Frank.H. HUMPHREYS - by Arthur Osborne #4

[Guest guest]

...........

 

“Take a piece of glass, paint colours and forms on it,

and put the same into a magic lantern, turn on a little light,

and the colours and the forms painted on the glass are

reproduced on the screen. If that light were not turned on,

you would not see the colours of the slide on the screen.

“How are colours formed? By breaking up white light

with a many-sided prism. So it is with a man’s character.

It is seen when the Light of Life (God) is shining through

it, i.e. in a man’s actions. If the man is sleeping or dead,

you do not see his character. Only when the Light of Life

is animating the character and causing it to act in a

thousand different ways, in response to its contact with

this many-sided world, can you perceive a man’s character.

If white light had not been broken up and put into forms

and shapes on our magic lantern slide, we should never

have known that there was a piece of glass in front of the

light, for the light would have shone clearly through. In a

sense that white light was marred, and had some of its

clearness taken from it by having to shine through the

colours on the glass

 

“So it is with an ordinary man. His mind is like the

screen. On it shines light, dulled and changed because he

has allowed the many-sided world to stand in the way of

the Light (God) and broken it up. He sees only the effects

of the Light (God) instead of the Light (God) Himself,

and his mind reflects the effects he sees just as the screen

reflects the colours on the glass. Take away the prism and

the colours vanish, absorbed back into the white light from

whence they came. Take away the colours from the slide

and the light shines clearly through. Take away from our

sight the world of effects we see, and let us look only into

the cause, and we shall see the Light (God).

“A Master in meditation, though the eyes and ears be

open, fixes his attention so firmly on ‘That which sees’

that he neither sees nor hears, nor has any physical

consciousness at all — nor mental either, but only spiritual.

“We must take away the world, which causes our

doubts, which clouds our mind, and the light of God will

shine clearly through. How is the world taken away? When,

for example, instead of seeing a man you see and say, ‘This

is God animating a body’, which body answers, more or

less perfectly, to the directions of God, as a ship answers

more or less perfectly to her helm.

 

“What are sins? Why, for example, does a man drink

too much? Because he hates the idea of being bound —

bound by the incapacity to drink as much as he wishes. He

is striving after liberty in every sin he commits. This striving

after liberty is the first instinctive action of God in a man’s

mind. For God knows that he is not bound. Drinking too

much does not give a man liberty, but then the man does

not know that he is really seeking liberty. When he realizes

that, he sets about seeking the best way to obtain liberty.

“But the man only gains that liberty when he realizes

that he was never bound. The I, I, I’s who feel so bound are

really the illimitable Spirit. I am bound because I know

nothing that I do not sense by one of the senses. Whereas

I am all the time that which senses in every body in every

mind. These bodies and minds are only the tools of the ‘I’,

the illimitable Spirit.

“What do I want with the tools who am the tools

themselves, as the colours are the White Light?”

 

Needless to say, police service did not prove congenial

to Humphreys. Sri Bhagavan advised him to attend to his

service and meditation at the same time. For some years he

did so and then he retired. Being already a Catholic and

having understood the essential unanimity of all the religions,

he saw no need to change but returned to England, where he

entered a monastery.