me with a terrific thirst—how do you get it? You advised a bored young woman to “Try Christ, and I give you my word of honor that it will work to the degree you work it.” But how? Where to start? Then again in chapter eleven: “Today so far as I am concerned this program begins”—and, still, how? How to achieve a life evidencing the peace that passes understanding, even in myself, let alone passing it on? How does the kingdom of God start within my unruly, discontented, selfish, ungrateful, impatient, and sullen self, before I can begin to spread it? Your books (I have read several) paint a glorious picture of living life—but you forgot to tell us what brushes and colors to use, and how. I believe there must be thousands like me. Won’t you write a book about “Christ and the Kingdom Within”?
I am sure that the writer of this letter represents many, and I have written for them as well as for the mature Christian. I mentioned in my last book that I had received a request signed by many prominent Christians of America asking me to write a book on the “Inner Life.” I trust that this book fulfills that request—a request that I deeply appreciated. But, as the reader will see, it goes beyond it, for all life is one, the inner and the outer being indissoluble.
The book was written during a three-month retreat in the Himalayas, the mornings being spent in writing and the afternoons and evenings in going through a course of reading—the only vacation, if it can be called one—that I have had for some years. It was the cold season, and these hills were deserted at that time, so that my only companions were an Indian secretary and the wild animals that roamed the estate—the deer, the panther, the tiger, and the wild pig. At noon, after a morning of writing, I would take a walk through these lovely mountain paths to clear my brain, only to return to find that my faithful secretary, who was unused to the mountains, had been spending anxious moments of prayer for me until I got back safely! It was the unknown to him—to me it was the beloved known. Perhaps many of my friends across the seas will share that same anxiety and will be in anxious prayer as we penetrate from the known personal to the jungle of social relationships, and will wonder if we should not stick to the beaten paths of personal religion. But this jungle of social relations must be Christianized, for Christ must claim all life.
At the close of the retreat I had the unspeakable privilege of presenting the manuscript, during May and June, to the Sat Tal Ashram Group, made up of many nationalities, and of receiving their criticisms and suggestions.
Many in that group were led into victorious living as we made our way through step by step, and now it goes to the larger circle, and it goes out with prayer, that among them too may be many who will find through these pages a clear path from confused and baffled and defeated human living to living that is certain, adequate, and victorious.
E. Stanley Jones
Week 1 Sunday
Week 1 Sunday
The Question That Halts Our Quest
Job 11:7-9; 21:15; 23:3-9; John 14:8
“In the beginning” God (Gen. 1:1).
It would be well if, in our quest for “Victorious Living,” we could all begin with God. It would put a solid fact beneath our questing feet. It would give meaning and purpose to the whole of life. But, alas, many of us cannot begin there. For God is the vague, the unreal. We wish we could believe in God, and get hold of God so that we could live by God; for life without the Great Companion has a certain emptiness and meaninglessness about it. For many skepticism is not voluntary, but apparently unavoidable. The facts of life are too much for us—the unemployment, the hunger of little children, the underlying strife in modern life, the exploitation of the weak and incapacitated by the strong, the apparently unmerited suffering around us, the heartlessness of nature, the discoveries of science that seem to render the hypothesis of God unnecessary—all these things and more seem to shatter our belief in God. We do not reject that belief; it simply fades away and becomes unreal. And we cannot assert what, to us, is not real. For amid all the losses and wreckage of our modern day, we are trying to save one thing: the desire for reality. We wish to keep an inner integrity. We loathe all unreality. That leads us to face the fact that our skepticism has gone deeper than the matter of belief in God; we find ourselves questioning life itself. Has life any meaning? Any goal? Is the flame of life within us different from the flame that leaps from the logs in the fireplace—both of them the result of material forces and both destined to die down into a final ash? If it has no ultimate meaning, has it any meaning now as we live it?
O God, our Lord (if we may call you thus), as we begin this quest we are haunted with many a biting fear and with hesitation and doubt. Help us to face them all and come out, if possible, on the further side of them into victorious living. Amen.
Week 1 Monday
Follow a Life of No or a Life of Yes?
Ecclesiastes 4:1-2; 9:2-3; John 10:10
There are just two elemental philosophies of life: that of Buddha and that of Christ. The rest are compromises between. (When writer H. G. Wells chose the three greatest men of history he selected Christ, then Buddha, then Aristotle: life affirmation, life denial, and the scientific method.) The two greatest characters of history head up two diametrically different outlooks on life. Both of them looked at the same facts of life and came to opposite conclusions—one to a final yes, and the other to a final no.
Buddha, pondering under the bo tree, came to the conclusion that existence and evil are one. The only way to get out of evil is to get out of existence itself. Nirvana is so close to annihilation that scholars still doubt whether it means annihilation or not. “Is there any existence in Nirvana?” I asked a Buddhist monk in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). “How could there be?” he replied, “for if there were existence, there would be suffering.” “Is it an emptiness, a cipher?” “It is an emptiness, a cipher,” he replied with a final and decisive gesture. It is true that this is called bliss, but it is the bliss of the world-weary. In its revolt against life, the soul performs its final “hara-kiri,” clothed, it is true, with an air of sanctity and nobility. Buddha would cheat the sufferings and evils of life by getting rid of life itself. He would have us perform a sanctified suicide, not only of the physical, but of personality itself. It is a final no to life.
There is much to be said for Buddha’s position. Everything seems to be under the process of decay. The blushing bride—then the withered old woman shriveling to fit her narrow final shroud. We grasp the lurid colors of the sunset and find that we have grasped the dark—first the beauty, then the blackness.
O God, our Lord, we stand confused and dismayed, not knowing if we shall be compelled to adopt the noble pessimism of souls like Buddha. Perhaps there is another way. We hardly dare to believe it. But show us the way—the way to life, if there is such a way. Amen.
Week 1 Tuesday
Is Life a Bubble or an Egg?
Ecclesiastes 1:1-9; 2 Corinthians 5:1-4
A noble missionary drew near in spirit to Buddha when he said with a sigh, “Every new affection brings a new affliction.” Philosopher Bertrand Russell also took his stand with Buddha when he said, “All the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated upon the individual soul which must struggle alone, with what courage it can command, against the whole weight of the universe that cares nothing for his hopes or fears.” There are many modern followers of Buddha, unconscious of course, but driven there by the hard facts of life. They worship with a sigh at the shrine of the stupa.
Standing in the midst of a Buddhist ruin, I asked the learned Indian curator why the stupa was always oval shaped. “Because Buddhism believes that life is a bubble, therefore the stupa is shaped like one,” he replied.
