CHAPTER XIV.

PURITY
Purity is a word that signifies much in occultism. We encounter it often, for there can be no spiritual progress that does not reckon with it. A striv- ing after purity is one of the absolute essentials to higher development. There can be no real spiritual illumination without it, no matter what other quali- fications may be possessed.
The essential difference between a spiritual person and the man of the world is that the latter lives largely in his physical senses. At a low point in evolution — the savage state — he lives altogether in the physical senses. He is completely dominated by physical de- sires, passions and emotions. It is the triumph of matter. As evolution goes
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forward, as experience is multiplied by successive incarnations, the mentality asserts itself and finally becomes the center in which he lives, mental pleas- ures gradually outweighing the physi- cal. Ultimately spiritual joys will rise triumphant over both; but for a long period the man is slowly rising from one stage to the other, with the new and higher dawning in him while the old and lower still hold him firmly. When he comes into a realization of the fact that he can work intelligently with nature in hastening his own evo- lution, and turns his attention to a defi- nite method of doing it, he enters into a contest with his lower nature, the duration of which is dependent upon his earnestness no less than upon his will power.
At the point where the aspirant for higher things awakes to the fact that the old life of sensation is an undesir- able slavery, realizes dimly that some-
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thing better lies above and beyond it, and resolves to attain it, he is likely to be surprised at the strength of the old fetters which hold him back. There are certain appetites that he would gladly be rid of but they assert them- selves at intervals with astonishing vigor. There are passions he thought dead which he finds were only sleep- ing. There are impulses he believed were under control but they flash out without the slightest warning and throw him off his balance. There are certain classes of undesirable thoughts that he hoped to have done with for- ever but they leap into his mind in spite of him.
Why is it that with the perfectly pure motive of rising above the lower nature, with the sincere desire for a loftier life, and with an earnest effort to achieve it, we do not promptly suc- ceed ? When we intellectually compre- hend that the change is necessary to
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our happiness, and most devoutly de- sire its consummation, why is a pro- longed struggle necessary to accomplish it? Because the difficulty is not in our- selves at all but in the bodies we live in. The self has resolved upon the higher life. The ego has succeeded in impressing the waking consciousness — in arousing a longing to escape from the thraldom of the lower nature. But the bodies are to be reckoned with and they cannot be changed in a day. They are the seat of what is commonly called "sin," — the fortress of the lower na-^ ture; and that fortress cannot be car- ried by assault. It can be taken only by siege.
The progress of purification is a process of changing the matter that composes the physical body and its in- visible counterparts, as actually and lit- erally as one would reconstruct a house, making it into a totally different habi- tation. The verv desire to attain the
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higher life begins the reconstruction. But just as one could not instantly raze his house and as instantly rebuild it, but could effect any desired change by taking the necessary time, so any change that we are capable of imagin- ing can be made in ourselves within a reasonable period. We cannot unbuild in a few days what we have been so long in building. Our battle is against the automatism that we have created. The matter of the astral body has long been accustomed to act in a certain way under certain circumstances and it continues to do it, for a time, in spite of all our genuine desires to the con- trary. If a man has long given way to great anger on slight provocation, and resolves to do so no more, his good resolution will help a little toward his some-time self-mastery; but when the good resolution is followed by sudden and unexpected provocation the astral body responds before he is aware what
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is happening. So, too, with the mental body. However much he may desire to be pure in mind an impure thought that has often been harbored in the past will flash in when some connecting thought or old association opens up the way. Of course the astral and mental bodies work together, desire and thought being inextricably mingled and interwoven, and the purification of both goes forward together.
While the purification of the lower nature is not an instantaneous process and is likely to be attended with some temporary failures in the efforts to live up to one's ideal, the final triumph is certain if there is reasonable persist- ence and earnestness, together with some knowledge of how to proceed. There should be no feeling of an ef- fort to escape from something unde- sirable and degrading. The mind should not be turned in that direction at all. It should be kept busy in the
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opposite direction — should be occupied with pure and lofty thinking. There should be no mental effort to crush out the old order of things. Let it be crowded out by thoughts of the op- posite nature. To set the mind deter- minedly against a certain objectionable thing is only to give that thing new vitality and invite it to battle. Non- resistance has its value here as else- where. "Let sleeping dogs lie."
Another helpful thing to remember is that association and environment are important factors. Suppose a man is trying to overcome a certain thing — the desire for liquor or tobacco, or meat; and what is true of these will apply to all other desires of the lower nature. He may escape them for a time and almost believe that they are dead when some old association will arouse them again. Environment is a thing to be taken into account. Until one has grown strong enough to touch
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elbows with old temptations and re- main absolutely unmoved it is wise to keep as far from them as possible. A man who is fighting the drink habit need not increase his difficulties by liv- ing next door to a bar. One who is trying to purify the mind can keep away from certain classes of much ad- vertised plays in which the public de- sire for the salacious is gratified under the mask of dramatic art of a high order. It is remarkable what vitality the desires of the lower nature have, how tenaciously they cling and how subtly they masquerade in attractive disguises. Art is invoked to refine them and wit is used to adorn them and keep them alive in clever song and apt story.
Every person has his varying moods. There are times when we feel spiritu- ally very strong and easily dominate the lower nature. But there are other times when materiality rises against
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us in its might and we feel the very near danger of losing our balance and being swept from our footing in the tide of reaction. In such moments of peril a definite course of action is use- ful. The Christian prays, which draws his mind away from lower things to the higher. The occultist can think steadily of the Masters of Compassion, even of the Christ, all of whom he re- gards as embodying all that is pure and exalted. He can remind himself of the too-often forgotten fact that his efforts are known and observed and that he does not strive after purity unaided.
To succeed well in dominating the lower nature the danger of permitting the mind to turn for even a moment to impure thoughts and things should be well understood. Any sort of dallying is fatal and safety lies only in turning the mind instantly in the other direc- tion when the old thoughts and im-
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pulses crowd upon us. This is repeat- edly emphasized in such invaluable oc- cult works as The Voice of the Silence.
"Strive with thy thoughts unclean before they overpower thee. * * Beware, disci- ple, suffer not e'en though it be their shadow to approach."
And again:
' ' One single thought about the past that thou hast left behind will drag thee down, and thou wilt have to start the climb anew."
To be pure is to be strong. Purity and spiritual strength are inseparable. There can be no real strength without purity; not even mental strength. In proportion that the lower nature domi- nates a man's life he is both physically and mentally weak, as well as morally weak. The physical, mental and moral are so inextricably interwoven that each necessarily reacts upon the others. None of them can stand alone because they are really a blended whole, gain-
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ing or losing together. There must be purity and strength for all or for none. Purity, then, is literally the way to strength, to power, to illumination and to immortality.