08 - Reflections on My Life & Writings by Paul Brunton

Author:Paul Brunton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2010-10-03T19:22:09.754000+00:00

5 The Literary Work

5.1 For Kindred Souls

1

I write for those who have felt the truth in intuitive flashes as well as for those who must be argued into it by intellectual reasonings.

2

My work has also been to open up new paths, both for those already interested in spiritual seeking and for those who in the past were not but are now ready to begin it.

3

It is not possible to estimate correctly the number of those who have ennobled their characters and exalted their purposes because of this reading experience. Small it must necessarily be, for people are too mesmerized by the prestige of old churchly institutions to listen to a new voice speaking to a new age struggling to be born.

4

The man whose mind has hardened around the dogmas of some sect will be unwilling to receive truth where it conflicts with those dogmas. I do not write for him. I write for those who, noting the bewildering confusion of contradictory doctrines offered to them, prefer to keep themselves free of any commitment and unjoined to any particular sect. In that way, they are open to receive additional truth and to correct previous errors.

5

Throughout this writing, I have tried to give one hand to the realist and the other to the idealist. Only so could I walk safely, and my readers with me. Therefore, these are positive techniques designed to fit real needs with something that yet stretches away to the ideal.

6

To attempt this book will be an adventure for the Warriors of Light, but the wanderers of night will put it down with much celerity. For these pages are enchanted with a white magic which can inflict no greater injury on adversaries than to permit them to resist the principles contained therein.

7

Some of these lines are written for the few, for the few out of each million who have inborn attitudes toward spiritual development. Such people will rise to the right path once they are shown it. If I attempt to teach them the truths of directed aspiration, it is because I have myself wasted much time in misdirected aspiration, and now know the difference.

8

Since this is intended less for the casual reader or the academic student than for the aspirant whose earnest endeavour is to make something spiritually worthwhile out of his present life, it enters very seriously into regimes, training, self-denials, disciplines, and exercises.

9

We who write can only give the truth as we see it. That others have seen farther and deeper and better we must gladly proclaim, but we cannot remain in literary paralysis because of this fact. There are always readers who are not yet ready for, or do not yet seek, what is beyond their level. For them we may have some significance.

10

We address ourselves to those whose aim is to make themselves intelligent citizens of the world, not to those whose aim is to turn themselves into academic bookworms or whose view is bounded by the village in which they dwell.

11

I write for those who have to keep on working in cities, not for those who like to keep on idling in ashrams.

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