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Gems From The East: A Birthday Book

By H.P. Blavatsky

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September

"Shall there not be as good a 'then' as 'now'?
Haply much better. . . Therefore fear I not;
And therefore, Holy Sir! my life is glad,
Nowise forgetting yet those other lives
Painful and poor, wicked and miserable,
Whereon the Gods grant pity! But for me,
What good I see, humbly I seek to do,
And live obedient to the law, in trust
That what will come, and must come, shall come well."
— LIGHT OF ASIA, Bk. 6.
1 To him who has subdued self by SELF, his self is a friend; but to him who has not subdued senses by mind, that self is an enemy.

2 The eye is a window which looks into the heart. The brain is a door through which heart escapes.

3 Devotion and clear vision are not his who eats too much, nor his who eats not at all; not his who sleeps too much, nor his who is too awake.

4 At the end of a life of study, the man possessed of knowledge approaches Deity; and at the end of many lives, the wise man becomes one with the ALL.

5 Grief and wrath, avarice and desire, delusion and laziness, vindictiveness and vanity, envy and hatred, censoriousness and slander — are the twelve sins destructive of man's bliss.

6 The wolf changes his coat, and the serpent his skin, but not their nature.

7 The young of the raven appears to it a nightingale.

8 The dog howls at the moon, but the moon heeds it not; be like the moon.

9 Let your soul work in harmony with the universal intelligence, as your breath does with the air.

10 Let no bitterness find entrance into the heart of a mother.

11 Pervert not the heart of a man who is pure, for he will turn thine own first enemy.

12 Do not make a wicked man thy companion, or act on the advice of a fool.

13 Save not thy life at the expense of another's, as he will take two of thy lives in future births.

14 Mock not the deformed; assume not a proud demeanor with thy inferiors; hurt not the feelings of the poor; be kind to those weaker than thyself, and charitable to all beings.

15 Sacrifice not thy weaker child to the stronger, but protect him.

16 Amuse not thyself at the expense of those who depend on thee. Mock not a venerable man, for he is thy superior.

17 Death is a black camel that kneels at everybody's door. Death is a friend and a deliverer.

18 A little hill in a low place thinks itself a great mountain.

19 Men are gnomes condemned to forced toils in the kingdom of darkness (or ignorance).

20 We are the true troglodytes, cave-dwellers, though we call our cavern the world.

21 Living for ages in the night-realm, we dream that our darkness is full day.

22 All life is but a perpetual promise; an engagement renewed, but never fulfilled.

23 Man is a king, dethroned, and cast out from his kingdom; in chains and in a dungeon.

24 The heart of a beggar will not be content with half the universe; he is not born to a part, but to the whole.

25 Our life is the ante-room of the palace where our true treasure lies — immortality.

26 Useless to seek to seize the ocean-echo, by clasping the shell in which it lies hid; as useless to try to seize this essence, by grasping the form in which for a moment it shone.

27 When the leaden clouds clash together, the fair glimpse of heaven is shut out.

28 When the silence falls upon us, we can hear the voices of the gods, pointing out in the quiet light of divine law the true path for us to follow.

29 All the air resounds with the presence of spirit and spiritual laws.

30 The spirit it is, that, under the myriad illusions of life, works steadily towards its goal; silently, imperceptibly, irresistibly, moving on to divinity.