everlasting glory that walketh beside thee is not a system of thinking. Give the one priceless treasure thou carriest with thee, which is thy attention only, to the Thinkless One. So shall thy mind be glorious, unfailing wonder, full of stupendous powers, but thou didst not train it.

So shall thy body step forth in its beauty, the radiant sign of the last of pain, but thou didst not train it, for no man hath ever yet lived with any possible approachment to training power over his body. As long as Paul is understood as proclaiming a method which any man living can carry out, just so long will we see the poorhouse face the churchman indissoluble adjunct, and the jail stare the college in the eye — the undefeatable companion thereof.

The senses shall master thee long as thou lookest their way, and themes such as Paul often had on his lips must perforce be thine also. But Jesus Looked Godward, and his senses glowed till Revelation wrote them down as the bright and morning star pure with adorable divinity.

Words Which Shall Not Pass Away

Thy thoughts shall leap against thy happiness so long as thou lookest their way, and thou shalt weep over mistakes and misfortunes with the little sorrowful Dalai Lama till the sun sets on thy human destiny a withered, half-­demented old sage. But Jesus Christ looked Godward, and though heaven and earth pass away his words shall not pass away, and the enchantment of his unconquerable smile shall endure forever.

It makes no difference from what part of this round earth they come with their postures and breaths and salts and sands and tiltings and fastings, the flesh
profiteth nothing saith the man who understood them all for what they are worth. It makes no difference from what part of the round earth they come with their mutterings and formulas and memorizings and high languages and restraints of language and concentrations of mind — take no thought saith that one who understood them all for what they are worth. "Watch." Then shall mind break forth as the morning and thine health shall spring forth speedily. Then shall the new language spring to the lips of the nations. Then shall the Elohim sing on the hills of the ocean. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand," shouted Paul. Peering through the mists of nineteen hundred years of vain attempts at finding the Savior and Lover, through his foolish system, he caught the foregleam of a day when the world should hurl systems and philosophers and religions to one side, wide awake enough now to see that under their yokes we might go on and on and on in the silly belief that they would land us somewhere, but that, free from their yokes, we know that they have constituted the darkness of time. Light has come by turning to face One that never knew them. With one foot on the surging sea of mind, and one foot on the rolling lands of sense, the angel of this instant crieth that time shall be no more. There is no more attention to be given to the mind. One careth. Attend to that One. There is no more training of the life. Because I live, ye shall live."

Bible Interpertations Series 15 Lesson 12
Emma Curtis Hopkins
Inter-Ocean Newspaper March 24, 1895  
Her Bible lessons appeared in the Chicago Inter-Ocean (newspaper) from 1890 through 1898.
WOW, I update a previous blog mentioning Blavatsky and this comes through by email and Hopkins mentioned Blavatsky.