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Nirvana — An Occult Experience by George Arundale |
CONTENTS
Foreword ..... vii
Author’s Preface ..... ix
Note to the Second Edition ..... xix
CHAPTERS
I. The First Glimpse ..... 1
II. The First Readjustment ..... 30
III. The Inner Light Upon Outer Things ..... 46
IV. A Meditation in the Himalayas ..... 67
V. Some Reflections ..... 94
VI. The Awakening of Nirvana ..... 110
VII. The Theosophical Society ..... 123
VIII. The Immanence of Light ..... 132
IX. A Further Adjustment ..... 161
X. Later Thoughts ..... 186
XI. Mother-Light ..... 203
XII. The Dangers of Nirvana ..... 216
XIII. The Glorious Task ..... 225
Envoi ..... 237
APPENDICES
A ..... 239
B ..... 248
C ..... 251
D ..... 258
To
Two Elder Bretheran
Annie Besant
and
Charles Webster Leadbeater
By Whose Aid
These Experiences Were Possible
And To Those
In Whom Nirvana Shines Revealed
- v -
FOREWARD
I have been asked by my life-long friend Bishop Arundale to write a few words of
introduction to this book. I consider it a very
remarkable production — a valiant attempt to
describe the indescribable. Few among men
still living on earth are they who have experienced Nirvana; fewer still have made any
endeavour to record their impressions. Those
of us who have touched that truly tremendous
altitude know well that all human words fall
short in the effort, that all earthly colors are
hopelessly inadequate, to depict its supernal
glories; yet must we try, even though we are
foredoomed to failure. That which is given To
us we must share with our brethren, so far as
may be, for that is the law of the occult life;
in obedience to that law this book is written.
I have myself tried to convey in words something of that supercelestial atmosphere, as you
may read in The Masters and the Path, but I
think my brother Bishop has been more successful than I. There is a living fire in his words.
True, that which he has seen cannot be portrayed; yet the enthusiasm which he throws
...
- vii -
into the essay is so infectious that we feel
ourselves on the very verge of understanding.
Much of upliftment, much of help he certainly
can and does give us; if we cannot yet know
all, at least we are nearer to the knowing, at
least we are encouraged by the testimony of
one who already knows. And where he stands
now, all will stand one day.
So let us unite in outpouring our heartfelt
gratitude for this rare book which he has
given us; and the best way in which we can
show it is to aid him and to follow him in the
splendid work which he is doing in the service
of our Holy Masters.
C. W. LEADBEATER
~~~
My son George has asked me to add a few
words to the above, written by one who knows.
To try to describe Nirvana is as hopeless a task
as to try to empty the ocean in to a thimble.
Yet it is one of the efforts that are made by
heroes only. I recall the words spoken by one
who grea tly dared in this lower world, as
marking the heroic enthusiast:
It is better to climb nobly and to fail,
Than ignobly not to climb at all.
ANNIE BESANT
- viii -
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
I THINK I may say I have been a rather
strenuous person for many years, for over
twenty-five years now, under the inspiring
guidance of my revered Chief, Dr. Annie
Besant; and my strenuousness has been velY
much on the physical plane. I confess to
having thought little of what people call
“higher things,” of causes and of origins, of
theories of life, of planes of nature, of hierarchies of beings, and so forth. I have had work
to do in the outer world, and I have tried to do
it, and have not concerned myself with whys
and wherefores. Whenever I have studied, I
have studied specifically to the immediate
ends of a particular piece of work. I have
never studied for study’s sake. I have never
cared for wisdom for what wisdom is, but for
what wisdom can do. My universe is full of
the things I need. If I could not relate a
thing to my work, then that thing has been
out of my perspective, at all events for the
time being. I have been one-pointed, even ...
- ix -
though I may have turned my eyes from
much upon which they might usefully have
rested.
But during the last year or so I have been
making a discovery. I have discovered that
however much I may have been strenuous on
the physical plane, this physical plane strenuousness has been almost as nothing compared
with my strenuousness on other planes. This
is probably the case with everybody, but it
came as a great surprise to me on the physical
plane. I began at once to realize that I must
cease to live in these plane-tight compartments. I must begin to live on many planes
simultaneously. I began to realize that the
one life unites all planes and all things;
and that in reality there is nothing which
should be indifferent to me. Everything is
related to everything else, and everything
modifies everything else. Why, the far-distant Sun Himself presses physically upon
every part of the world, as science itself
teaches us.
So I brooded much upon this unity, both in
and out of the body, and tried to live more
from the universal than from the particular.
The result has been, I hope, bigger living, more
effective living. But I had no clear perception ...
- x -
of unity only a sense of it, a vague idea of it
just sufficiently to make life strangely and
intriguingly different.
Many years ago, it was in 1912 at Taormina,
Sicily, I had my first glimpse of the fundamental
unities. I remember sitting at the
window of my room in the hotel in which a
party of us were staying, and I was listlessly
dreaming. All of a sudden my half non-seeing
eyes rested on the orange grove in the little
valley beneath, and I found myself peculiarly,
wonderfully, identified with the orange trees,
with their very life and being. I was at my
window, yet was I also in the orange grove —
indeed, I was the orange grove. It was almost
as if my consciousness flickered between George
Arundale as George Arundale and George
Arundale as the orange grove. I was two
entities, yet one. And as I lived as the orange
grove a gardener entered and began to pluck
some of the oranges and to cut off some of the
branches. All these things the gardener was
doing to me. I rebelled — not as George
Arundale might rebel, not with my mind and
my will, but as orange groves apparently do
rebel. I was conscious of discomfort, of loss,
not exactly of pain but of something next door
to it. I was the more discomforted because ...
- xi -
the gardener did not treat me reverently or
affectionately, but as if I were inanimate with
no feelings, with no capacity for sensation.
Why could he not realise that the same life
was in us both? If he bad only had the
attitude of asking my permission, of begging
my pardon, for his actions, of conveying to me
that I could make others happy by sharing
myself with them, I should not have minded
so much. But he was callous, selfish, and
treated the orange grove as a slave instead of
as a comrade. He hurt me every time be
plucked an orange or cut off a branch. With
a different attitude on his part, he might have
had all my oranges, all my branches, and we
might have rejoiced together, for we could
have worked together. As it was, being at
his mercy and treated as his chattel, life was
only just worth living, and I was a poor orange
grove, because uncared for.
This experience of consciousness in the
vegetable kingdom opened before my eyes
In entirely new conception of consciousness at
different levels of unfoldment, and of the
implications of the all-embracing unity. I
have never been the same since. I have never
been able to pluck a flower, or even to uproot
a weed, without as it were silently explaining ...
- xii -
my reasons to the plant or to the weed,
requesting a sacrifice for some definite, I will
not necessarily say larger, good. And I have
never found any lack of cooperation. Interestingly
enough, I always feel that I must justify
my actions to the life which I am thereby
affecting, and for this very reason I am more
than ever a vegetarian. How can I explain,
how can I have the face to explain, to sheep
or cattle, to birds or fishes, that I ask them to
sacrifice themselves, with an inevitable accompaniment
of much suffering, simply to gratify
my palate, or because I myself suffer from the
delusion that I cannot live without eating
flesh food? To make such a request is grossly,
disgustingly selfish; and though I can behave,
if I choose, like a robber or pirate, and steal
by force, still there is fortunately just enough
of the honorable gentleman about me, at
least in this particular direction, to cause me
utterly to decline to make so monstrous a
demand, whereby I must inevitably lower the
dignity of the kingdom to which I belong,
making the sub-human kingdoms wonder what
kind of evolution it is that causes those who
should know better to prey upon those who
cannot resist force, whose only defence is their
right to live.
- xiii -
From time to time I have had other visions
of this glorious unity, but none so inexpressibJe
as that which marked the opening of the doors
of Nirvana to the knock I had learned to
give.
One night I suddenly awoke with a most
vivid remembrance of a supreme exaltation,
of a marvellous expansion of consciousness
absolutely indescribable, though then and there
I felt I must somehow or other record it on
paper. It was about 1 a.m, and part of me
was very much disinclined to take the trouble
to sit up and write, even though pencil and
paper were by my bedside — as has been my
habit for some time in case an idea came
during the fruitful hours when sleep minimizes
physical interference. But another part of me
insisted. So I sat up and wrote that with
which this book begins, and I remember
hearing: “This is Nirvana.” And I knew
it was Nirvana. I was immensely astonished,
I confess, for I had never before given a
thought to Nirvana, at all events on the
physical plane. What I wrote was very
strange to me at first. My waking consciousness was not accustomed to reflect Nirvanic
consciousness, and the process of remembrance
was physically painful. However I wrote ...
- xiv -
down all that came to me, and my pencil
found it exceedingly difficult to travel at
the rate at which the thoughts poured
through. I could hardly read my own handwriting, so fast I wrote; and certainly I hardly
knew what I was writing. I wrote for hours,
and was all aglow with exaltation. The whole
of my being seemed re-oriented. I was born
again; and when the day came I found all
changed. A new note had been sounded in my
being, new values had come to everything and
since then I have been occupied in readjustment, so that I may gradually blend my old
world with my new world. Practically the
whole of the book had been written either
between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. or between 4 a.m
and 6 a.m., and many nights have been passed
in the physically painful, though spiritually
wonderfully uplifting, process of striving to
hold a reflection of Nirvana in the physical
brain and in the waking consciousness.
Needless to say, even the most beautiful
description of Nirvana which could be conceived
out here must inevitably be nothing less than a
caricature of Nirvana as it in reality is. What
then must my poor efforts be! It is almost a
blasphemy to publish them, even as a feeble
attempt to indicate a shadow of Nirvanic ...
- xv -
glories. They fall indescribably short of the
reality. Yet it seems to be better to have even
these than nothing; and many who have read
some extracts have felt an upliftment. With
Bishop Leadbeater's encouragement, therefore
this book is issued as a poor sketch by an
unpractised hand, conveyed through deadening media, of a world of incomparable glories.
I ought to add that even the glories I know
can only be those of the very lowest sub-plane
of Nirvana, and even then only a few of the
glories of this sub-plane, for I have only just
been born into Nirvana, and have yet to
develop the senses appropriate to my new
world.
As time passes, however, more and more of
Nirvanic consciousness penetrates my being
and it is as if I had begun a stupendous journey
from a great Resurrection to an Ascension
the glories of which are as different from
those of Nirvana as is the Sun from our
Earth.
I hope the account of my own experiences
will help others to contact this royal consciousness of Nirvana. It is within the near reach,
no doubt, of many; while some today, and
many in days gone by, have known Nirvana as
I can only hope to know it after long effort ...
- xvi -
and concentration. My own description is
not, of course, of Nirvana as it actually is, even
on the lowest sub-plane. It is of Nirvana as it
has appeared to me, of as much of Nirvana as
I have been able to assimilate. Much of the
description is doubtless colored by my personality. Another description, totally different,
might well be quite as true, possibly far more
true. I can on]y say I have done the best I
could with the powers at my disposal, and I
I am well aware that the narrative is in many
ways made up of a number of disconnected
parts. The reason for this is that I have
written night after night as I was moved to
write, without thought of what I had already
written. Each section is, therefore, the pen-impression of a particular vision of the
Nirvanic landscape, just as it impressed itself
upon me at the time.
GEORGE S. ARUNDALE
- xvii -
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
I am naturally gratified that after a few
months a second edition of Nirvana is demanded. I think the value of the little book has
been more in the direction of suggestion as to
lines of experiment than as a description of the
conditions obtaining under the Nirvanic mode
of consciousness. Frankly, the reader will find
little description, for description is impossible;
but he will find many impressions, and my
advice to him is to pay just as much or as little
attention as he feels disposed to the details of
the various impressions and to concentrate on
the atmosphere of which they are particular
expressions as the result of the medium, George
Arundale, through which the atmosphere
must needs filter. For example, I write of
Lightning-standing-still. A reader might well
exclaim; “Ah! I think I know what you
mean. I should not call it Lightning, nor
Lightning-standing-still. I should call it so
and so. That would be the kind of filtration
I should get from that selfsame atmosphere ...
- xix -
which we both sense, but which I should
describe so differently.” Let Nirvana help you
to Nirvana, be your road what it may. All
I can say is that I happened to take a route
which I have described as best I could in the
following pages.
With this latitude open to every reader,
there is one door I want to shut in his face, and
that is the door of common sense. If you have
nothing but common sense at your disposal I
am afraid Nirvana will mean little or nothing
to you. To understand either Buddhi or
Nirvana a distinctly uncommon sense is needed.
Common sense will not help you in these
regions any more than it will help you to
understand modern physics since Einstein.
Bertrand Russell tells us in his ABC’s of
Relativity that a new kind of thinking must
dawn upon our mental worlds as a result of
the introduction of new conceptions and notions
regarding physical things, even though these
conceptions and notions be by no means yet
entirely verified. He adjures us to start
thinking in terms of these “modern physical
notions rather than in terms of the notions
derived from common sense and embodied
in traditional physics.” That is exactly
what has to be done by those who have ...
- xx -
contacted the outer fringes of Buddhi and
Nirvana. It is not common sense and the
tradition of the lower worlds with which they
are now concerned, but rather with an uncommon sense which is an extraordinarily
refined sense, as yet extremely uncommon but
some day to become common in its turn.
Remember that the use of uncommon sense
does not mean that we cease to be efficient in
the lower worlds. On the contrary, we become
far more efficient for we build with stone and
not with sand. We live more truly because
nearer to the Real, even though in its ignorance and common sense the outer world may
laugh, ridicule, persecute, despise. Indeed,
Bertrand Russell goes further than I should
have dared to go, though by no means further
than I should be prepared to go, in the
following startling utterance taken from the
same little book.
“It is possible that the desire for rational explanation may be carried
too far. . . every apparent law of
nature which strikes us as reasonable is not really a law
of nature, but a concealed convention, plastered on to
nature by our love of what we, in our arrogance, choose
to consider rational. Eddington hints that a real law
of nature is likely to stand out by the fact that it appears to us irrational, since in that case it is less likely
that we have invented it to satisfy our intellectual
taste.”
- xxi -
A profoundly true utterance which, had it
been widely appreciated in times gone by and
were it widely appreciated to-day, would have
saved many apostles of truth from persecution
and martyrdom and would enable the world to
derive far more benefit than it does from the
researches of occultists and mystics — true
pioneers, true seekers after “real laws of
nature” through the “irrational” and super-rational.
I have made many corrections and a number
of additions and modifications in this new
edition, and I have added a new chapter —
“Later Thoughts” — containing a few results
of further meditations. I hope these also will
prove interesting, and provocative of pioneering in the same direction.
G. S. A.
- xxii -
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