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Talks in Eerde Castle, Holland, 1926
THE VALUE OF EXPERIENCE
The only authority you recognize, the only command you allow, must be the Voice of that Intuition which is unalterable, which nothing in the world can shake. In this way you gradually develop that sense of beauty which is of your own creation, which increases as time goes on and gives you joy; that is the only authority that any civilized, cultured, and spiritual person can recognize; not the authority of another, not the spiritual label of another, for you can only recognize that which you feel from within.
We have been discussing how to develop that Voice, that unyielding Tyrant, and we have examined one or two ideas. I want to put before you another idea. If you desire to recognize such a Voice, you must have revolution, you must have anarchy within you, you must have discontentment; you must be in a whirlpool, mentally and emotionally, and the center of the whirlpool must become stronger and strong that the little things of life are thrown out, and only the strength of purpose remains. Out of the chaos within you, you must give birth to the dancing star! That discontentment which gives birth to true contentment must be encouraged, and not set aside and subjugated and killed out. The more you question and demand, the greater will be the strength of your whirlpool, the greater the shattering, the greater the strength of desire to discover the Truth. You have to create a whirlpool in your mind and in your emotions; not a whirlpool of mere sentimentality and excitement, but a whirlpool that forces aside and destroys the unimportant -a whirlpool that centers round a single purpose; and it whirls round and round with greater speed and gathers greater energy, and out of that energy the true genius, the dancing star of your creation, will be born.
How are you going to gain this divine discontentment? You cannot acquire this discontentment by merely listening to others; they can but provide the scaffolding, which helps you to climb and to build, but you must carry your own bricks and your own mortar, you must yourself be the builder. For this, you must go through your own experiences, and that is why mere innocence is not spiritual. The man who knows great sorrows, great ecstasies, great devotion, great bursts of adoration or of anger, can become a truly spiritual person, because he is all the time seeking, all the time asking.
In order to become spiritual, to live happily, and to serve, you must have a "soul prepared for temptation."
Experience is essential. People who are childishly innocent tend to be petty and narrow and jealous, and it is against such trivial things that we must fight. These do not tend to give great and true experiences. You do not want the innocence of a child who has had no experience, who does not know what it is to suffer, what it is to be in a turmoil of emotion, what it is to suffer mentally; a child but prattles and uses pretty words and babbles. You must be like the man who has suffered, who knows, who has built. Such a man you must be. You must have your own thrill of life, and not the thrill of another. Nor does it mean that you must rush into absurd experiences, absurd expressions of your feelings. Ordinary pleasures, pains, sorrows, and joys must be your experiences; out of these you must build. They are your channels, your rivers on which you must sail to the vast ocean where you lose your own experience, your own identity, and become a drop in that ocean. But you must have vessels in which you can go; you must be able to sail, you must be able to row, you must have all the accumulation of experiences behind you; you must be thrilled at the idea of new experiences of the right kind; you must have this divine discontent, this chaos, which shall give birth to the dancing star.
Most people are self-satisfied, and contented with their own little lives -and thereby create for themselves the narrow world of mediocrity. And if you would be different, you must find yourself, give birth to your true self, follow your own path, keep in view your own goal -the goal which is Happiness, which is Truth. Like a fisherman, who goes from pond to pond, from river to river, from ocean to ocean, fishing, gathering experience, not being satisfied with one little fish, or with one enormous fish, you must desire to gather and keep the various types, colors, and expressions of divinity, in all the oceans of life. You must hear for yourselves that call, that Voice which only comes through experience, through thought, through feeling. You do not want pictures, you do not want ceremonies, you do not want anything in life if you have this one thing, this adventurous, divine longing. In the bird as it flies in the blue sky, the shimmer of light on its wing, in the solitary tree, the quiet meadows and the little stream that wanders by, in the flower, there dwells divinity; they are the truth of life, they are the real expressions of spirituality. Because when you recognize Truth in those little things of everyday life and lose yourself in their beauty, you will have acquired that eternal Truth, you will then live in that Kingdom of Happiness. When you have acquired this, you will be able to give it to others. The person who has it not and who yet is trying to convince others, is the hypocrite; but the person who has it, in however small a degree, will speak with certainty, with knowledge, with authority. You will speak with authority because you know what it means to feel with the Universe and with humanity, with all who suffer, with all who are happy; you will create and make others create their own ideas, their own conceptions of life. That will give a different tone to your existence, a different joy, a different thrill; then all the outward forms and expressions will have no value, because are at the Eternal source of all things. And you can only get there if you have this chaos, this discontentment, this perpetual longing. One vision of the Eternal does not satisfy; one vision opens up another, and so it goes on through life after life. Evolution does not suddenly begin at a certain moment, nor stop in a given moment, nor after one life; it is an endless road, and the person who enjoys walking does not stop to worship at little shrines, small conventionalities, outward forms and altars of supposed greatness -otherwise evolution becomes a long-drawn suffering. If he sees in the distance the temple of his own creation, the image of his own making, which he has created through suffering, through happiness, through the beauty of life, then he is walking perpetually in the Kingdom of Happiness.
You must be either one thing or the other; either you must be a genius, a creator, a destroyer, or an ordinary weed in the middle of the stream that is buffeted about from side to side. You must be the main current of life, the main force of life, because you live in Him and have your being in Him. The beauty which is Truth, which, in its turn, is He whom you all long for, He whom you adore, He whose image you create in your hearts, becomes a part of you, because you have striven towards Him and have found Him. Such a conception gives the inspiration to exist, the inspiration to breathe, to think, and to feel. But if you are contented and self-satisfied, you lose the great adventurous thrill of spirituality; instead of helping, you become mere followers; instead of being creators, you are mere waste products of life.
I wish you could see -I am sure you do, for every one of us sees in moments of ecstasy and happiness- the importance of maintaining this standard, this culture, and of living in this Kingdom of Happiness. If you are there, dwelling safely in that Kingdom, you can wander forth and create more vitally, more dangerously, more nobly, than anyone else, because you can always withdraw into that Kingdom. It gives you a sense of thrill, of vitality, of being great not only for yourself, but in helping others and in destroying things which do not matter and in creating the things which are Eternal. Instead of being giants of ignorance you must be creative giants. At the present time we are all seeking, groping, questioning, while the solution of all these things lies under every common stone, in all things that live and move, in all things animate and inanimate. If you are really enlightened, you can go out and become messengers of that Kingdom. I have drunk at the source, and I long to bring every one of you to it; and when you have delighted and sported in the shades of Eternity, you will want to bring others to it also.