Arthur Osborne - Tribulation #6

[Guest guest]

 

TRIBULATION

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Louis Hartz was one who approached me himself. A very

conspicuous young man from Holland who, for some reason

or other, had not been evacuated with the rest of the Dutch;

short, with black hair and eager eyes, he was obviously seeking.

Several times he engaged an associate of mine in long discussions

but went away unconvinced. Then I saw him walking up and

down the camp with an elderly gentleman who had at one time

been the head of a school or college and overheard a snatch of

their talk as they passed:

 

“When I was younger I read the Bible, but of course I

don’t believe it now.”

 

“Well — er — Mr.Hartz, what exactly in the Bible do you

not believe?”

 

“All of it.”

 

In view of such a brash reply, it can be imagined that I was

not disposed to explain to him at any great length, much less to

enter into an argument, when he approached me a day or two

later and announced that he wanted to know the Truth.

 

“I will tell you one truth,” I said. “Infinity minus x is a

contradiction in terms, because by the exclusion of x the first

term ceases to be infinite.”

Yes, he saw that.

“Very well, then,” I told him, “think of Infinity as God

and x as yourself. Now go and think it over and come tomorrow

and tell me what you make of it.”

That was all; no more explanation.

 

When he came back next day he told me that there

had been no need to think it over. Before even he got back

to his place in the dormitory it had flashed on his heart

that it was true.

He had been ripe for understanding and therefore a single

explanation had been enough. Moreover, it had been the right

kind of explanation that I was led to give him, because, like my

wife, he had the intuitive type of mind which cannot read a

whole chapter about what can be said in a sentence. He could

never read Guenon, but he read and re-read the Tao Te Ching.

 

However, brilliant initial understanding is no guarantee

of a smooth or rapid quest. Since Realization is quite different

from mental understanding, every preoccupation with the ego

is an obstacle to progress on it. The process must continue until

the whole nature is transmuted and all egoism dissolved.

 

The internees found various occupations during the

daytime; in the evening many of them used to sit around on

the lawn in small groups, and ours formed one group among

the others. A certain power flowed through me at that time.

Sometimes two of the group would discuss some point and

decide to ask me about it in the evening, and when evening

came I would spontaneously explain it without the question

being raised. One person who joined us was of a psychic

disposition, and the first time he sat in our evening group he

saw a vortex of blue light encircling it and rising to a spiral in

the centre. In general I had a feeling of how to respond to the

needs of the various people, what to say and do.

 

This illustrates the dangers of a false guru. There is nothing

personal in such powers. I had never consciously practised

telepathy and I myself never saw any blue lights; even if I had it

would have meant nothing; and yet on the basis of such

happenings a man can build up a reputation for himself and

start posing as a guru, and if he attributes the power to himself

it will be both to his detriment and to that of the people he is

supposed to be guiding.

 

Fortunately I was not drawn into any such aberration.

Indeed, before the camp broke up I had ceased to exert any

influence or to guide the others at all. There was a psychic crisis

in camp when one went mad and most of those who had joined

me took fright and drew back. That was what was visible

outwardly, but inner events are more fundamental, and in myself

I felt at this time a cessation of the power of guidance. I no

longer felt that I knew what to do and say; I no longer felt any

influence over the others; nor did they any longer feel it. This

did not seem to me a privation or a cause for regret, simply a

change of course, because the interest in guiding others

evaporated together with the power to do so. I vaguely felt it to

be a transfer from the spiritual influence of the order into which

I had been initiated to that of Bhagavan. More and more I felt

his presence and he seemed to dominate and to bestow grace.

Although I had only seen him in photographs, his face was more

vivid to me, more easily visualized, than any I had ever known.

I was content simply to feel his pervading graciousness without

occupying my mind at all with what I had been told about his

not being a guru.

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taken from Arthur Osborne's MY LIFE & QUEST