The Way of Power by L. Adams Beck (best books to read now .TXT) 📖

work, and this applies a thousandfold to psychic wisdom, where, historically, are seen immortal results attained by those who have made the body a clear window through which the inward light can shine.

Therefore health of the body, which includes that transmitter the brain, is of immense importance for people who wish to attain high results in the study of the psychic, commonly called the occult, and it is plain wisdom to neglect no means of attainment, especially the fundamental one of a body trained to co-operation instead of hindrance.

To those who have experienced this advantage it is really like watching a dance of lunatics to see how people apparently otherwise competent to pursue the business of life treat their bodies. Women who consider the possession of physical beauty the chief business of life as means to the only end they are capable of understanding destroy it as it were wilfully, withering its brief blossom by every means in their power. They eat foods fatal to the circulation and mechanism of the body, coarsening their skins till all the raddling and rouging in the world only accentuates the mischief, dulling the luster of their eyes and hair, driving their bodies into the rebellion of excessive fat or leanness at ages when they should still be beautiful as figures on a Greek frieze. Men to whom pellucid clearness of brain is wealth or power, vital to all their hopes and interests, cloud it with nicotine and alcohol, darken it with gross and mistaken feeding. Since the brain is part of the body and the nervous system is the first to cry out against such usage one may safely say that men and women suffering from the results of such folly are very ill qualified to run the world’s business. When Carlyle wrote that every sick man was a scoundrel he was with characteristic violence overstating a case which does not need strengthening, and there is something to be said for the point of view in Butler’s brilliant “Erewhon” where people suffering from physical disability are brought before a jury to be judged and condemned accordingly. The Roman who spoke of “a healthy mind in a healthy body” knew what he was talking of. And with Carlyle I marvel at what men suffer, not at what they lose.

In the study of the Occult a healthy body and clear brain are even more necessary than in the affairs of daily life, because in that strange world we are explorers. It is ours, yet unknown to us, forgotten, uncharted, in some ways dangerous. Though the world is really our own we are as little at home in it at first as the long-lost heir when he returns to his kingdom and finds the scepter strange and alarming in hands used to the spade. And it is largely because they have often lacked this physical calm and poise that we are apt to call those men mad who have penetrated behind the deceptive Looking Glass of our senses and with half-dazed eyes brought back word of the strange conditions beyond. They are very strange because in the world of reality the values are not ours, our great things are small, our small things great and all our logic baffled. But the pioneer need not necessarily be unbalanced. Take an historical example of what is probably the greatest pioneering fact in the history of psychics; the one which has shaped the lives and destinies of more uncounted millions than any other. No one has called the Buddha either nerve-broken or insane, though after that tremendous psychic experience which gained him the name of the Enlightened One he returned from the world of true perception with teachings perfectly staggering to the opinions concerning life and death held by the world at large. And the foremost reason of his triumph in enabling men to discern what really matters from what does not matter a cent was his perfect sanity and cool clarity of brain backing the highest psychic perception and all based upon a disciplined body. That was a thing all men could understand and honor. He had tried luxury and had renounced its poisons. He had tried a cruel asceticism and had cast aside its follies, and so experienced he taught a wise temperance that the body attaining perfect poise may not thrust its revolt in the face of the spirit. According to his doctrine the psychic powers are sooner or later within the reach of every man who follows a certain plainly defined path. They come as inevitably and normally as breathing, but like all other powers are to be used with caution and wisdom and by no means as a show-off or an end in themselves. This wisdom he had learned from the ancient Indian teaching and his own great experience. It is the art of seeing life steadily and whole both within and outside the perception of our physical senses and it cannot be completely mastered until the subjugation and co-operation of the body are made part of the coherent scheme of things. Real life cannot be treated as a thing of little colored patches. It must be seen in its entirety.

I know that to acquire a perfectly working circulation of the blood and mastered appetites may seem a lowly beginning for a great quest but there is an Indian parable which illustrates the value of the infinitely little. A prisoner in a great tower directs his wife to bring to its foot a beetle, a silk thread and a little honey. She is to attach the silk to the beetle, to smear his horns with honey and set him free to climb the tower, following the scent of the honey. He does it. A twine is attached to the silk thread, a rope to the twine and the prisoner is freed. The infinitely little has conquered.

So the ancient wisdom of India perceived long ago, what we are dimly beginning to guess, that if a man desires to storm the strange world of psychic attainment safely he must lay his foundations on the earth as he sees it and make the body his co-operator and not his trampled or pampered slave. For, as says one of the greatest of the ancient books: “He who fasts and he who eats too much, he who does not sleep and he who sleeps too much, he who works too much and he who does not work,—none of these can be adepts.” In other words one cannot acquire discrimination, insight and instinct without making a scientific study of the means to that end.

I gained the beginning of this knowledge by experience years before I knew anything of the way charted out in Asia. Fortunately for myself I suffered in youth from violent headaches which obliged me to consider whether there was no means of escape from facing life with such a miserable handicap. Doctors failed in finding their cause or cure and at last I resolved I would give up one food after another in hope of tracking down the offender. I did this and have never had a trace of headache from that day to this, though with as many opportunities for it as most people can boast of.

I was groping blindly for escape from bodily suffering and had not the faintest notion that this change would influence my life psychically and intellectually. It would be handsomer if I could say I had done it from the most exalted motives, but it is perhaps more impressive as showing the colorless and impassive action of law in these matters that such a very ordinary impulse should lead one into such unforeseen paths. For when I came in touch later with the wisdom of the Orient I knew that by a very little hole I had crept in through the thorny hedge that guards the ancient wisdom. It was a tiny beginning, but a beginning.

I do not say for a moment that the world of true wonders lies open before one who has so entered. Life is not like that in any of its spheres… . Physically, intellectually and psychically it is always a case of evolution, and in evolution you cannot jump any of the links. I will try to tell as simply and truly as I can exactly what the process seemed to me to be as it worked itself out.

First there was the relief from a crippling disability. That is always joy. Indeed it has been said there is no joy in the world so great as the relief from suffering, which though it may be an exaggerated statement represents a common experience. I knew at once that a problem was solved and had left me free to grapple with others, and realizing that the body is like a boat obedient to the rudder I had a passionate desire to see how much could be done with it by wise steering. It was more difficult then than now because within the last few years the doctors have begun to pay some attention to the preventive aspects of disease and one can have advice. For me it was a case of pioneering, but I did not turn back for a moment.

Here I may be asked what I did. I gave up in one gesture, so to speak, meat of every kind, including poultry and fish. I also surrendered tea, coffee, and cocoa. Alcoholic drinks I had never used. I was ignorant that this sudden change of habit was a risk and it did not hurt me, but I should always advise against any but a very gradual change. For a time I lived on cooked vegetables, much cereal, and an abundance of milk, a mistaken diet though infinitely better than the one I had left. But gradually the mysterious wisdom of the body asserted itself and I evolved a diet of raw fruit, salads, nuts, a little cheese, eggs not abundantly used, and for drinks water and sometimes milk. Everyone cannot take milk so I may mention that with lemon juice dropped into it and stirred while dropping (in the proportion of about half a lemon to a tumbler of milk) it is a very refreshing and digestible drink. I took very little cereal, and gave up cakes, puddings, pastries and all sugared foods, and I have lived ever since in this way, eating only two or three times a day and never between meals. I tried twice in view of going to a country where it is dangerous to eat salads to substitute a little fish but it was such a failure from every point of view that I gave it up. I may say I have no use for the so-called “simple feeding” which demands all sorts of meatless dishes, elaborately cooked, and continues the drugs of tea and coffee. It is better to get down to bed-rock if you really want to make a success, and one gets to like these simple foods so much as to think it strange that everyone is not content with them.

And now I will say what these did for me. I had rather an inclination to overweight. That disappeared and I touched the normal weight for my height and have kept to it. With this carne activity and energy of mind and body which have never left me. I had been a little inclined to drowsy and lethargic reverie. Doing now became more interesting, but it was doing with a clear purpose ahead for I realized that I was gaining weapons and sharpening them for the adventure of life. My circulation was clear. I no longer suffered from cold hands and feet, and instead of pallor, developed a healthy color. I noticed that even my hair gathered luster, as one may see a sick dog’s roughened staring coat smooth itself and shine, with wise treatment. I could