Selected from
A Hermit in the Himalayas
by Paul Brunton
PB eTeaching #15 – Nature
…My excursions into stillness have led to a distinct sense of closer touch with my surroundings. In the poet Shelley’s phrase, I feel “made one with Nature”… .And as this unifying spirit penetrates me more and more, a benign sense of well-being appears to be one result. I and all these friendly trees, this kindly earth, those white glistening peaks which rim the horizon, are bound up into one living organism and the whole is definitely good at its heart. The universe is not dead but alive, not maleficent but benevolent, not an empty shell but the gigantic body of a Great Mind. I feel sorry for those materialists who, quite honestly but upon limited data, find Death to be the king of the world and the Devil to dwell at the heart of things. Could they but still their overactive brains and align themselves with Nature’s panoramic personality, they would discover how wrong they are…
For Nature has a will to outwork in us and only by desisting for a time from the continuous exercise of our own wills can we acquaint ourselves with her purpose. If however, we do this we may learn with surprise that she also has a way of silently yet forcefully attaining this end before our eyes, once we help her by such selflessness. And then her aims and our aims become one, interblent. Ambitions are then transmuted into aspirations and the things we once wanted to achieve for our own individual benefit alone become achieved, almost effortlessly, through us for the benefit of others as well. To co-operate with her in this way is to give up carrying the burden of life and to let her carry it for us; everything becomes easy, even miraculous… The mysterious manner in which this growing sense of unity commingles with a sense of utter goodness is worth noting. It arises by no effort of mine; rather does it come to me out of I know not where. I feel the fundamental benignity of Nature despite the apparent manifestation of ferocity… In short it is a matter of doing nothing in order to allow something to be done to me. Harmony appears gradually and flows through my whole being like music…
How many of our sufferings arise, then, from our resistance? Nature places a gentle finger upon us at first but we turn roughly away. The call to entrust our lives to a higher Power comes in the softest of whispers, so soft that unless we withdraw for awhile and sit still we can hardly hear it, but we stop our ears. Submission, which would bring us peace, is farthest from our thoughts. The personal self, with its illusive reality, deceives us, and, deceiving, enchains us. All of which is but the price we pay for our desertions of Nature’s way. With her, harmony; without her, discord and consequent suffering…
I cannot adequately explain the reverence in which I hold Nature. It is to me the universal temple, the universal church… Nature’s voice is to be heard within; her beauty may be discerned without; but her beneficent harmony lives both within and without us…
But if I die tonight, then let these words be found in my journal and published broadcast to the whole world:
Nature is your friend; cherish her reverently in your silent moments,
and she will bless you in secret.
All excerpts are from Chapter 4, pp. 45-48, A Hermit in the Himalayas, by Paul Brunton, Samuel Weiser, NY, 1972.