Mount Everest: Its Spiritual Attainment

By George S. Arundale

WITHIN the pages of this book are contained the outstanding addresses given by Dr. George S. Arundale during the 1932 sessions of Wheaton Institute, Summer School and Convention of The American Theosophical Society.

Discipleship, glorious and inspiring, is the golden motif which runs like a stirring song through every talk to its triumphant climax in the address, Mount Everest. This mightiest peak, towering symbol of the grandeur of the heights attainable by man’s own divinity, rightly represents the goal of our aspiration, as also the difficulties and obstacles to be surmounted on the way of ascent.

It is a vivid and heroic drama which is given by Dr. Arundale with all the dynamic power so splendidly at his command, but a drama which challenges the aspirant to responsibility of leadership in the world’s thought and activity and imposes the obligation of joyous and selfless service. Great is the world’s need during the period of transition through which it is passing and Dr. Arundale makes it abundantly clear that the goal of each man’s Mount Everest may be attained only as he turns outward to his fellows in wise and strong helpfulness.

There can be no greater glory than to “leave the lower self behind” in the selfless service of others, and, on entering the temple of one’s own Godhood, to find the door opening into the world of the Great Ones Who have attained Mount Everest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Release date: Jan 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787208940

George S. Arundale

George Sidney Arundale (1 December 1878 - 12 August 1945) was a Theosophist, Freemason, president of the Theosophical Society Adyar and a bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church. He was the husband of the celebrated Indian dancer Rukmini Devi Arundale (1904-1986). Born in Surrey, England, Arundale was adopted at a young age by his aunt Francesca, a wealthy Theosophist. Initially privately tutored, he later attended school in Germany before receiving his Master’s degree from St John’s College, Cambridge. In 1902 he and his aunt moved to Varanasi, India, where he took a position as history teacher at the Central Hindu College (CHC) and was appointed its principal in 1909. He devoted himself to the activities of the Theosophical Society, settling at its sprawling campus at Adyar in Madras. There he met the family of Nilakanta Sastri, a fellow Theosophist, and fell in love with his daughter, Rukmini. They married in 1920, and Arundale mentored and encouraged Rukmini to develop her interest in classical dance. He then accepted an offer at the Maharaja of Indore in central India to serve as the Commissioner of Education of that state, whilst continuing to devote much of his time to the activities of the Theosophical Society. In 1926 he became bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church and was also appointed General Secretary of the Theosophical Society in Australia, where he moved with his wife. In 1934, Arundale became president of the Theosophical Society Adyar and founded the Besant Memorial School within the Society’s campus. In 1936, the Arundales founded Kalakshetra, a now venerable institution devoted to researching and teaching Indian classical dance. In the last decade of his life, he wrote several books and monographs regarding Theosophy. He died peacefully in 1945 at his residence in Adyar, India, aged 66.

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Text originally published in 1933 under the same title.

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Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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MOUNT EVEREST

ITS SPIRITUAL ATTAINMENT

BY

GEORGE S. ARUNDALE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

FOREWORD 4

THE CONDITIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP 5

I 5

II 8

III 13

IV 17

V 21

VI 26

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF YOURSELF 30

I—YOUR PHYSICAL BODY 30

II—THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS 38

III—THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MIND 45

IV—THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE INTUITION AND THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 52

INDIVIDUALITY AND LEADERSHIP 59

I 59

II 63

III 67

MT. EVEREST 72

LAWS AND PRINCIPLES 78

I 78

II 82

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 86

FOREWORD

WIΤΗΙΝ the pages of this book are contained the outstanding addresses given by Dr. George S. Arundale during the 1932 sessions of Wheaton Institute, Summer School and Convention of The American Theosophical Society.

Discipleship, glorious and inspiring, is the golden motif which runs like a stirring song through every talk to its triumphant climax in the address, Mount Everest. This mightiest peak, towering symbol of the grandeur of the heights attainable by man’s own divinity, rightly represents the goal of our aspiration, as also the difficulties and obstacles to be surmounted on the way of ascent.

It is a vivid and heroic drama which is given by Dr. Arundale with all the dynamic power so splendidly at his command, but a drama which challenges the aspirant to responsibility of leadership in the world’s thought and activity and imposes the obligation of joyous and selfless service. Great is the world’s need during the period of transition through which it is passing and Dr. Arundale makes it abundantly clear that the goal of each man’s Mount Everest may be attained only as he turns outward to his fellows in wise and strong helpfulness.

There can be no greater glory than to leave the lower self behind in the selfless service of others, and, on entering the temple of one’s own Godhood, to find the door opening into the world of the Great Ones Who have attained Mount Everest.

OLCOTT

WHEATON, ILLINOIS

1932

THE CONDITIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP

I

THE, conditions for discipleship descend from time immemorial. Those cannot be abrogated, although one is bound to say that in these modern times, and comparatively recently, there has not been perhaps that complete subordination to those eternal conditions of discipleship which have heretofore prevailed. There are regulations which cover specific ways. It is a very complicated question. But the immemorial conditions will be restored. If you are treading another way there may be other rules for that. The main thing is to be clear that you have at least reached the point where you know your own way. Until that time comes you are thrown amidst innumerable ways—just as with the roulette ball, when you whirl the wheel, you never know where the ball will come to rest.

If you do not yet know your way with certainty, clarity, and definiteness, then go everywhere, examine all possible ways, not impulsively nor impetuously, nor by reason of a flow of oratory, nor for any external reasons, but drinking it all in and yet preserving your own individuality.

Supposing you come here and I set forth with all my power the Path of Discipleship, and you are not at all clear whether discipleship is your line or not, do not allow yourself to be overwhelmed. That would be unwise. Drink it all in, and see what happens in your heart, your mind, and your will. Do not deny the truth of utterances that do not happen to suit you.

You have nothing at all to do with other people. They can help you, but you are not concerned with their rightness or wrongness. It is an exceedingly difficult thing to be right even on your own pathway; and many are the defeats and distresses which everyone suffers who is seeking to tread the razor-edged path of his own way. When I look back upon the last twenty-one years while endeavoring in this particular life to follow my way, I see mistake after mistake; and although one feels sad when one makes mistakes, because it makes the work more difficult for the Elder Brethren, one endeavors to get rid of that sense of sadness and to feel happy because one has an opportunity to correct the mistakes.

What I can give to you is not wisdom, not absolute truth, nor a statement of unalterable fact. What I can give you are the fruits of my experiences so far as they have gone, and I can communicate to you my own definite determination to follow my own way to its end, let the mistakes come as they will. Your business is to profit from me, not to judge me. I am not your concern, to express an opinion as to whether I am right or wrong, whether I am wise or unwise. You need not waste your time entering into those considerations. Allow what I say to pass in review before you, and, without reference to me, that which I say take or leave according to the dictates of your own soul, your own wisdom. Say to yourself: In my lower intelligence, my lower critical, analytical, somewhat destructive concrete mind, I am prone to judge according to human standards. But if I want to profit from the prophet and the missionary and all those who are treading emphatically their own path, I shall be wise if I enter into the spirit of it all and take that which helps and lay aside that which does not help. The trouble is, people will not listen with their higher intelligence.

I am not interested in many of the questions that are asked me because they are asked from the lower concrete mind standpoint. But I am interested in them when I am endeavoring to make you feel tremendously through the answering of them. You are pawns in a tremendous game, citizens of a great continent, members of a great Society. You have your own realizations of Theosophy and those must be filled with life. Those realizations must rise above the mind into the will, and they must be mellowed by the heart. Then you can go into the world filled with your own Theosophy. My task is to add a sense of compulsion towards, and not to provide you with forms for, theosophical work. Teaching you can get at any time, and you can read the books dealing with the simplest right up to the most intricate and secret conceptions.

If you can forget all that I or anyone else has said, and have a sense of your own worth, your own value, infinitely intensified, feeling less a seeker, less of a student, less of a mere citizen in the kingdom of the world, and a little more of a king yourself, then you profit from your own experiences. Otherwise you do not.

If we talk of the things of the mind, it is simply because people are accustomed to using the mind and a certain amount of such talk will help to stretch it—but the Gods need messengers. They need many messengers of different temperaments and of different types. The Gods desire to be all things to all men, and the more messengers They can have the better it will be. You listen, and should listen less with the mind and more with the heart, less with the heart and more with the will. The great Teachers teach very little. In my own experience with the Elder Brethren I have been taught an infinitesimal amount.

Do you suppose that when we go to sleep night after night, week after week, month after month, year after year, that we are receiving instruction? We are not. What we can, we pick up by the wayside; here and there in the course of operations an illuminating observation may be made which may open up to us a vast vista of study, but our main preoccupation is to deal with the overwhelming need of the world, expressed in an infinite variety of ways. We have no time to study save occasionally, but all this preoccupation with the needs of the world orients us little by little to reality so that we drink in, as it were, the spirit of study, of wisdom, and little by little that spirit of wisdom is able to find its appropriate forms.

If you are really intent on giving what you are, no matter how divergent you may be from other people, so much the better. If you will give what you are in increasing measure, forgetting the domination of the lower mind (though giving it its due place and no more), you will find that you are beginning to know, to enter into realization of that of which knowledge is but the variegated reflection. You will enter into the white light, and a spectrum in due course will be yours.

For the moment, as the new word is about to be born, the white light is even more important than the spectrum. There are numbers of people to attend to the spectrum, to overflow with knowledge, and we reverently recognize them; but there are things even more important. So, while you will not hesitate to study, yet while you are studying with the will more than with the lower mind, you will enter into that fundamental reality of the facts that may be set forth in books, for that which appears in the books is at best but a partial expression of that reality which they reflect.

There is one book of books in which as nakedly as may be the real is displayed, and that book is At the Feet of the Master. If you rise into the heights of wisdom and knowledge, and can make that magnificent little book your life, knowledge will come to you in its right aspect, its right perception, and presentation. The fruit of that knowledge is wisdom. That and other books like Light on the Path, etc., give a certain substance to the human fiber, a certain dignity, worth, and purity to the human consciousness. There is a certain nobility that those books confer.

You have in you tremendous power, and that power is what I am concerned with, because I myself have so strongly the sense that such power as I have is the most magnificent thing in me. I know that the power you have is, similarly, the most magnificent thing in you. I want that power to be energized so that your studies may be clearer, your service more effective, and your way more quickly and surely trodden.

There are so many things that do not matter. We must not waste time over them. We gather together under the great will-principles of life, so that we may feel strength to go forth and conquer. Each has his own individual difficulties, his own obstacles, his own karmic inhibitions and circumstances, whether personal or otherwise, which make life difficult for him.

Do not be afraid of your difficulties, do not wish you could be in other circumstances than you are, for when you have made the best of an adversity it becomes the stepping-stone to a splendid opportunity. When you are in the midst of life’s prison with its many difficulties, you will rejoice because you will feel that into that prison you have taken a spirit of freedom which will enable you to make the very best of it, and when you face that prison its walls will crumble and break down before you and will entirely disappear.

From time to time it has fallen to my lot to be admonished by the Elder Brethren. Do you know what it is to be admonished by an Elder Brother, by a Master, because you have failed to rise to His expectations? I do not think there is any more heart-rending occurrence than to stand in the presence of the Master and have His face, as it were, beclouded with sadness. But He does not expect you to be sad because you have made Him sad. And the true disciple, the strong disciple, rejoices in the Master’s sadness, because out of that vision of His sadness the disciple will in increasing measure learn to prevent Him from being sad on his account again.

I have my imperfections, my foolishnesses, and the Master allows that veil of sadness, as it were, to form a cloud between Him and me. I do not recede before that cloud, nor do I plunge into the depths of despair, nor feel disconsolate or lonely. That is not the kind of disciple the Master wants. He expects him to derive from that expression of disapproval the resolve that at least the cause for that particular disapproval never recurs.

So the individual who treads this razor way towards perfection treads it joyously, be the adversities what they may. For a moment perhaps he sinks down, but he rises again quickly, feeling he has learned the lessons of life.

You should go into the outer world, in which we must live, with all its frustrations, imprisonments, and obligations—feeling that you can achieve that which seems to be out of your reach. Then when you study and endeavor to understand the teachings of Theosophy, you will look for studies which will give you an increasing measure of truth, an increasing sense of your own cosmicness, your own divinity. That is the value of all