Arthur Osborne - Tribulation #5

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TRIBULATION

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One of the things that struck me most powerfully was

their fair-mindedness. I do not refer only to their acceptance

of myself as soon as I was prepared to be accepted (though

that might well be called magnanimous); but throughout the

years of internment it happened a number of times that one

person or another would make himself unpopular, and in every

case I found that as soon as the cause of disapproval was

removed, the camp as a whole spontaneously recognized the

fact and, so to speak, welcomed him back into its fellowship.

Of course, there were quarrels; it was a very average community

and I do not want to make it appear in any way ideal. Some

of the women took advantage of being in a minority; also

there was tension among the camp politicians who aspired to

get elected to the committee and run things; but on the whole

there was a good spirit.

 

Another thing that struck me was the prevailing

dissatisfaction with life — and I do not mean conditions in

camp but with life itself, as it had been outside before they were

affected by the war. And these people were not misfits or failures.

Most of them were at least averagely successful, with a good

job, a wife and family, better pay than they would have received

at home in England, comfortable house and servants, and a full

social life; yet it was surprising how many would confide that

life held no meaning for them and that, while outside, they had

drunk heavily in order to forget and not to think.

It is dissatisfaction with the false that leads a man to seek

the true. When asked why one should seek Self-realization,

Bhagavan has been known to answer: “Who asked you to? If

you are satisfied with your present life, stay as you are. But

many people become dissatisfied, and when you realize the Self

your discontent will vanish.”

 

There were also more specific signs of discontent — three

broken marriages, four cases of madness, one suicide. A very

sociable, good-hearted man, a complete extrovert one would

have said, borrowed Paul Brunton’s A Search in Secret India

from me in order to read about the Maharshi. On giving it

back, he said: “Yes, well, when one reads about something like

Ramana Maharshi one either does nothing about it — or else…”

He seemed so unlikely to do anything about it that I said no

more to him, nor he to me; but soon after the camp broke up,

at the end of the war, I heard that he had committed suicide.

The most dynamic sign of discontent was that as many as

seven of the internees joined me, pledging their lives to the

quest, apart from a penumbra of others who sympathised without

deciding to take the plunge.

 

However, before that happened I passed through a lengthy

period of dryness and tribulation, a dark night of the soul when

I knew the taste of tears, even though with no outer weeping. It

no longer seemed a quest that I was making but a vast impersonal

process that was taking place, hammering the living being into

shape, and with no anaesthetic. Suffering seemed the very essence

of life and ‘pain-bearer’ the definition of man. I was tempted to

despond, to regard God as a tyrant Who torments His creatures.

There seemed no light, no grace, and no hope of progress;

and yet to go back, to renounce the quest, was even more

impossible; in fact the very idea never arose. I just clung on

grimly, suffering. The outer conditions of life accorded well

with the inner misery but did not cause it, any more than outer

conditions cause the unspeakable bliss when grace floods the

heart. Indeed, before I left the camp I was to know periods of

some grace also, though not at it’s fullest. There was a lot in me

that had to be burnt out, and this period of savage pain was

largely due to the cauterisation. Even at the time I knew this,

but that did not make me like it.

 

I did not proselytise. The love of argument was one of the

things that had been burnt out of me. I preferred to avoid it as

far as possible. I still do. Some approached me themselves; some

persuaded each other. This, of course, was proselytism, even

though I did not do it myself. Proselytism cannot always be

condemned, although it is better to be chary of it. Spiritual

understanding places an obligation on a man, and if he has not

the endurance and integrity to take this up he is more culpable

than before. That is the point of Christ’s saying that it was not a

sin to be in darkness when there was no light but only to cling

to the darkness when light was made available. Therefore the

reckless proselytiser may be doing a disservice to those to whom

he speaks. That is why initiatic bodies have normally kept their

teaching secret, and why Christ warned against casting pearls

before swine. Incidentally, this is one of those sayings of Christ’s

which can have no possible meaning to those who have reduced

Christianity to an exoteric shell. What are the pearls and who

the swine? And what is there they need fear to reveal? All that

they know they proclaim endlessly to whoever will listen. On

the other hand, what wonder if those who seek the pearls of

wisdom and are given only the exoteric shell find the religion

they are taught unsatisfying?

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taken from Arthur Osborne's MY LIFE & QUEST