Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. III — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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On the contrary, the disciple of wisdom will study every record of such institutions accessible to him, and ponder on their marvellous multiplicity, and marvel at the infinite modes devised to play the pedagogue, that so man may be brought unto his God. Nevertheless, if he has not the love and wit to study such things, he should not despair, for is he not already in the Outer Court of the Temple, if he would but lift up his eyes to see the mysteries of the universe that surround him on every side ?
We all are babes in the Womb of the Great Mother ; how long we continue as babes, as embryos, remains for each of us to decide. For in this Birth the Mother alone cannot bear all the pains of labour; we too must help and strive and struggle and dare to breathe within her holy Womb, so as to accustom our dead lungs to expand, before the Great Birth can be accomplished, and we can at length walk forth into the Inner
World erect upon our feet and draw in at every pore and in every atom its pure air without fear. But this Inner World is no thin shadow of the outer world, as it may appear to us in the dark night of our present ignorance ; it is the Inner Cosmos, not the inner earth. Eapts and visions may let us see some mysteries of the inner earth, but not the mysteries of Earth, much less the Divine Mysteries of Cosmos.
Nor is there any need to label these things with precise terms, for now even the most experienced in such vision can know but in part ; whereas then we shall know the Fullness, face to face, without a parable. But knowing this, who shall tell the Mystery, who can tell the Mystery — for is not the whole of Nature telling us this Mystery now at every moment with infinite voices from infinite mouths, and yet we hear nothing ? For is not the whole creation designed with this one purpose to tell every son of man that he is of Light and Life and only happens to be out of them, as Hermes says ?
A LAST WOKD
But it is very possible that some who have done me the honour of reading to the end, will say : " This man is a dreamer, an ecstatic ; we have no use for such in the hard world of rigid facts that confront us in our everyday life ! "
But indeed I have little time for dreams and ecstasies in the sense in which my supposed critics would use the words, as any one may see who can realise the labour that has been expended on these volumes, ninetenths of which are filled with translations and commentaries, criticisms and notes, in which dreams and ecstasies have no part, but only strenuous co-labour of mind and soul and body. And that is just the carrying out of what I hold to be the true doctrine of practical mysticism, or if objection be taken by the reader to that much ill-used word, of the Great Work of life. It is true that it is almost impossible to talk of these high or deep things except in language that in every expression and in every word is liable to misconstruction. For even when we call them high things, they are not high in space or place, but rather in the sense that they are of greater intensity than the shows and appearances of opinion that form the surfaces or superficialities of our world of normal conditioning.
Spirit in itself is not superior to mind, or mind to soul, or soul to body; each and all must work together according to their proper dignity, nature, and energy, in perfect equilibrium in the perfect man. They are not descending degrees of some one thing, but are mutually in some mysterious way all aspects of one another.
For should we regard them as quantitatively distinguished solely, then we should be looking at them from the point of view of divided body alone ; or should we regard them as qualitatively distinguished, then we should be looking at them from the point of view of separated soul alone; or should we regard them as logically distinguished, then we should be regarding them from the standpoint of the formal reason solely ; while if we should look at them as wholes monadically and synthetically, we should be regarding them from an abstract and not a vital view-point.