James Allen - The Shining Gateway

The Shining Gateway

JAMES ALLEN TITLES

Above Lifes Turmoil

All These Things Added

As a Man Thinketh

Byways of Blessedness

Eight Pillars of Prosperity

Foundation Stones to Happiness and Success

From Passion to Peace

From Poverty to Power

James Allens Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year

Light on Lifes Difficulties

Man: King of Mind, Body, and Circumstance

Men and Systems

Morning and Evening Thoughts

Out from the Heart

Poems of Peace

The Life Triumphant

The Mastery of Destiny

The Shining Gateway

Through the Gate of Good

The Shining Gateway

James Allen

Published 2019 by Gildan Media LLC

aka G&D Media

www.GandDmedia.com

No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any manner whatsoever, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. No liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained within. Although every precaution has been taken, the author and publisher assume no liability for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

Design by Meghan Day Healey of Story Horse, LLC

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request

ISBN: 978-1-7225-0245-4

ISBN: 978-1-7225-2339-8

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

by Lily L. Allen

Editors Foreword

S tudents of the works of James Allen all over the world will welcome with joy another book from his able pen. In this work we find the Prophet of Meditation in one of his deepest and yet most lucid expositions. How wonderfully he deals with fundamental principles! Here the reader will find no vague statement of generalities, for the writer enters with tender reverence into every detail of human experience. It is as though he came back to The Shining Gate, and, standing there, he reviewed all the way up which his own feet have travelled, passing over no temptation that is common to man; knowing that the obstacles that barred his ascending pathway, or the clouds that at times obscured his vision, are the common experiences of all those who have set their faces towards the heights of Blessed Vision. As we read his words now, he seems to stand and beckon to us, saying, Come on, my fellow Pilgrims; it is straight ahead to the Shining Gateway; I have blazed the track for you. In sending forth this, another posthumous volume from his pen, we have no doubt but that it will help many and many an aspiring soul up to the heights, until at last they too stand within The Shining Gateway.

Lily L. Allen

Bryngoleu,

Ilfracombe, England

The Shining Gateway of Meditation

Be watchful, fearless, faithful, patient, pure:

By earnest meditation sound the depths

Profound of life, and scale the heights sublime

Of Love and Wisdom. He who does not find

The Way of Meditation cannot reach

Emancipation and enlightenment.

T he unregenerate man is subject to these three thingsdesire, passion, sorrow. He lives habitually in these conditions, and neither questions nor examines them. He regards them as his life itself, and cannot conceive of any life apart from them. Today he desires, tomorrow he indulges his passions, and the third day he grieves; by these three things (which are always found together) he is impelled, and does not know why he is so impelled; the inner forces of desire and passion arise, almost automatically, within him, and he gratifies their demands sans question; led on blindly by his blind desires, he falls, periodically, into the ditches of remorse and sorrow. His condition is not merely unintelligible to him, it is unperceived; for so immersed is he in the desire (or self) consciousness that he cannot step outside of it, as it were, to examine it.

To such a man the idea of rising above desire and suffering into a new life where such things do not obtain seems ridiculous. He associates all life with the pleasurable gratification of desire, and so, by the law of reaction, he also lives in the misery of afflictions, fluctuating ceaselessly between pleasure and pain.

When reflection dawns in the mind, there arises a sense (dim and uncertain at first) of a calmer, wiser, and loftier life; and as the stages of introspection and self-analysis are reached, this sense increases in clearness and intensity, so that by the time the first three stages are fully completed, a conviction of the reality of such a life and of the possibility of attaining it is firmly fixed in the mind. Such conviction, which consists of a steadfast belief in the supremacy of purity and goodness over desire and passion, is called faith. Such faith is the stay, support, and comfort of the man who, while yet in the darkness, is searching earnestly for the Light, which breaks upon him for the first time in all its dazzling splendour and ineffable majesty when he enters the Shining Gateway of Meditation. Without such faith he could not stand for a single day against the trials, failures, and difficulties which beset him continually, much less could he courageously fight and overcome them, and his final conquest and salvation would be impossible.

Upon entering the stage of meditation, faith gradually ripens into knowledge, and the new regenerate life begins to be realised in its quiet wisdom, calm beauty, and ordered strength, and day by day its joy and splendour increase.

The final conquest over sin is now assured. Lust, hatred, anger, covetousness, pride and vanity, desire for pleasure, wealth, and fame, worldly honour and powerall these have become dead things shortly to pass away for ever; there is no more life nor happiness in them; they have no part in the life of the regenerate one, who knows that he can never again go back to them, for now the old man of self and sin is dead, and the new man of Love and Purity is born within him. He has become (or becomes, as the process of meditation ripens and bears fruit) a new being, one in whom Purity, Love, Wisdom, and Peaceful ness are the ruling qualities, and wherein strifes, envies, suspicions, hatreds, and jealousies cannot find lodgment. Old things have passed away, and, behold, all things have become new; men and things are seen in a different light, and a new universe is unveiled; there is no confusion; as out of the inner chaos of conflicting desires, passions, and sufferings the new being arises, there arises in the outer world of apparently irreconcilable conditions a new Cosmos, ordered, sequential, harmonious, ineffably glorious, faultless in equity.

Meditation is a process both of purification and adjustment. Aspiration is the purifying element, and the harmonising power resides in the intellectual train of thought involved.