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Tilak of Tibet Reveals Life's Purpose, by Ann Hackett [1944], at sacred-texts.com
Tilak of Tibet sat before a wooden table in the Chamber of the Great Potential. Before him on the roughhewn boards lay sheets of parchment on which he had been writing.
Tilak sat in meditation. His right hand still holding a quill was resting on the table:
Unselfish actions gild the memory, and when recalled will soothe any troubled moment. Sweet and pleasant memories ever protect against uninvited harshness. Man should so live that memory can be called forth as a friend.
Tilak found that even finest parchment was a poor surface on which to place the wedding of elevated thought and feeling. Tilak laid aside his pen and moved from the Chamber of the Great Potential. At the entrance of the Chamber he paused to absorb the beauty of the rising sun, distant in the heaven, yet by its very beauty near. Whatever awakens beauty is part of that which is awakened. Separation is in degree but not in kind.
A young girl appeared before Tilak. Her eyes were full of wonderment. The girl was timid.
"I am your friend, Renee—you may speak."
"You know my name!"
"Yes," replied Tilak, "I know."
Eagerly the girl asked, "You will come with me?"
"Yes, Renee."
As Tilak spoke he held out his left arm, saying: "Just place your hand on my arm and we will journey quickly to your home."
With complete confidence the girl placed her small hand on Tilak's robed arm. Together they soared across the land of India. Reaching Calcutta they descended slowly and stood near the home of a ship owner.
"We will enter," said Tilak softly.
The maiden held back. In a low whisper, she said: "I am afraid."
"Nothing can harm thee, Renee. Come."
The young girl and Tilak entered the home of the ship owner. By some unseen attraction the girl was drawn to a room on the second floor. Tilak followed. On a bed was lying a child of five. The night before the child had left her earthly covering. Around the bed stood the mourning parents and the brothers of the child.
Renee pulled at Tilak's robe and burst into tears: "That is my body," she sobbed. "Why did I die?"
"Come, I will show you."
Together Tilak and the maiden left the dwelling of the ship owner. Together they soared beyond the highest peak of the Himalayas. Soon they entered a sylvan glade. The quiet and peace of the surroundings soothed the girl. She sat down on a rustic bench of sweet-smelling wood.
Tilak stood before the girl. Tilak spoke: "Study well the scene appearing."
The girl's eyes opened wider and wider as she studied the scene before her.
Tilak stepped behind the girl and viewed with her a scene that portrayed an earthly life of the girl in another country, with another people.
A rugged country appeared, along the shore rushed angry waves.
In a roughly-fashioned boat could be seen three men at the oars. The men were straining every sinew and muscle to bring the boat safely in. In the bottom of the boat were piled hundreds of fish. The wind whistled as though signaling the waves. At times it seemed that the rising billows would not permit the boat to safely reach the shore.
When the three men landed they were tired and wet. Placing the fish in sacks, and slinging the sacks across their backs, they trudged toward a wooden hut When mile distant. hen they reached the hut they were
greeted by a middle-aged woman. A younger woman took the sacks of fish from the three men.
Renee leaned forward, as she viewed the scene, as though not to miss a single movement of the characters.
The older man and the middle-aged woman proved to be the father and mother of the two men and the girl. All of them ordered the girl about as a hireling. Their rough jokes were directed toward her. The girl remained silent.
The scene changed. One day there appeared before the hut a young man, tall and strong. The young man was leading a horse. The young man knocked at the door of the hut. The girl answered the summons. The girl and the young man talked. He tied his horse to a tree and then entered the hut.
"My father and brothers are fishing, and my mother is in the pasture below."
The young man, leaning against the table's edge, said: "I lost my way." After surveying the girl from head to foot, he added: "I am glad I did."
Again the picture changed. Tilak and Renee now saw the young man mounted on the horse with the girl before him. They rode away, laughing merrily.
Later the woman returned, and then the men.
"Where is that useless girl!" demanded the father.
"She was not here when I returned from the field," replied the mother.
"Maybe she ran away," suggested one of the younger men.
"She has often threatened to," added the other young man.
"Where could she go?" grunted the father. "We are miles away from any town." He spat on the floor: "She will come back—I'll beat her for this!"
The next scene showed the girl in a distant city as a happy wife of the young man with whom she had ridden away five years before. The young couple could not understand why children had not appeared to add happiness to their little household.
After a festive anniversary dinner, in which the neighbors had partaken, the young girl suddenly became ill. The alarmed husband sent for a doctor. Before the doctor arrived the girl died. In his sorrow the young husband kept saying: "Five years tonight—Five years tonight." The picture vanished.
The girl turned to Tilak: "I was that girl—the daughter of the cruel fisherman."
"You were, Renee."
Excitedly the girl exclaimed: "I remember my fisherman father. He was the same man who was my father in Calcutta—and the fisherman's wife and sons were my mother and brothers in Calcutta—I don't understand. In Calcutta they were kind to me. They suffer because I died."
"It is thus, Renee, that they repay in part their
cruelty to you in a previous life. It was necessary that you return and live with the same family for five years. Those were the five years that you lived apart from them after running away from the fisherman's hut."
Renee's eyes questioned: "I should not have run away?"
"You did, Renee—and those five years you lived with them in Calcutta were years that fulfilled an association that was needed."
Softly the maiden asked: "And my husband of the north?"
"Is waiting for you beyond—Come."
Down a lane walked Tilak and the girl. Ahead of them, at the side of the lane, stood a little house covered with vines.
"I know that house!" Renee cried. Rushing forward: "Olof! Olof!"
The door of the little house was thrown open and a man came hurriedly out. It was the young man that had ridden away with the daughter of a fisherman. Renee threw herself into the outstretched arms of the young man. When the young girl turned to present Olof—Tilak had disappeared.
Tilak wrote on a parchment sheet:
Life is a partnership of the finer and grosser bodies
[paragraph continues] —death the dissolution. For periods it is an uneven partnership. The grosser body often assumes control, and listens but seldom to the counsel of the finer body. After many earthly lives the dissipations of the grosser body bring all but ruin to the partnership.
Tilak heard a whining at the door of the Chamber, a whining as of a lost dog. Tilak swung open the portal and a dazed young man staggered in.
"Old fool!" muttered the young man, "Old scapegrace!—leaving me in poverty, scattering gold on women of the street, pouring gold into wine casks."
Tilak led the unsteady and dazed young man to a chair.
"You are troubled, friend?" asked Tilak. The soft tones of Tilak's voice acted as a strengthening power to the young man.
Straightening up in the chair, the young man said: "You called me friend!"
"I am your friend."
The young man, rose and shook himself, as though attempting to shake off a weight that bore heavily upon him: "Everyone calls me a fool and drug-crazed."
"Do you use drugs, friend?"
"Why shouldn't I! I should be a rich man—and I am but a beggar! My grandfather squandered the money that should be mine—threw it into the laps of vermin."
"Can drugs change the past actions of your grandfather?"
"No, but they do shut out from me the thought of the things that should have been mine."
"I will help you, friend."
"I will not give up the drugs—never!"
Tilak walked to the altar and removed the incense cone. Into the cone he placed a piece of charcoal and lighted it. The incense burner became warm. Tilak dropped onto the cone a white liquid. The Chamber became filled with the sweet essence of wild flowers.
Suddenly the young man, pointing before him, said: "See! See! My grandfather!"
As though by magic the Chamber of the Great Potential had disappeared and in its place appeared the outskirts of a great city. Walking down a city street was a man of forty years. Clinging to his arm, and gazing up into his face, was a pretty woman. Large and valuable jewels flashed from a bracelet on the woman's wrist.
The picture changed to a great banquet hall. Many guests surrounded a festive board. At the head of the table sat the man of forty years and the young woman. Wine colored the long-stemmed glasses and colored the wit that leaped about the table.
When the guests had departed the man of forty sat alone gazing in front of him as though in thought. Suddenly he burst into laughter, and brought his fist
down with a heavy thud on the table before him: "I care not for the cost. Life should be gay. We live but once and then become food for worms."
The picture faded to a scene in a stately drawing room. The man of forty years was clasping about the white young throat of a beautiful girl a diamond necklace.
As he kissed the girl he murmured: "I have been waiting for this moment. To think that we met but yesterday!"
With undulating hips the girl walked to a full-length mirror and admired her reflection, as she caressed with pink fingertips the jeweled necklace at her throat.
The scene vanished.
The young man stepped back a pace. Facing Tilak, he said: "My grandfather—and yet I see in him myself. A sunken memory leaps the chasm of that forgotten."
"Memories stirred, friend," said Tilak slowly, "often bring back to us vividly the cause of our undoing. The cause, friend, is always ourselves. You looked upon your own life; a life wherein you were a licentious spendthrift, scattering a substance in wanton waste that your very soul remain asleep. You were basking in a setting light and were offering your physical body as a willing sacrifice to lust."
"I see," groaned the young man—"As a setting sun
the grandfather—as a rising sun the grandson—the grandson brought back and placed amid the wreckage of his own doing. In cursing my grandfather I was cursing myself. I only wanted to carry farther an insatiable lust, which, as my own grandfather, I had beat into a fury. Twice would I be the fool!"
Tilak raised both arms over the head of his visitor, as though to lend a protection: "Return, friend, to your body. You will not forget this meeting. We will meet again."
Instantly the young man vanished.
Tilak poured over his parchment leaves, and then wrote:
That which debases ever biteth at the heel of him who would run away from folly. It is not given that one generation should pile up obligations that generations to follow must dispatch. What are coming generations? Who compose the coming generations? THOSE WHO LEFT THE OBLIGATIONS.
It is never given that we can discharge the obligations of others. We must discharge those of our own. All debts are discharged by the maker of them, even to a single hair. Should man expect physical death to erase blemish? Should man, leaving his earthly task unfinished, expect release because his earthly frame
drops from him? Did another ever complete a task we left unfinished? Such could not be, for each has his work to do and always labors to his capacity.
Earthly life always appears in the making because so many departing from earth life leave unfinished work—work that will not be completed until they return and again labor in neglected field. The finer body cannot complete unfinished earthly work without a physical counterpart. Whatever the earthly task may be it is only great when it is completed. The greatest among men is he who has completed most.
Man enters earthly life equipped for the work that lies before him. He alone is the architect; he alone drew the .plan. If man fails there will be for him another day—for failure is incompletion. Opportunity is ever present. When a man cries out that never in earthly life did he have an opportunity to accomplish great things, this man is but seeking an earthly life only for the opportunity to build a greater indebtedness.
Men complain of their earthly lot; complain because they are not willing to discharge a past obligation. Complaint is ever the unwillingness to pay what is due. Should a father lament that a son follows not in his footsteps—footsteps that so often are but impressions upon water? Has not the son his work to do? Has the father so lived that he would want any one to follow in his footsteps?
Can any earthly man say, "When I am duplicated there will be a millennium?" Can any earthly man say, "When I depart the world will suffer a loss?" Can any earthly man say, "Who can take my place when I shift this mortal coil?"
If a man stood upon the earth alone and sought to build an earthly structure and death removed him before the structure was completed, would he not yearn to come back and continue his building?
Such is it with the teeming millions that move in earthly life. They yearn to complete a definite work.
Several nights later Tilak entered a poorly furnished sleeping room. On the bed, tossing restlessly, was a young man; the young man who had visited Tilak in the Chamber of the Great Potential. On the table beside the bed was a small bottle containing a powerful drug. The young man was fighting to resist the lure of the opiate. Tilak could see the ravages caused by the previous use of drugs; drugs that numb the sensibilities of the earthly body, separating the channels of sense from the protecting finer body. Drugged physical senses report poorly, and often report grotesquely. Thus confused the individual is neither sleeping nor waking, and hovers between the physical body and the finer body, but without the ability to use clearly any sense or faculty.
Physical pain may have ceased for the individual. Drugs push aside awareness from its protective seat. Pain is one of the earthly body's greatest guardians. The varying degrees of pain or discomfort are but warnings of bodily impairment. If the sense of pain were absent entirely the flesh would fall from the bone, and the bodily organs would cease to function.
The hem of remorse ever drags the ground. Remorse may be temporarily silenced by drugs, but never by drugs can it be eliminated. Remorse is always picked up where it was left. What brings remorse? The following of low prompting. If a man follows a low prompting, when a higher prompting beckons, the man will have remorse, knowing that he has done the things that he should not have done. It is thus that remorse becomes a teacher and gradually prevents the repeating of acts that bring suffering.
LET NOT UNRULY PHYSICAL APPETITES CAST A SHADOW ON THE MIRROR OF THE MIND.
While Tilak watched the young man gradually relaxed and dropped into a fitful slumber. The youth's finer body separated from its reclining physical counterpart and remained suspended over the sleeping form.
Tilak raised his right arm and said softly: "I am here, friend." The subtle body of the young man became animated and moved to the side of Tilak.
Tilak pointed to the still form on the bed, and said: "Soon your physical covering will serve you as it should, freed from the disrupting influence of drugs. The spell the narcotics wove around you is broken. Its poisonous web will hold you no longer. Go forth and fulfill your mission. When animating the limbs of your grandfather your utter disregard for earthly values will now force upon you as the grandson the recovery of the values ignored. It is not often, friend, in the course of Universal Justice and Law that an individual has an opportunity to so soon see the cause of his present suffering and plight. It is not often that an individual is born in an earthly body as his own grandson to repair self-caused ravages."
Standing in his finer body the youth listened to Tilak. Tilak's every word lent encouragement. Tilak had shown the youth the ever manifesting Law.
Sadly the young man said: "I sowed the wind, and now I will reap the whirlwind. It is just that it should be so."
"It is just," repeated Tilak gravely. After these words Tilak vanished from the sleeping quarters of the youth.
Having returned to the Chamber of the Great Potential, Tilak wrote on parchment leaves:
The voice of the past may be hushed, but it is not silenced until its message reaches the soul of man. Should a man expect to dance gaily in his present life, if in his past lives were actions that had deprived others of peace? Should a man expect, at any time, to roughly carve his appetites and passions into everything around him and then enter unscarred a state of bliss?
Past brutal carvings have not lost their power. They move out—not that the individual be punished—but that the individual be brought to a just realization of what he is doing and what prompts him. When such just realization does come, man ceases his waltz with folly, and the voices of the past become sweet song.
All things that disappear from physical vision cease not. They ever move in finer fields and wait for a reappearance in physical life. Everything will be in brightest array when it reaches the apogee of its being.
The architecture and every part of a city's construction, to finest lineament, represents collective thinking, collective feeling, collective motive. Thus also is it with nations, with the nation's ruler, and the people ruled. If governments are to be changed, if cities are to be changed, it is only the collective thinking, the collective feeling, and the collective motive that can do it.
Civilization follows civilization—each rearing the other. The very earth generates itself from the materials given. During this ageless process self-prepared
individuals discover these laws. They live under this recovered knowledge and seek to impart such knowledge when and where they can that others elevate their thinking and feeling and thus elevate their motive. This ever adds some beauty to the conditions all are passing through.
What is the secret of a seed?—That it grow and give bounteously of its growth. Is not growth a natural process? Can anything go contrary to growth? Can any individual stand still? Does not natural growth show the possibilities of mental growth, of moral growth? How can any one cry out, "Why am I here? What can I do? "—when all around the individual are so many in dire distress.
Wherever the individual is placed, whatever the individual may be doing, there are always those who need badly what he has to give. These the individual overlooks when his whole being is intent upon what he can get. Thus in passing from the earthly life the individual leaves his mission unfulfilled.
Tilak next found the young man, who had laid aside drugs, cutting wood. The hot sun beat down upon the young man as he labored. For this work the young man was to receive his daily food. The derision of the townspeople had spent itself, and the young man was
left alone. When the youth paused in his work, Tilak said to him: "I am your friend."
The youth heard not the words, but over his face crept a smile, as he thought: "I have a friend." Friendship heals and binds every wound of life. Friends ever meet in the field of higher prompting.
WHEN FRIENDSHIP IS REACHED LIFE'S RICHES ARE DISPLAYED.