The Need for the Sacred Quest
There are a fortunate few to whom powerful intimations of the sacred mystery come unsought and others who, accepting the affirmations of accomplished mystics, have faith in its reality. For them, it would be unthinkable not to seek the source and dwell there forever. For the rest, the conclusions forced on us by an unprejudiced examination of the human lot ought to be shattering enough to make us eager to try every means of transforming it into something less inherently tragic. With the passing of youth, life’s rainbow glitter soon wears off; one by one, the shining bubbles burst, and the “shades of the prison house” close in.
Even those who escape great physical distress in the form of disease, hunger, want, or back-breaking toil find happiness elusive. True, in the more advanced countries, crushing poverty is becoming increasingly rare; few women die in childbirth or needlessly lose their babies for want of care; unshod waifs are no longer seen upon the streets; no hordes of children grow up sickly for lack of nourishment; no corpses lie by the wayside to be devoured by dogs and flies; musicians no longer cough away their lives in icy garrets; no children singe their flesh against the bricks of soot-filled chimneys or drag heavy loads up
forbidding flights of stairs. Yet, even if we dare ignore the three-quarters of the human race who still toil like buffaloes for the means of bare subsistence, who can say that life brings more joy than discontent? Whereas hunger is always hunger, cold always cold, and pain always pain, pleasures diminish with repetition; real satisfaction is less familiar to the gourmet than is pain to the human donkey sweating away his life in an Eastern sugar mill. Moreover, it now appears that, where wealth abounds, want and insecurity have been replaced not by happiness but by mounting boredom and frustration. Blindly accepting the mechanistic worldview, we have reposed all our faith in material progress. With what result?
That the need for a radical readjustment of our aims is desperate can be deduced from the unprecedented rise in the incidence of nervous disorders, from the motiveless crimes perpetrated by well-fed, well-educated children, from the hideous examples of mass cruelty carried out by civilized nations on a scale worthy of Attila or Genghis Khan, and from the terrifying speed with which we are rushing towards the abyss of world destruction. What a joy if we could come upon some means of lasting satisfaction that would give meaning to our existence and sweep away cruelty and frustration! Aesthetic and intellectual satisfactions are subject to the same law of diminishing returns as the cruder forms of sensual pleasure. Organized religion too often resembles a bone-dry vessel from which the water of life has long been drained away. How good if men would heed the precious counsel: “look within,” and embark on the sacred quest!
No doubt, most thoughtful people will agree that the tremendous social and scientific advances of the previous two centuries have, even in the most privileged communities, added far less to the sum total of human happiness than was expected, besides creating new dangers. They will readily see the need for a fresh approach, but not many are likely to have patience with someone who offers an Eastern religion as the remedy. The day has passed when missionary-minded folk could raucously proclaim that they and their fellows were the sole custodians of the divine will and that whoever thought differently would roast throughout eternity. By and large, people have rejected religious solutions to life’s unsatisfactoriness and regard those who propose them as crackpots, bigots, or both.
What is proposed in these chapters is not necessarily a return to religion in exotic oriental guise, but a return to the wisdom that predates all religions and has been distorted, overlaid, and hidden by centuries of misguided religiosity. That this wisdom, or the means of achieving it, has been presented in accordance with Tibetan tradition is because, owing to a combination of geographical and historical circumstances, knowledge of the road to it has been preserved in Tibet more fully than elsewhere. Tibet, as it was up to the 1950 Communist invasion, was the one living link with the ancient world that still remained — if we exclude the pockets of rather primitive culture found here and there in inaccessible places. Tibet’s culture, though ancient, is far from primitive. True, there are Tibetan nomads and mountain tribes living in conditions as close to natural as any in the world, but the learning preserved until recently in Tibet’s great monasteries is, in the main, of a highly sophisticated kind.
In reading about Tibetan mysticism, a clear distinction has to be made between what is essential and what is fortuitous. The ancient wisdom has naturally been preserved in a form suited to Tibet — a country where demigods and demons are accepted by most people as being no less real than eagles and scorpions. In presenting my material, I have seldom ventured to separate aspects which seem to me of principal value from those whose worth strikes me as dubious, because I feel unqualified to draw the dividing line. I have written as one who, having been accepted as a disciple by several outstanding Lamas, naturally tries to follow their teaching in all respects. Yet, I do not for one moment suppose that it is all equally precious.
My purpose can be understood from an analogy. Suppose that the ancient wisdom is a treasure locked in a vast mine to which only one entrance remains open. I have tried to describe that entrance and the passageways leading into the mine as I saw them. I believe implicitly in the inestimable value of the treasure; I do not, however, take it for granted that the approach revealed to me is the only one or necessarily the best one. If others can find another approach more suitable to their dispositions, so much the better — so long as it reaches the treasure and does not leave them groping in the darkness of the mine. Until such a way is found, we had best make do with the present one, without altering it to suit our special needs or preconceived ideas.
