the super man

8/8/2019 The Super Man

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THE BOOK WASDRENCHED


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OU 160522 >m


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OSMANIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARYGall No. t .c

This book should be returned on or before the datelast marked belo\v.


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Ideal and Progress : No. 2.ESSAYS

THE SUPERMAN

BYSRI AUROBINDO GHOSE

ARYA PUBLISHING HOUSE2/10, Wellington Street, Calcutta.


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Published bySARAT CHANDRA GUHA, B.A.

2/10, Wellington Street, Calcutta.

2ND EDITION, 3000 COPIES.(Revised by the Author.)

Printed by S. C. MAJUMDAR,SRI GOURANGA PRESS,

7///, Mirzapur Street, Calcutta.


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THE SUPERMAN1 he ideal of the Superman has been brought

recently into much notice, some not very fruitfuldiscussion and a good deal of obloquy. It is aptto be resented by average humanity because menare told or have a lurking consciousness that hereis a claim of the few to ascend to heights ofwhich the many are not capable, to concentratemoral and spiritual privileges and enjoy a domi-nation, powers and immunities hurtful to adiffused dignity and freedom in mankind. Soconsidered, supermanhood is nothing more im-portant than a deification of the rare or solitaryego that has out-topped others in the force of ourcommon human qualities. But this presentationis narrow and a travesty. The gospel of truesupermanhood gives us a generous ideal for theprogressive human race and should not be turnedinto an arrogant claim for a class or individuals.It is a call to man to do what no species hasyet done or aspired to do in terrestrial history,evolve itself consciously into the next superior


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[ 2 ]type already half foreseen by the continual cyclicdevelopment of the world-idea in Nature's fruit-ful musings. And when we so envisage it, thisconception ranks surely as one of the most poteuAseeds that can be cast by thought into the soilof our human growth.

Nietzsche first cast it, the mystic of Will-worship, the troubled, profound, half-luminousHellenising Slav with his strange clarities, hisviolent half-ideas, his rare gleaming intuitionsthat came marked with the stamp of an absolutetruth and sovereignty of light. But Nietzschewas, an apostle who never entirely understood hisown message. His prophetic style was like thatof the Delphic oracles which spoke constantlythe word of the Truth but turned it into untruthin the mind of the hearer. Not always indeed ;for sometimes he rose beyond his personaltemperament and individual mind, his Europeaninheritance and environment, his revolt againstthe Christ-idea, his war against current moralvalues and spoke out the Word as he had heardit, the Truth as he had seen it, bare, luminous,impersonal and therefore flawless and imperish-able. But for the most part, this message thathad come to his inner hearing vibrating out of a


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I 3 ]distant infinite like a strain caught from the lyreof far-off Gods, did get, in his effort to appro-priate and make it nearer to him, mixed up with? somewhat turbulent surge of collateral ideasthat drowned much of the pure original note.

Especially, in his concept of the Supermanhe never cleared his mind of a preliminary con-fusion. For if a sort of human godhead is thegoal to which the race must advance, the firstdifficulty is that we have to decide to which oftwo very different types of divinity the idea inus should owe allegiance. For the deity withinmay confront us either with the clear, joyous andradiant countenance of the God or the stern con-vulsed visage of the Titan. Nietzsche hymnedthe Olympian, but presented him with the aspectof the Asura. His hostile pre-occupation withthe Christ-idea of the crucified God and itsconsequences was perhaps responsible for thisdistortion as much as his subjection to the imper-fect iHeas of the Greeks. He presents to us asuperman who fiercely and arrogantly repels theburden of sorrow and service, not one who arisesvictorious over mortality and suffering, hisascension vibrant with the triumph-song of aliberated humanity. To lose the link of Nature's


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[ 4 ]moral evolution is a capital fault in the apostleof supermanhood ; for only out of the unavoid-able line of the evolution can that emerge in thebosom of a humanity long tested, ripened ancLpurified by the fire of egoistic and altruisticsuffering.

God and Titan, Deva and Asura, are indeedclose kin in their differences; nor could eitherhave been spared in the evolution. Yet do theyinhabit opposite poles of a common existence andcommon nature. The one descends from thelight and the infinity, satisfied, to the play; theother ascends from the obscurity and the vague-ness, angry, to the struggle. All the acts of theGod derive from the universal and tend to theuniversal. He was born out of a victoriousharmony. His qualities join pure and gracioushands and link themselves together naturally andwith delight as in the pastoral round of Brinda-van, divine Krishna dominating and holdingtogether its perfect circles. To evolve in thesense of the God is to grow in intuition, in light,in joy, in love, in happy mastery ; to serve byrule and to rule by service ; to be able to be boldand swift and even violent without hurt orwickedness and mild and kindly and even self-


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indulgent without laxity or vice or weakness ; tomake a bright and happy whole in oneself and,by sympathy, with mankind and all creatures.And in the end it is to evolve a large impersonalpersonality and to heighten sympathy into con-stant experience of world-oneness. For such arethe Gods, conscious always of their universalityand therefore divine.

Certainly, power is included. To be thedivine man is to be self-ruler and world-ruler,but in another than the external sense. This isa rule that depends upon a secret sympathy andoneness which knows the law of another's ^beingand of the world's being and helps or, if needbe, compels it to realise its own greatest possi-bilities, but by a divine and essentially an innercompulsion. It is to take all qualities, energies,joys, sorrows, thoughts, knowledge, hopes,aims of the world around us ino ourselves andreturn them enriched and transmuted in a sub-lime commerce and exploitation. Such anempire asks for no vulgar ostentation or goldentrappings. The gods work oftenest veiled bylight or by the storm-drift ; they do not disdainto live among men even in the garb of the herds-man or the artisan ; they do not shrink from

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[ 6 ]the cross and the crown of thorns either in theirinner evolution or their outward fortunes. Forthey know that the ego must be crucified andhow shall men consent to this if God and thegods have not shown them the way? To takeall that is essential in the human being and up-lift it to its most absolute term so that it maybecome an element of light, joy, power foroneself and others, this is divinity. This,too, should be the drift of supermaiahood.

But the Titan will have nothing of all this ;it is too great and subtle for his comprehension.His instincts call for a visible, tangible masteryand a sensational domination. How shall hefeel sure of his empire unless he can feel some-thing writhing helpless under his heel, if inagony, so much the better? What is exploita-tion to him, unless it diminishes the exploited?To be able to coerce, exact, slay, overtly,irresistibly, it is this that fills him with thesense of glory and dominion. For he is the sonof division and the strong flowering of the Ego.To feel the comparative limitation of others isnecessary to him that he may imagine himselfimmeasurable; for he has not the real, self-existent sense of infinity which no outward


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[ 7 ]circumstance can abrogate. Contrast, division,negation of the wills and lives of others areessential to his self-development and self-assertion. The Titan would unify by devour-ing, not by harmonising ; he must conquer andtrample what is not himself either out of exist-ence or into subservience so that his own imagemay stand out stamped upon all things anddominating all his environment.

In Nature, since it started from division andegoism, the Titan had to come first; he is herein us as the elder god, the first ruler of man'sheaven and earth. Then arrives the God anddelivers and harmonises. Thus the old legendtells us that the Deva and the Asura labouredtogether to churn the ocfean of life for thesupreme draught of immortality, but, once it hadbeen won, Vishnu kept it for the God anddefrauded the fiercer and more violent worker.And this seems unjust; for the Asura has theheavier and less grateful portion of the burden.He begins and leads ; he goes his way hewing,shaping, planting : the God follows, amends,concludes, reaps. He prepares fiercely andwith anguish against a thousand obstacles theforce that we shall use : the other enjoys the


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[ 8 ]victory and the delight. And therefore to thegreat God Shiva the stained and stormy Titanis very dear, Shiva who took for himself thefierce, dark and bitter poison first churned upfrom the sea of life and left to others the nectarBut the choice that Shiva made with knowledgeand from love, the Titans made from darknessand passion, desirous really of something verydifferent and deceived by their stormy egoism.Therefore the award of Vishnu stands, to theGod shall fall the crown and the immortality andnot, unless he divinise himself, to the proudand strenuous Asura.

For what is supermanhood but a certaindivine and harmonious absolute of all that isessential in man? He is made in God's image,but there is this difference between the divineReality and its human representative that everything which in the one is unlimited, spontaneous,absolute, harmonious, self-possessed becomes inthe other limited, relative, laboured, discordant,deformed, possessed by struggle, kept by sub-servience to one's possessions lost by thetransience and insecurity which come fromwrong holding. But in this constant imperfec-tion there is always a craving and an aspiration


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[ 9 ]towards perfection. Man, limited, yearns to theInfinite ; relative, is attracted in all things towardstheir absolute ; artificial in nature, drives towardsa higher ease, mastery and naturalness that mustfor ever be denied to her inconscient forces andhalf-conscient animals ; full of discords, he in-sists upon harmony ; possessed by Naure andto her enslaved, is yet convinced of his missionto possess and master her. What he aspires to,is the sign of what he may be. He has to passby a sort of transmutation of the earthly metal henow is out of flawed manhood into some highersymbol. For Man is Nature's great term oftransition in which she grows conscious of heraim ; in him she looks up from the animal withopen eyee towards her divine ideal.

But God is complex, not simple ; and thetemptation of the human intellect is to make ashort cut to the divine nature by the exclusiveworship of one of its principles. Knowledge,Love whose secret word is Delight, Power andUnity are some of the Names of God. Butthough they are all divine, yet to follow any ofthem exclusively is to invite, after the firstenergy is over, His departure from us anddenial ; for even unity, exclusively pursued,


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ceases to be a true oneness. Yet this error weperpetually commit. Is it Love, in whosetemple we adore ? Then we shut its gates uponPower as a child of the world and the devil andbid Knowledge carry elsewhere her lack ofsweetness and remoteness from the heart'sfervonr. We erect an idol of Power and wouldpass all else through the fire of Moloch beforeits sombre and formidable image, expellingLove with scorn as a nurse of weaklings anddegrading Knowledge to the position of a squireor even a groom of Force. Or we cultivateKnowledge with a severe aloofness and austerityto find at last the lotus of the heart dulled andfading happy if its more divine faculties arenot already atrophied, and ourselves standingimpotent with our science while the thunders ofRudra crash through and devastate the world wehave organised so well by our victorious andclear-minded efficiency. Or we run after avague and mechanical zero we call unity andwhen we have sterilised our secret roots anddried up the wells of Life within us, discover,unwise unifiers, that we have achieved death andnot a greater existence. And all this happensbecause we will not recognise the complexity of


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the riddle we are set here to solve. It is a greatand divine riddle, but it is no knot of Gordias,nor is its all-wise Author a dead King that heshould suffer us to mock his intention and cutthrough to our will with the fierce impatienceof the hasty mortal conqueror.

None of these oppositions is more constantthan that of Power and Love. Yet neither ofthese deities can be safely neglected. Whatcan be more divine than Love? But fol-lowed exclusively it is impotent to solve theworld's discords. The worshipped Avatar oflove and the tender saint of saints leave behindthem a divine but unfoliowed example, aluminous and imperishable but ineffectivememory. They have added an element to thepotentialities of the heart, but the race can notutilise it effectively for life because it has notbeen harmonised with the rest of the qualitiesthat are essential to our fullness. Shall wetherefore turn round and give ourselves to Powerwith its iron hands of action and its hard andclear practical intellect? The men of powermay say that they have done a more tangiblework for their race than the souls of Love, but itis a vain advantage. For they have not even


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[ 12 ]tried to raise us beyond our imperfect humanity.They have erected a temporary form or given asecular impetus. An empire has been created,an age or a century organised, but the level ofhumanity has not been raised nearer to the secretof a Caesar or a Napoleon. Love fails becauseit hastily rejects the material of the world's dis-cords or only tramples them underfoot in awunusual ecstasy ; Power because it seeks only toorganise an external arrangement. The world'sdiscords have to be understood, seized, trans-muted. Love must call Power and Knowledgeinto the temple and seat them beside her in aunified equality ; Power must bow its neck tothe yoke of Light and Love before it can do anyreal good to the race.

Unity is the secret, a complex, under-standing and embracing unity. When the fullheart of Love is tranquillised by knowledge intoa calm ecstasy and vibrates with strength, whenthe strong hands of Power labour for the worldin a radiant fullness of joy and light, when theluminous brain of Knowledge accepts andtransforms the heart's obscure inspirations andlends itself to the workings of the high-seatedWill, when all these gods are founded together


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[ 13 ]on a soul of sacrifice that lives in unity with allthe world and accepts all things to transmutethem, then is the condition of man's integralself-transcendence. This and not a haughty,strong and brilliant egoistic self-culture enthron-ing itself upon an enslaved humanity is the divineway of supermanhood.

ALL-WILL AND FREE-WILL.His is surely a bounded soul who has never

felt the brooding wings of a Fate overshadowthe world, never looked beyond the circle ofpersons, collectivities and forces, never beenconscious of the still thought or the assuredmovement of a Presence in things determiningtheir march . On the other hand it is the sign ofa defect in the thought or a void of courage andclearness in the temperament to be overwhelmedby Fate or hidden Presence and reduced to a dis-couraged acquiescence, as if the Power inthings nullified or rendered superfluous andabortive the same Power in myself. Fate andfree-will are only two movements of one indivi-sible energy. My will is the first instrument of


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[ M ]my Fate, Fate a Will that manifests itself in theirresistible subconscious intention of the world.

All error like all evil is born of a division inthe indivisible. Because God has a myriadaspects, mind breaks up His unity; it creates aviolent opposition and vain attempt at mutualexclusion in the united family of the Ideas andPowers that are convergently busy with theuniverse. Thus our thought erects a mysteriousFate or an equally mysterious free-will andinsists that this or that must be but both shall notsubsist together. It is a false and unreal quarrel.I have a will, that is plain ; but it is not true thatit is 'free in the sense of being a thing apart in theworld determining itself and its actions and fruitsas if it alone existed or as if it could at all shapeitself except as visible crest and form of aninvisible wave. Even the wave is more thanitself; for that too has behind it the tramp ofthe whole measureless ocean of Force andTime. On the other hand there is no incal-culable Fate, no blind cruel and ineluctableNecessity against which the wings of the soulmust dash themselves in vain as if it were abird snared by a monstrous Fowler in a dim-litand fantastic cage.


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[ 15 ]All times and nations have felt or played

with the idea of Fate. The Greeks were pursuedby the thought of a mysterious and ineffableNecessity presiding over the divine caprices ofthe gods. The Mahomedan sits calm and inertunder the yoke of Kismet. The Hindu speaksof Karma and the writing on the forehead whenhe would console himself for calamity or failureor excuse himself from perseverance and mas-culine effort. And all these notions are akin inthe general imprecision of the idea they shadowforth and the vague twilight in which they arecontent to leave its ulterior significance. ModernScience has brought in an equally formless andarbitrary predestination of Law of Nature andHeredity to contradict the idea of responsibilityin a free, willing and acting soul. Where thereis no soul, there can be no freedom. Natureworks out her original law in man ; our fathersand mothers with all that they carried in themare a second vital predestination and the deadgenerations impose themselves on the living ;pressure of environment comes in as a third Fateto take from us the little chance of liberty wemight still have snatched out of this infinite coil-


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ing of forces. The triple Moirae of the Greekshave been re-enthroned with other masks andnew names. We believe once more in a tremen-dous weaving of our fate, but by the measureddance of immense material Powers. It is the oldgods again, but stripped of intelligence and thechance of human sympathy, inexorable becausethey are conscious neither of themselves nor ofus.

It is doubtful whether belief in Fate or free-will makes much difference to a man's action, butit certainly matters a great deal to his tempera-ment -and inner being; for it puts its stamp onthe cast of his soul. The man who makes beliefin Fate an excuse for quiescence, would findsome other pretext if this were lacking. Hisidea is only a decorous garment for his mood ;it clothes his indolence and quiescence in aspecious robe of light or drapes it with a noblemantle of dignity. But when his will clutchesat an object or action, we do not find him pur-suing it with a less strenuous resolution or, itmay be, a less childish impatience or obstinacythan the freest believer in free will. It is not ourintellectual ideas that govern our action, but our


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[ 17 ]nature and temperament, not J/n,* but matior even manyu, or, as the Greeks would havesaid, thumos and not nous.On the other hand a great man of action willoften seize on the idea of Fate to divinise to him-self the mighty energy that he feels driving himon the path of world-altering deeds. He is likea shell discharged from some dim Titanichowitzer planted in concealment far behind thisfirst line of trenches which we see thrown outby Life into the material world ; or he is likea planet sped out from Nature's hands with itsstore of primal energy sufficient for its giventime, its fixed service to the world-life, its settledorbit round a distant and sovereign Light. Heexpresses in the idea of Fate his living andconstant sense of the energy which has cast himdown here whether to break like some VedicMarut the world's firm and established thingsor to cut through mountains a path down whichnew rivers of human destiny can pour. LikeIndra or Bhagirath he precedes ; the throng ofthe divine waters follow. His movement decides

* These are terms of Vedic psychology. Dhi is the intellect ,mail the general mentality ; manyu, the temperament and emotive mind.


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[ 18 ]their course ; here Indus shall flow, there Gangespace yellow and leonine to the sea. Thereforewe find that the greatest men of action the worldhas known were believers in Fate or in a divineWill. Caesar, Mahomet, Napoleon, what morecolossal workers has our past than these? Thesuperman believes more readily in Destiny, feelsmore vitally conscious of God than the averagehuman mind.A saying of Napoleon's is pregnant of thetrue truth of this matter. Questioned why,since he talked continually of fate, he thoughtit worth while to be always- thinking andplanning, he answered with just reason,"Because it is still Fate who wills that I shouldplan." This is the truth. There is a Will orForce in the world that determines the result ofmy actions as part of the great whole; there isa Will in me that determines, concealed by mythought and personal choice, the part that I shalltake in determining the whole. It is this thatmy mind seizes on and calls my will. ButI and mine are masks. It is All-existence thatgives me my reality ; it is the All-will and All-knowledge that, while I calculate, works in mefor its own incalculable purpose.


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[ 19 ]For this very reason I am right in laying

stress on my free-will. If a Necessity governseven the gods, yet is my will a daughter ofNecessity with a right in the mansion of hermother ; or even it is a face of the divine Neces-sity that in many forms plays with the world.If Kismet is the will of God, yet is that willactive in my present moment and not only in thehour of my birth or of the world. If my pastactions determine my present, my immediateaction also determines the moment that shall beand is not utterly put off by a tardy mechanismto belated effects in a far-off life. If law ofnature and heredity and environment are power-ful, yet do they depend on the individual for theuse to which they shall be turned.

The fruit of my actions belongs not to me,but to God and the world ; my action belongs toGod and myself. There I have a right. Orrather it belongs to God in myself ; the right isHis, but I enjoy it. The Will that works in meis the indivisible All which only seems toseparate itself from itself in my body and person-ality, namarupa, as the whole sea throws itselfupon a particular coast in a particular surge ofwaves, The All and the I are at play of hide


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[ 20 ]and seek with each other in a corner of an infiniteuniverse.

I may play entirely at cross-purposes withthe All-Will in me. That is when I lend mywill-power to be a servant of the nervous part ofmy mind which, ignorant and passionate, adoresself, openly or under many pretences, as its owngod. It is this in me, this egoist, this hungererthat feels upon it in the heavy hand of Fate theoppression of a tyrant or the resistance of a blindand unintelligent power. For always absorbedin its own need and view-point it helps the Allby that friction and opposition which are soessential to the mechanism of the world. There-fore it misunderstands the firm Teacher and Hisstern, yet loving compulsion in things and mustprogress by self-will and struggle and sufferingbecause it cannot yet learn to progress by obedi-ence. But also I may, by an intuition in mynature, an aspiration in my heart and a reasonin my mind, put myself at the service of somestrong ideal, some intelligent Force that servesGod with or without knowledge of Him. Thenis my will a true will ; it does its share, it leavesits quota, it returns to its Master with its talentused or increased. And to a certain extent it is


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[ 21 ]free ; for a great liberty is this, to be deliveredfrom the Animal and the Rakhasa in ourselves,free to choose the right or be chosen by it.

But how different a thing would it be if 1could persuade my ego to break and emergefrom the mould in which it has taken refuge fromits divine Pursuer ! The great antinomy wouldthen be abrogated and not simply mitigated.My free-will would become God-will and Fateput off her mask. By consenting to be the mereslave of God and consciously but one instrumentof That which is not bound by its instruments,I should know a freedom which sings on theharps of heaven, but which no speech of mancan utter ; I should be washed and rolled in thewaves of pure puissance and pure ecstasy, theimmeasurable and unfathomable ecstasy of all-being and all-life and all-force. I should seeFate illumined melting Fnto Will and Willglorified passing into God.

THE DELIGHT OF WORKS.In thy works there are always these three,

the Master, the Worker and the Instrument. To


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[ 22 ]define them in oneself rightly and rightly topossess them is the secret of works and of thedelight of works.

Learn thou first to be the instrument of Godand to accept thy Master. The instrument isthis outward thing thou callest thyself ; it is amould of mind, a driving force of power, amachinery of form, a thing full of springs andcogs and clamps and devices. Call not this theWorker or the Master; it can never be theWorker or the Master. Accept thyself humbly,yet proudly, devotedly, submissively and joy-fully as a divine instrument.

There is no greater pride and glory than tobe a perfect instrument of the Master.

Learn thou first absolutely to obey. Thesword does not choose where it shall strike, thearrow does not ask whither it shall be driven,the springs of the machine do not insist on theproduct that shall be turned out from its labour.These things are settled by the intention andworking of Nature and the more the consciousinstrument learns to feel and obey the pure andessential law of its nature, the sooner shall thework turned out become perfect and flawless.Self-choice by the nervous motive-power, revolt


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[ 23 ]of the physical and mental tool can only mar theworking.

Let thyself drive in the breath of God andbe as a leaf in the tempest ; put thyself in Hishanc! and be as the sword that strikes and thearrow that leaps to its target. Let thy mind beas the spring of the machine, let thy force be asthe shooting of a piston, let thy work be as thegrinding and shaping descent of the steel on itsobject. Let thy speech be the clang of thehammer on the anvil and the moan of the enginein its labour and the cry of the trumpet that pro-claims the force of God to the regions. In what-ever way do as an instrument the work that isnatural to thee and appointed.

The sword has a joy in the battle-play, thearrow has a mirth in its hiss and its leaping, theearth has a rapture in its dizzy whirl throughspace, the sun has the royal ecstacy of its blazingsplendours and its eternal motion. O thou self-conscious instrument, take thou too the delightof thy own appointed workings.The sword did not ask to be made, ijor doesit resist its user, nor lament when it is broken.There is a joy of being made and a joy of being


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[ 25 ]thy soul and an alien and a stranger, thy joy andthy sorrow, thy sin and thy virtue, thy strengthand thy weakness, thy knowledge and thyignorance. And yet it is none of these things,but something of which they are attempts andimperfect images. For beyond all these it is anoriginal self-knowledge and an infinite force andinnumerable quality.

But in thee there is a special movement, aproper nature and an individual energy. Followthat like a widening river till it leads thee to itsinfinite source and origin.

Know therefore thy body to be a knot inMatter and thy mind to be a whirl in universalMind and thy life to be an eddy of Life that isforever. Know thy force to be every otherbeing's force and thy knowledge to be a glimmerfrom the light that belongs to no man and thyworks to be made for thee and be delivered fromthe error of thy personality.

When that is -done, thou shalt take thy freedelight in the truth of thy individual being andin thy strength and in thy glory and in thybeauty and in thy knowledge ; and in the denialof these things thou shalt take delight also. For


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[ 26 ]all this is the dramatic mask of the Person andthe self-image of the self-Sculptor.

Why shouldst thou limit thyself? Feel thy-self also in the sword that strikes thee and thearms that embrace, in the blazing of the sun andthe dance of the earth, in the flight of the eagleand the song of the nightingale, in all that ispast and all that is now and all that is pressingforward to become. For thou art infinite and allthis joy is possible to thee.

The Worker has the joy of her works andthe joy of her Lover for whom she works. Sheknows herself to be his consciousness and hisforce, his knowledge and his reserving ofknowledge, his unity and his self-division, hisinfinity and the finite of his being. Know thy-self also to be these things ; take thou also thedelight of thy Lover.

There are those who know themselves as aworkshop or an instrument or the thing worked,but they mistake the Worker for the Master ; thistoo is an error. Those who fall into it can hafrdlyarrive at her high, pure and perfect workings.

The instrument is finite in a personal image,the worker is universal with a personal trend :


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[ 27 ]but neither of these is the Master, for neither arethe true Person.

* * * *Know last the Master to be thyself; but tothis self put no form and seek for it no definitionof quality. Be one with That in thy being,commune with That in thy consciousness, obeyThat in thy force, be subject to That and claspedby it in thy delight, fulfil That in thy life andbody and mentality. Then before an openingaye within thee there shall emerge that true andonly Person, thyself and not thyself, all othersand more than all others, the Director andEnjoyer of thy works, the Master of the workerand the instrument, the Reveller and Ttamplerin the dance of the universe and yet hushed andalone with thee in thy soul's silent and innerchamber.

The joy of the Master possessed, there isnothing else for thee to conquer. For He shallgive thee Himself and all things and all creatures'gettings and havings and doings and enjoyingsfor thy own proper portion, and He shall givethee that also which cannot be portioned.Thou shalt contain in thy being thyself andall others and be that which is neither thyself


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[ 28 ]nor all others. Of works this is the consum-mation and the summit.


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the super man

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