“You say that you want no salvation, that you need no redemption, that you will take the responsibility for what you have done and you will live out each day of your life in misery for it. And I say to what end do you do this, to what end do you desire this misery? You do not desire misery for the sake of misery, you cannot, you desire misery so that truth may come in its place. And I say that this is the most foolish dream of the world, it is the dream of the mad dog barking for the moon, because you have no hope for it, no hope at all, because the mad dog cannot fly and you are human. If you wish to make yourself sufficient for your responsibilities that is an aim as wild as the moon and you will miss it, you will fail, you will end up in delusion and that is the greatest sin of all. You will think you have reached the moon because you will have stared at it so long that it will have blinded you, the image that you will hold in your arms will be the deception of your eyes. It is you who have talked of failure and I tell you that this is the most terrible failure of all because it is deliberate, it is the deliberate will to failure arising out of pride. It is the sin that we call unforgivable, and this is why we call it unforgivable, because it can only be committed by those who have seen the moon and who have had an opportunity to worship it and who in its light have decided to deride it. In envy they bark at it and in hatred they blind their eyes. If for one moment you will look into yourself with the eyes that you turn upon others you will see this, you will see this choice, the choice between humble worship and the mad and bloody hound. You still have eyes left, then do this for me, look into yourself as you look into the world and then dare to say that you can tell what is your truth and what are your responsibilities, dare to say that you can bear them, dare to say that you are so much less mad than the world is that you can bring light to it! Remember, you are responsible for everything! Look now and tell me what it is you see that is so powerful!
“And if you look and truly say as you are saying now that you can do nothing, that alone you can do nothing, then there is still something that you can do. Alone you are mad and useless as are dogs that chase their tails around the gutter, but you have a choice, you have a choice which even a dog has, you can do what you are told. And for you who know your uselessness, who in your own words for a year have lived in madness is this not a possible thing to do and even a necessary one, to give yourself up to that which can bear what you will never be able to bear, which can do within you what alone you will never be able to do, which can give you the moon when you do not even desire it? When you come upon beauty you have not asked for beauty and yet beauty is there, and when you see it it possesses you and what is beautiful is this, that you have given yourself up to it, that you are yourself no longer, that there is within you a gift that is greater. In all beauty there is something within you and something outside of you and something which exists between you and the world. In all love there is this threefold existence, the giving and the receiving and the gift itself. This existence is God. What you give to God is given back to you and this gift is a greatness beyond compare. That to which you have given is given within you and the gift is a fulfillment of freedom and love. This is what love is, and this is what freedom is, and this is God. But God has given already, and it is for you to receive Him. To receive Him you have to give yourself and this is the choice. You can live as a madman chained to his lunacy or as an angel free in the service of love. You have no freedom now except this choice.
“You have no freedom. You have said that you are a machine. You cannot talk about your failures or successes because you are living as a machine and not as a man. Only a man has freedom, who has chosen love. Until you have made your choice this futility will continue, you will never know what happens and what there is to be done. And for us who have chosen, who have attempted to make the choice, do not talk to us about our failures or successes because failures may be triumphs and it is not for you to say. Nor is it for you to presume that we should live our lives in misery; when here, now, there is a joy such as you have never dreamed of, once and for all and always there is this joy that was given at the moment of time, the greatest triumph in history that is the whole of history, the point of triumph of eternity. And when there is this triumph and this justification and this redemption it is not for us to be miserable, it is for us to do our duty to our neighbour, yes, but this duty is not what you would make it out to be, the comfort of sickness by pretending there is no health;—it is simply the living of lives in the light of this triumph and saying over and over again in every corner of the earth that there is this triumph and there is this light and that all a man must do is to lift up his eyes in humility to it. This is what we do. Man does not require comfort, he only partly requires aid, what he requires is absolution. Sin exists and man lives in sin, there is no real aid other than this absolution. This is what we work for. And when you have realized this and have lifted up your eyes to the light of this absolution then and only then will you realize what this world is and what is the perfection of it. You will realize then that everything in the world is beautiful, that every horror and every terror and every pain in every corner of the world is beautiful, that it is beautiful because it is known by God, because God himself has suffered it, and then you will understand. You will understand everything, you will understand even this, — that when the lion eats the heart of the deer, yes, that is beautiful; that when the hangman puts the noose around the neck of his innocent victim and the floor drops and the tongue comes out and the neck screams as it is torn from the shoulders, yes, that is beautiful. You will realize that even the hangman is beautiful. Think of this when you talk about misery. Then you will know the meaning of that moment in eternity.”
In all these evenings — Mr. Palmerston’s huge face with the moon upon its cheek-bone, the cold room listening, the dampness of walls outside which there is the darkness waiting like water round a ship — there is nothing that I can do, I cannot do as he asks me, there is no I to do it when the centre is not there. I see the savagery of eyes that are kind and terrible, the sad night face that weeps and weeps, the collar like a horizon between dark and dark, the cold moon running as if with oil at some last benediction. I hear the voice beautifully modulated and controlled beginning and going on in one key always from creation to birth to death to deliverance and it all goes past me in a wild thin stream and I am left again in silence when the sound has gone. It is like an autumn night in the long lost grass when you stand and hear the sound of swans’ wings above you, a stream of swan-water flying whirring round the world and it gets very close to you, very close to your heart, and yet when it has gone you are still alone and loveless, although the earth is circled the mystery is apart. Whatever was happening to me happened in the spaces outside, and was not within me.
With Marius, too, in the mornings, it was as if my consciousness were more with him than with myself. He did not make things difficult. In talking to him there was always the feeling that he had ceased to be the person I had known before, that instead of being able to impose his will by subtlety he was now more concerned with the simplicity of making his will seem absent; but that it was possible, nevertheless, to understand that he was the same and to see the course of his change. Once he had dealt with life like a juggler; and now, with the suddenness of a child, he had given up his toys and was letting life do the juggling for him. In this condition, somehow his character was stronger. All the things that he had said a year ago were still part of him, yet by ceasing to impose them he made their presence more felt. He said that his marriage had died, and I wondered if what he had believed had died too; but it hadn’t and neither had his marriage — what he said was not true. It was rather his selfishness that had died. He had searched for his centre by heightening his power and he found it only when his power had failed. In this sense, really, his marriage lived.