CHAPTER VI THE VALUE OF ALL EXPERIENCE

" I go to provc my soûl I I Bee my way as birds their trackless way, I shall arrive. What time, what circuit first, I ask not. . . .

In some time, His good time, I shall arrive ; He guides me and the bird.

I press God's lamp Close to my breast ; its splendour, soon or late, WiU pierce the gloom ; I shall émerge one day."

Browninq ARGUMENT

The answer to the question " Why does this happen to me ?" dépends on two prior questions — " Who ami ?" and " What predsely is happening to me ?" The first question ha$ been already answered. The second is answered by saying that the crux of every expérience is in the experient ; expérience does not mould the man, but rather elicits the soûl. The reaction to expérience is the important thing ; every kind of expérience may be necessary to educe the latencies of the soûl, and ail expérience counts. The poem " After Long Ages " is an account of the Soûl climbing the heights of expérience to Paradise. Expérience works %y per-

WHT DOKS TmS HAPPENT 115

cotation and by attrition, constantly adding som^ thing to the soûl, and constanUy wearing ihinner the dividing membrane of separated indivtduality ; after long expérience, therefore, throughout an eager and faithful life, the slightest thing may become the occasion of the soul's deUverance into vision and Power,

ONE of the most poignant of human cries is the question, '' Why does this happen to me? " Sometimes it issues out of the heart of a withering sorrow, sometimes out of a bewildering joy— Who am I that my Lord cometh unto me?

The problem is only intensified by the refiective ejaculations, " I did not seek it," "I do not deserve it," " It is not my fault " ; and is so obstinate that many despair of finding an answer save in some such theory as that of Réincarnation coupled with the Buddhist conception of Karma — a solution which, as so often happens, is simply the substitution of one problem for anotha:. This ofEered solution, however, points in the right direction, since it suggests that this mortal, threescore-years-and-ten life is not selfcontained, and can only yield its secrets when placed in a wider context.

It is a human cry, the cry of a self-conscious being. We cannot conceive of its being uttered by an animal, even by a domesticated animal with some claim to incipient intelligence. A bee does not ask such a question when it awakes one