Prefatory - 'The Wisdom of the Overself' (Part 2)

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

In Dr. Paul Brunton's book of 'The Wisdom of the Overself', he said that:

 

(p.12) It may well be that these pages will appeal only to those who have the

perseverance to get over their first fright at unfamiliar forms of thought and

who are prepared to force their way, however slowly, through a subtle metaphysic

to the subtler truth about this God-dreamed universe which it seeks to express.

(p.13) For the intellectual study of the way to what transcends intellectual

experience cannot be an easy activity. But if any cannot comprehend this

teaching in all its completeness, let not this fact depress them. Its

profundities and difficulties exist and are admitted but its surfaces and

simplicities also exist and are within their grasp. Let them take the latter

therefore and leave the rest unworriedly for future personal growth, whether it

be within the present incarnation or a later one. Even their faith and interest

will alone suffice to bear good fruit. And even those who feel they have neither

the external conditions nor the internal inclination to undertake such a quest

may feel heartened merely to know that the Overself 'is', that life is

significant, that the world makes a rational whole and that righteous conduct is

worth while.

 

The Wisdom of the Overself, Chapter 1, p.12-13.

 

 

Here now, is Part 2.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

Prefatory - 'The Wisdom of the Overself' (Part 2)

 

(p.13) It is now needful to explain that I went to great pains to explore the

most recondite [hidden/obscure] sources in quest of the material which has

partly gone into the making of this book, and that in the course of this

exploration the hidden teaching was discovered not in a perfectly unified system

but in scores of broken fragments which have been scattered in different hands

amongst Asia's present-day cultural inheritors--not a few of them being

non-Indian. And although the first volume mentions that the texts were

Sanskrit--because this also was at one time the sacred language of Eastern

Turkestan, Tibet and China--it must not be thought that they all were

necessarily Indian. Moreover not every text has survived to this day in its

original language but quite a number of the most important now exist only in

Tokhari, Chinese and Tibetan translations for example. Their disappearance from

India would alone, were this the sole reason, suffice to explain why uninitiated

Indian critics find certain features of this teaching unfamiliar and unorthodox.

 

Hundreds of texts were examined in the effort to trace and collate basic ideas.

The conflict of venerable and respected authorities over many momentous points

shrouded them in grey shadow but opened my eyes to the inescapable need of

disentangling myself from all authority whatsoever. This was a course contrary

to Asiatic traditions and notions but it could not be avoided if I were to

remain faithful to the ideal which had been glimpsed.

 

(p.14) If therefore I began these studies with Indian texts I was compelled to

abandon my original premise that the full and pure teaching could be found in

them alone and had to widen my research until it again became an all-Asiatic

one. The Ariadne's thread which finally led me through this metaphysical maze

was indeed placed in my hands whilst visiting Cambodian China where I

encountered amid the deserted shrines of majestic Angkor another visitor in the

person of an Asiatic philosopher. From him I received an unforgettable personal

esoteric instruction whose final vindication unfortunately had to wait a little

longer and whose inspiring demonstration of the value of a human guide to make a

clearing through this thick jungle of obscurity and mystery, was memorable.

 

All this is but a preamble to the statement that with these volumes a doctrine

is presented which in all essential principles is not a local Indian tradition

but an all-Asiatic one. According to the testimony of this philosopher who

personally initiated me into the Yaka-kulgan (Mongolian) metaphysical school,

which studies a particular phase of this doctrine, so far as India is concerned

the teaching spread there from its original home in Central Asia. But dead

history does not lie in my domain and this point need not detain us.

 

It would have been much easier to emulate a portentous [impressive] academic

parrot and merely write down what other men had written or said as it would have

been more self-flattering to parade the breadth of my learning by peppering both

volumes with a thousand Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese quotations, names or

words. But life to-day points a challenging sword at us. I was too sensitive to

the iconoclastic spirit of our age, [i.e., the opposition to

image-worship/cherished errors/superstitions] too enamoured of the austere

figure of truth rather than of her discarded robes, too troubled by what I had

physically seen and personally experienced in this world-shaking epoch to be

satisfied with anything less than a fresh living reconstruction.

 

For these reasons there was no hesitation in making use of sources unknown to

antiquity just as there was none in recasting everything learned into a form

shaped by the scientific experience and metaphysical knowledge of the West.

(p.15) Not that I--who claim no higher status than that of a blundering

student--arrogantly sought to improve on the ancient teaching, for its basic

essentials are indeed impregnable and will remain untouched for all time, but

that I sought both to improve on its contemporary presentation and to make a

human application of what often seems to Western view an inhuman metaphysics.

Despite our incursions into celestial realms, we still want--and want

rightly--to remain incorrigibly human. Hence although this book has been written

in an intellectualistic form to meet the requirements of our time, whoever

believes it to be inspired by purely logical concepts alone or to be merely a

modernized re-interpretation of mildewed ancient documents and ant-eaten

palm-leaf texts, will be greatly in error. For the encouragement of aspirants

let it be categorically noted that several of its statements are the outcome not

only of such re-interpretation but also of present-day living experience.

 

Were these the sole reasons they would nevertheless alone have justified

heretical innovations, for that which actuates these pages is the simple desire

to help others over life's stiles to the fulfilment of its higher purpose. And

to implement this more effectively I have sought, creatively instead of

imitatively, to help a widely-scattered group born in this epoch work out its

own inner understanding of existence and display its own cultural vitality. The

need to-day is not old dogmas but new dynamisms. Our century must speak for

itself. We must let the past instruct us, not enslave us. In such a way alone

can these difficult doctrines be made as clear to modern man's mind as the water

of a Swiss lake is to his eye. Therefore this teaching will henceforth be

offered on its own merits, not on the value of any tradition which may lie

behind it, and offered to free minds, not to shackled ones.

 

Let it finally suffice therefore to say that in the effort to provide these

ideas with a systematic form and scientific presentation, in the desire to help

students by progressively deducing one truth from another in an orderly and

consistent manner, in the aspiration to couch these doctrines in a medium

understandable by living contemporaries and in the need to ground the whole on

verifiable facts rather than on dictated dogmas, I have had veritably [i.e.,

with truthfulness, faithfulness, genuineness and sincerity] to reconstruct this

aged pyramid of external revelation along modern lines from base to apex. That

which is here presented is a fresh reincarnation and not a revivified corpse.

 

The Wisdom of the Overself, Chapter 1, p. 13-15

Dr. Paul Brunton

Samuel Weiser, Inc., York Beach, Maine

ISBN 0-87728-591-8

Library of Congress Catalog No. 83-60833